Abit AT8 32X Crossfire Xpress 3200 Motherboard Review

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:25 am

With the arrival of AMD's AM2 processors, does it make any sense to buy a new s939 board? After the recent AMD pricing changes the 'old' 939 processors pack a great price versus performance value on a mature platform. The question we answer in this review today is, "Is the abit AT8 32X the board to buy if you are staying with s939?"

Read more here! Abit AT8 32X Crossfire Xpress 3200 Motherboard Review

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:49 am

I'm currently looking for a ATI based mobo(s).......
I was looking @ this board too, until I read...

The Legit Bottom Line

If you are looking for a board that is a moderate overclocker and...............................

I'm afraid you lost me on that last point! Moderate just aint good enough......
I'll prolly get the DFI CFX3200-DR board to replace this Expert and an Asus A8R-MVP for the second rig.....The Asus A8R32-MVP seems to have issues with high HTT clocking......the bios doesn't save your Tref settings and uses what ever it thinks best....

If Abit didn't have poor placement of components and just tried that bit harder with OC'in....I'd have gone for this board.......

Nice review!

Skippman · Post by **Skippman** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:49 am

Thank you for finally reviewing some ATI hardware!

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:52 am

Ken I understand. For me, moderate and overclocking do not go together. I personally have had no issues so far with the Asus, but I have only tested it up to and HTT of 300, and it is fine there. Honestly, the cost of this board makes it hard to choose it over the Asus as well. The DFI on the other hand is going for well over $200. Abit is coming out and Asus going in for my test bench as of now. I do not have the DFI to comment on it.

Skippman · Post by **Skippman** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:13 pm

Couple questions on the ASUS.

What color is the PCB? And what chipset is it running?

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:17 pm

Skippman wrote:Couple questions on the ASUS.

What color is the PCB? And what chipset is it running?

ATI R580 Chipset! --> same as this Abit AT8

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:24 pm

Asus is much nicer looking in my book. I hate the orange color on the abit

Skippman · Post by **Skippman** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 1:53 pm

That's a sexy board. I'll have to get one of those when it's Crossfire time.

pcrobot · Post by **pcrobot** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 7:30 am

Nice review!

I think I'll stick with SLi though.

hazeldene · Post by **hazeldene** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:04 pm

I have this board, and I use an Opteron 144.

I also have had the mixed OC results that you seem to have had, lets hope the BIOS engineers are hard at work on this now!!

I cannot break a 284HTT with the default x9 multiplier, I have to drop to x8 multi and then I can use a HTT all the way up to 370HTT which is about the limit of the processor. Weird huh?

I am able to use a 3x multiplier for the HTT here tho, but there seems to be loads of 'quirks' in this bios, such as a cold boot problem, and troube booting at 1T timings when cold.

Performance wise, I cannot complain, as it is very good.

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:08 pm

Thanks for sharing your results. I hope as well that the bios is tweaked better for this board, as I know it could do very well if it was. You fair better than I do using the 8x multi.

Also, welcome to the forums!

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:58 pm

hazeldene thanks for taking the time to register/post!