Abit AB9 P965 Conroe Motherboard

Specification

From Abit's Site:

CPU

* Support Intel Core 2 Duo Pentium® & Pentium® D processors with1066/800MHz FSB
* Support Intel® 2006FMB Conroe CPU

Chipset

* Intel® P965 / ICH8 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 10/100/1000M PCI controller

Audio

* On board 7.1 CH HD Audio CODEC
* Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF Out

Expansion Slots

* 1 x PCI-E X16
* 2 x PCI-E X1
* 2 x PCI

Internal I/O

* 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88 MB
* 1 x Ultra DMA 100/66/33 IDE connector
* 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connector
* 3 x USB header (support 4 ports)
* 1 x FP-Audio, 1 x CD-In

Back Panel I/O

* 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse

* ABIT Silent OTES^TM
* 1 x S/P DIF In, 1 x S/P DIF Out
* 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

Serial ATA

* 4 x SATA 3Gb/s through Intel® ICH8
* 2 x SATA 3Gb/s through JMicron® JMB363 support up to 0,1 ,JBOD RAID function

ABIT Engineered

* ABIT SoftMenu^TM Technology
* ABIT μGuru^TM Technology
* ABIT Silent OTES^TM Technology

Form Factor

* ATX form factor 305 x 245mm
* PCB Color: Orange

RoHS

* 100% lead-free process and RoHS Compliancy

BIOS

Abit have employed the Phoenix Award BIOS for the AB9. Being used to this from the DFI LANPARTY series I was looking forward to a nice easy BIOS with plenty of options. I won't mention the colour. No really....PINK!

The CPU and voltage adjustments are in the μGuru™ part of the BIOS. Plenty of adjustment in there for you.

Pretty decent CPU voltage adjustment up to 1.7v. Not too keen on the fairly large 0.025 steps.

And FSB adjustment up to 600FSB - not too bad!

DDR Voltage adjustment up to an "OK" 2.3v and some decent speed adjustment. Some of the higher speed DDR2 will need more volts. This is not as impressive as I had hoped for.

MCH goes up to 1.45v and ICHIO goes up to 1.7v. Pretty decent amounts of adjustment.

The RAM timings are set elsewhere in advanced. Not a huge amount like the LANPARTY BIOS, but the main 4 are there.

All in all the BIOS is pretty decent, although the lack of RAM voltage is slightly disappointing. Aside from the colour: Abit supply a decent BIOS and it will only get better and I hope Abit continues to release decent new BIOS's.