Abit AG8 Motherboard Review :: Setup and BIOS

uGuru

Setup of the board went almost without incident, as is customary with the new 915/925 platform in my experience, the motherboard booted up with a ridiculously high temperature of over 70 degrees C. I've yet to see a boot with a reasonable temperature on the new platform, which is disappointing to me in the extreme. With the latest BIOS, which is shipping on the AG8s out now (version 15 is the latest BIOS but I used 14 in the review), the temperature is a more modest 59 degrees C.

Primary Power

12v Power

The layout of the board is ok with a couple of problems. First, as is common with boards today, the ATX power connector is on the bottom of the board. A far better placement would be the top of the board next to the 5V connector. Second, the placement of the floppy drive connector is in an extremely precarious position, being behind the PCI Slots 1 and 2. The position causes the use of a long floppy drive cable, as the standard one that I use didn't reach the connector! One thing that I like about the board is that there is plenty of space around the CPU socket. This allows installation of virtually almost any CPU cooling solution available for this platform; it also gives wonderful airflow to the CPU to keep it cool, which the Intel CPU desperately needs.

Audio Connections

After installing the 3.4 EE CPU with the modified heatsink/fan from Swiftech that we use in our test station, I installed the dual Seagate HDDs and other devices from our new test bench without issue. After installing Windows, I proceeded to run our test series. Stability was excellent even with the ridiculous temperature readings and no issues with heat were present.

The BIOS on the UGURU is the Award BIOS that is pretty standard until you enter the uGURU utility. In the uGuru utility there is a OC Guru and a Abit EQ Guru. The OC Guru allows you to change the external FSB frequency of your CPU from the menu. There's a warning in the manual from changing the FSB frequency because it can cause CPU damage. With the abnormal temperature readings I decided not to fool around with overclocking the CPU. Also on this menu you can change the CPU/DDR/ North Bridge Voltage when you set the option User Define. Power Cycle Statistics gives you Up Time, PC Up Time Total, PC Power Cycles, PC Reset Button Cycles, AC Power On Total Time, AC Power Cycles. This is useful for those that are concerned about having problems with a computer over an extended period of time.

The ABIT EQ utility is just as useful. From here you can monitor your temperature of your CPU, System Temperature, Power Module Temperature 1 and Power Module Temperature 2. You can set the shutdown temperature from this menu. The next menu is the Voltage Monitoring menu. From here you can set Shutdown Voltages for the CPU Core, DDR Voltage, DDR VTT Voltage, North Bridge Voltage, North Bridge 2.5V Voltage, FB VTT Voltage, ATX +5V, ATX 3.3V Voltage and Standby Voltage.

One nice feature of the uGURU is in addition to the automatic shutdown at temperature reading, there is also shutdown when CPU Fan Speed is too low. You set this in the ABIT EQ Menu. You can monitor the CPU FAN Speed and set a low fan speed where automatic shutdown occurs. You can also set the North Bridge Fan, System Fan, Auxillary1 Fan, Auxiliary 2 Fan shutdown speeds at this menu. The FanEQ menu controls the default settings of the ABIT Motherboard giving control temperatures that are too high where the system shuts down, and also controls the Power Module Duty Cycle percentage adjusting the fan speed. This menu also allows you to control the High/Low North Bridge Temperature and Voltage and the System Fan Temperature/Voltage.

Abit decided to include a LED on the board for diagnostics. On boot, you get a numerical code that lets you know of issues the board may have. Some common issues that it will warn are: video card problems, memory issues, CPU issues. A 7F code indicates that the board has passed the tests and the system will boot.

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