Abit AV8

Although there's been much hype surrounding Intel's new processors and chipsets, AMD has also launched a range of new processors in the form of 939-pin Athlon 64s. If you're thinking about upgrading, the question is clear: which one do you want to be hitched to - Intel's new socket 775 Pentium 4s, or AMD's 939-pin Athlon 64s?

The Athlon 64 was originally introduced in two varieties: the 754-pin Athlon 64, and the high-end, 940-pin Athlon 64-FX. Both are now being merged into one pin-out package design, known as socket 939. As a result, all Athlon 64 motherboards will be able to accept Athlon 64s and 64 FXs. Although that means good upgrade potential, the path is slightly spoiled by the fact that the FX-53 still needs to use registered RAM. However, since the 939-pin socket introduces dual-channel memory access for regular Athlon 64s, rather than just keeping it for the elite FX chip, you might not need to bother with the ultra-high-end architecture.

As with previous-generation Athlon 64 boards, there's a choice of chipsets available: either nVidia's nForce 3, or VIA's K8T800. VIA's offering, unlike nVidia's, is a two-chip design. Abit has chosen the Pro version of VIA's chipset for its new AV8 motherboard, which boasts significantly faster data transfer rates between the north and south bridge than the standard K8T800: it sports a 1,000MHz HyperTransport bus, for total maximum throughput of 8GB/sec as opposed to the 6.4GB/sec of the standard K8T800. Although impressive, this is still a fairly academic specification since it's almost impossible to saturate the bus in practice.

Although the K8T800 Pro is a two-chip solution, the AV8 is cleanly and clearly laid out. The AV8's layout is like a perfect seating plan at a wedding reception: feuding family members are kept apart, and everyone's happy. First, this is because Abit hasn't used huge heatsinks on the motherboard's chips. The K8T800 Pro chip itself sports only a modest turquoise-coloured heatsink, with no pesky, noisy little fan in sight, and the VT8237 south bridge doesn't need cooling at all.

There's plenty of space between the AGP slot and the four DIMM sockets, making assembly quick and easy. The two SATA and two parallel ATA interfaces are located close to the edge of the board so they'll be near the drives when in a case. The two board power connectors are right behind the parallel port too, so they'll be next to the PSU to virtually ensure neat cabling. There's plenty of room around the CPU as well. All this is a result of offering five PCI slots instead of six. It's a smart move - there can't be many people who can fill that many PCI slots.

Performance-wise, the K8T800 Pro seems to have the upper hand over the nForce3, and the AV8 reflected this in our benchmark. It proved to be a good performer all-round, flying through games and handling multimedia tasks with ease. In testing, fitted with an Athlon 64 3800+ it completed the FlasK DivX video-encoding test in 13 minutes, 20 seconds, which is a reasonable, if not stellar time: Pentium 4s have the edge here. Attempts to overclock didn't prove very fruitful; we got the 3800's memory interface up to 210MHz, giving a FlasK improvement of 24 seconds.

The AV8's features are decent. The board offers RAID0 and 1 for SATA drives, as well as gigabit Ethernet. However, Abit has opted for AC97 on-board audio, handled by a Realtek ALC658 chip, which means that the AV8 only offers 5.1 surround-sound audio, as opposed to the 7.1 many new boards offer. Again, Intel has the edge here with its new high-definition audio, aka Azalia.