Benchmark Setup
Our abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard fully supports the current range of socket 775 Intel processors. We chose an E6300 for testing as we feel this will be a very popular Core 2 Duo CPU choice with the P965 motherboards. (Granted that many people looking at a $200+ motherboard like this abit are likely to opt for a more expensive CPU as well, but with the more budget-oriented P965 boards the choice makes sense, and we continue to use this CPU for purposes of consistency.)
A 2GB memory configuration is now standard in the AT test bed as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory. Our choice of DDR2-800 memory from GEIL offered a very wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via our test application results.
We are utilizing the MSI X1950XTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our motherboard test results. We did find in testing that applying a 4xAA/8xAF setting in most of today's latest games created a situation where the performance of the system starts becoming GPU limited. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this preview article at standard settings.
Synthetic and Application Performance
We are utilizing an abbreviated test suite for our first look at the abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard. We will present full test results in our next article that will look at new P965 boards from ASUS and Gigabyte.
At stock speeds the AB9 QuadGT motherboard posts the best WinRAR and Quake 4 scores, and it's SuperPI and Nero Recode scores are near the top as well. We had performance issues with Battlefield 2 at stock settings as the frame rates were consistently about 5fps below the other boards. The game also stuttered at various points in the benchmark and dropped online connections three out of five times. We finally traced the issue down to the BIOS and JMicron controller. After setting our memory latencies to 3-4-3-10 and loading the JMicron RAID driver instead the standard XP IDE driver our scores improved to 104.8.
Although not listed, we noticed a drop of about 200~300 points in PCMark 2005 when compared to our other P965 motherboards. The solution was once again to switch the JMicron controller from IDE to RAID and load the JMicron RAID driver set. Our scores improved from 5664 to 5962 while our disk intensive WinRAR and Nero Recode scores improved by a couple of percent.
In our overclocking tests the AB9 QuadGT was absolutely superb and offered the best overall performance even though the ASUS P5B-Deluxe has a 70MHz CPU speed advantage. This performance is a direct result of the 1067 strap settings and aggressive memory sub-timings. Stability was also excellent during overclocking, although we continued to have issues with BF2 until we changed the JMicron driver. Once the driver was changed our overclocked BF2 fps score improved to 151.3.
We have not encountered any performance issues with our Quad Core (QX6800), E6600, or E4300 in limited testing to date. We will provide a performance update with these processors in our next P965 comparison article. Overall, this board clearly performed very well in our limited testing.
Our abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard fully supports the current range of socket 775 Intel processors. We chose an E6300 for testing as we feel this will be a very popular Core 2 Duo CPU choice with the P965 motherboards. (Granted that many people looking at a $200+ motherboard like this abit are likely to opt for a more expensive CPU as well, but with the more budget-oriented P965 boards the choice makes sense, and we continue to use this CPU for purposes of consistency.)
| Standard Test Bed Performance Test Configuration |
|
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Dual Core, 1.86GHz, 2MB Unified Cache 1066FSB, 7x Multiplier |
| RAM: | Geil PC2-6400 800MHz Plus (2x1GB - GX22GB6400PDC) (Micron Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 320GB 7200RPM SATA2 16MB Buffer |
| System Platform Drivers: | Intel - 8.1.1.1010 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x MSI X1950XTX |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.11 |
| CPU Cooling: | Scythe Infinity |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXstream 700W |
| Optical Drive: | Sony 18X AW-Q170A-B2 |
| Case: | Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 |
| Motherboards: | ASUS P5B-Deluxe WiFi (Intel P965 C2, 1.01G) - BIOS 0804 abit AB9-Pro (Intel P965 C1) - BIOS 1.5 abit AB9 QuadGT (Intel P965 C2) - BIOS 10 Biostar T-Force 965 Deluxe (Intel P965 C1) - BIOS IP96a803 Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (Intel P965 C2) - BIOS F7 MSI P965 Platinum - (Intel P965 C2) - BIOS 1.2 |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| . | |
A 2GB memory configuration is now standard in the AT test bed as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory. Our choice of DDR2-800 memory from GEIL offered a very wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via our test application results.
We are utilizing the MSI X1950XTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our motherboard test results. We did find in testing that applying a 4xAA/8xAF setting in most of today's latest games created a situation where the performance of the system starts becoming GPU limited. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this preview article at standard settings.
