Abit AB9 Quad GT Review - PAGE 1

Abit has introduced one of its newer motherboards just recently, the Abit AB9 Quad GT.

Abit has been producing motherboards for over a decade and came into prominence during the early 90s. Abit' successes continued with a string of stellar motherboards all the way to 2007, with one of their best releases being the Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X. While the Fatal1ty was an AM2 socket board meant for AMD processors, Abit's new Quad GT is Core 2 ready. The Quad GT comes equipped with a socket 775 and with Abit's Quad core support (as you could probably tell from the name), the potential is high.

The AB9 Quad GT has been touted to take over Abit's mid-range motherboard lineup and become the successor to the AB9 Pro.



Seeing that the AB9 Quad GT is just a rehash of the Abit AB9 Pro, this board should be well received just as the Pro was. The AB9 Pro was praised in our previous Review Article for its amazing overclocking ability and SATA speed performance. Since Abit was likely to build or at least remain on par with its previous revision, the AB9 Quad GT should be coming into the market at the right time barring any disproportionate price differences between it and other mid-range boards.


Specifications

CPU
- Support Intel® Core™ 2 Duo / Quad processors with 1066/800MHz FSB
- Support Intel® Core™ 2 Quad/Duo(Extreme Edition) & Pentium® Dual Core & Pentium® Extreme
- Edition & Pentium® D & Pentium®4 Processors
- Digital PWM Designation provide high quality and efficient power

Chipset
- Intel® P965 / ICH8R Chipset

Memory
- 4 X 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. memory capacity 8GB
- Supports Dual channel DDR2 800/667/533 Un-buffered Non-ECC memory

LAN
- On board PCI Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000M Ethernet

Audio
- On board 7.1 CH HD Audio CODEC
- Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out
- HDMI ready header (SPDIF header)

Expansion Slots
- 1 x PCI-E X16, 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth), 1 x PCI-E X1, 2 x PCI

Internal I/O
- 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88 MB
- 1 x ATA 133/100/66/3 IDE connector
- 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connector
- 1 x IEEE1394, 3 x USB header (support 6 ports)
- 1 x FP-Audio

Back Panel I/O
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
- abit Silent OTES™
- 1 x S/P DIF In, 1 x S/P DIF Out
- 2 x eSATA
- 7.1 CH Audio connector (Front, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Surround, Rear Surround)
- 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 LAN connector, 1 x 1394
- Clear CMOS Switch

Serial ATA
- Intel® Matrix Storage Tech(AHCI & RAID0/1/5/10)
- 2 x eSATA 3Gb/s through JMicron® JMB363 support 0,1JBOD RAID function

IEEE 1394
Supports 2 Ports IEEE 1394 at 400Mb/s transfer rate.

Form Factor
- ATX form factor 305 x 245mm
- PCB Color: Blue

RoHS
- 100% lead-free process and RoHS compliant

abit Engineered
- abit µGuru™ Technology
- abit Silent OTES™ Technology
- 100% Low ESR and high ripple conductive polymer aluminum solid state capacitor
- 100% Japanese Capacitor
- EZ for CCMOS
- On board LED Lighting