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abit AB9 Pro Motherboard Review :: abit AB9 Pro Features
abit has tested the AB9 Pro with all current Core 2 CPUs including the X6800 Extreme Edition, the E6700 and E6600 and the E6300 CPUs. Earlier Intel LGA-775 CPUs including the 955, the 8xx series, the 6xx series, the 5xx series and the Celeron D are also supported. abit has indicated that the QX6700 is also supported by this motherboard, but they haven't tested its compatibility as of yet.  CPU socket  Board shot The AB9 Pro sports four 240-pin DIMM slots (Dual Inline Memory Module). The board supports up to 8 GB of unbuffered Non-ECC Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz memory. The most common DDR2 memory in use today is DDR2 667MHz memory, but 800 MHz DDR2 memory is becoming more and more available. Note that unless you use a 64-bit operating system like Windows XP 64-bit or Linux, you will be limited to 4GB due to memory address capabilities of a 32-bit operating system. DDR2 800/667/533 MHz memory is supported officially by the 965 chipset.  Expansion slots  PCI Express slots The high-end of the motherboard market has been dominated by boards supporting dual graphics cards. The AB9 Pro sports a single PCI express x16 slot for discrete graphics. Two PCI Express x1 slots are present, as well as two PCI slots for device expansion on the AB9 Pro. This is a bit disappointing as many boards will have 5 or more slots available or support SLI requiring a slot be taken up by another full length PCI Express slot. Alleviating that is the fact that only a small portion of the computer market use dual graphics cards in any shape or form.  SATA ports  SATA + Molex  SATA + PATA  FDC Controller  Intel Matrix Storage console SATA drives are the dominant drive interface on the market at the moment. abit decided that the more drives the merrier and the AB9 Pro sports 10 SATA ports. 6 of the ports are supported by the Intel ICH8R Southbridge chip which supports AHCI and RAID 0, 1, 5, and10 modes. 2 of the SATA ports and the PATA port are controlled by a Jmicron JMB3263 chip which supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD. Another port is controlled by the Silicon Image Sil3132 chip, offering RAID 0, 1, 0+1 JBOD modes. The external SATA port is controlled by the Sil3132 chip as well. Audio shots     abit went a different route than their other motherboard designs with the onboard audio of the AB9 Pro. They decided to outfit the board with a Realtek CODEC rather than use their AudioMAX riser card as many of their boards have. The Realtek chip supports High Definition Audio, allowing the user to have multiple audio streams, Dolby Live Studio, 7.1 Surround sound and more. I prefer the board to have an onboard chip, as I'd rather another expansion slot take the place where the riser board would be inserted.  External SATA The back panel input and output area is important, as this area defines what devices are installed in the area that there are no expansion slots, and the rear chipset cooling of the board is here as well. The standard PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse ports are here, but no COM or Parallel ports. 4 USB ports are present as are 2 RJ-45 jacks for Gigabit Ethernet. The onboard audio has 6 jacks for the 7.1 surround sound, a SPDIF In and S/PDIF Out optical connection for digital multimedia devices. Contents:
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