Synthetic and Application Performance
We are utilizing an abbreviated test suite for our first look at the abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard. We will present full test results in our next article that will look at new P965 boards from ASUS and Gigabyte.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
At stock speeds the AB9 QuadGT motherboard posts the best WinRAR and Quake 4 scores, and it's SuperPI and Nero Recode scores are near the top as well. We had performance issues with Battlefield 2 at stock settings as the frame rates were consistently about 5fps below the other boards. The game also stuttered at various points in the benchmark and dropped online connections three out of five times. We finally traced the issue down to the BIOS and JMicron controller. After setting our memory latencies to 3-4-3-10 and loading the JMicron RAID driver instead the standard XP IDE driver our scores improved to 104.8.
Although not listed, we noticed a drop of about 200~300 points in PCMark 2005 when compared to our other P965 motherboards. The solution was once again to switch the JMicron controller from IDE to RAID and load the JMicron RAID driver set. Our scores improved from 5664 to 5962 while our disk intensive WinRAR and Nero Recode scores improved by a couple of percent.
In our overclocking tests the AB9 QuadGT was absolutely superb and offered the best overall performance even though the ASUS P5B-Deluxe has a 70MHz CPU speed advantage. This performance is a direct result of the 1067 strap settings and aggressive memory sub-timings. Stability was also excellent during overclocking, although we continued to have issues with BF2 until we changed the JMicron driver. Once the driver was changed our overclocked BF2 fps score improved to 151.3.
We have not encountered any performance issues with our Quad Core (QX6800), E6600, or E4300 in limited testing to date. We will provide a performance update with these processors in our next P965 comparison article. Overall, this board clearly performed very well in our limited testing.
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8KCABrett - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
1. "loading the JMicron RAID driver instead the standard XP IDE driver" is a one time thing that can be done at installation and not worried about after that right?
2Does this lead to any other issues. . . is it still possible to use and IDE optical once this is done?
takumsawsherman - Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - link
Gigabyte may have had BIOS issues with the early releases, but their memory guide also gives a pretty good idea of what will work with the board. I have put in 2 P965 DQ6's recently). Both times I got the recommended Kingston kits, and everything works fine and is blazing fast. For the same price as this Abit is selling, it has 2 more SATA ports, 2 internal firewire headers (though I honestly don't know how many the abit has, both the abit and the gigabyte have a rear port built in), the DQ6 seems to have a better cooling system, a better floppy port location, better PCI-Express auxiliary power location, and it comes with 2 eSATA brackets, each with two ports, and 4 eSATA cables.Speaking of Kingston kits, one of the above posters was correct in asserting that many manufacturers ship an immature bios with their boards, and this has proved true for many P965 boards (1.8V only, etc.). A P965 is definitely not a platform on which I would want to muck around with enthusiast memory.
BTW, you should review the i-Star S-8 Storm Series enclosure. Best case I have used in a while, though they always seem to be trying to play some cruel prank by shorting you some screws. Luckily, building all of those Supermicro 750 and 760 based workstations years ago has left me with quite the surplus.
yyrkoon - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
Its pretty much in-excusable, releasing a motherboard, using an enthusiast chipset, that doesn't support the best enthusiast memory chips. At least, from the enthusiasts perspective, thats all we were saying.RippleStrip - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
Ok, so I've been out of it for a while. I remember reading on reviews for early 975s and 965s that it was possible to change the cpu multiplier (although sometimes only one way). Did Intel bop this on the head, or do some motherboards still do this? What about the nvidia boards?-Steven
SignalPST - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
This has nothing to do with the article, but nevertheless, I'm dying to ask.Will AnandTech do a roundup of non-refrence nForce 680i motherboards once they are all out? So far, the guys that are or will be making them are ASUS, ABIT, GIGABYTE and DFI.
Gary Key - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
Yes, finally received the new ASUS boards yesterday and the Gigabyte/abit boards are due this week.SignalPST - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
Great! I'll be looking forward to the review, and I'm sure alot of people will be too.I get a sense that everyone is still tight-liped about the DFI nForce 680i motherboard :)
yyrkoon - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Heh, Gary, was that you on the ABIT forums that smoked the set of Corsair 6400 memory ? (because of the uGuru issue)Gary Key - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
That was me. :)Heidfirst - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
there's a new beta BIOS available for it already (the board hasn't even made it to retail in the UK yet).http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=119222">http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=119222
Tbh with market pressure & shipping schedules I think that many mobo mfrs are shipping boards with an initial slightly buggy BIOS hoping to have a better 1 available for download by the time that the boards hit retail.
e.g. look at Gigabyte's BIOS development for the P965 series or the fact that the Asus P5N-E SLI is still on the release BIOS & that could use more work too.
Is that ideal?
Of course not but it's commercial pressure driving it...