Why's the Abit AN8 32-X better than the Fatal1ty?

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Ho Folks,

From what I can gather the AN8 32-X from Abit is the replacement for the trusty Fatal1ty. Why is it better? Having had a quick look over it's specs it seems to be just the same as the Fatal1ty but you loose out on the Ram cooler, pcb mounted led's and the unit that fitted into a free drive bay.

It seems to be the same technically, yet it costs more. How come?

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=310

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=246

Sniff Sniff - I might grab a Fatal1ty while I can.

conzy

Because the AN8 32-X has 2 true 16X PCI-Express lanes, and silent heatpipe cooling.

The fatality doesnt support SLI

Kintarō Hattori

The Fatal1ty does support Sli.
Sorry I linked to the old Fatal1ty, link corrected. Silent heatpipes aside, that's hardly the reason it's quite a bit more expensive.

conzy

You are paying for new tech, all the 32 lane PCI-Express boards cost a lot:eek:

Kintarō Hattori

Fair enough so........... bare with me while I grasp this. I think I know roughly where your going with this. So the old fatal1ty, what was the deal with the pci express x16 slots on it, compared to this newer board?
It's faster. more bandwidth??

gline

eo980 wrote:

Fair enough so........... bare with me while I grasp this. I think I know roughly where your going with this. So the old fatal1ty, what was the deal with the pci express x16 slots on it, compared to this newer board?
It's faster. more bandwidth??

fatality= 2x x8 slots when run in sli
an8 = 2x x16 slots when run in sli

no big deal at the moment because gfx cards dont use that much bandwidth fully yet and no big deal at all if you arent running sli

go with a fatality if you must chose between the 2

astrofool

the newer nforce4-16x chipset seems to have a much better IDE implementation

conzy

Toms Hardware did a test on how much bandwith the high end graphics cards use (7800gtx........) and the 4X PCI-Express slot offers enough bandwith:eek:

These new 32lane PCI-Express motherboards are an overkill, but Nvidia will more than likely make them a requirement for Quad SLI:mad:

astrofool

They're most definitely not needed. But neither was AGP4x or 8x, or even PCI-E really. If you're going to get a new board, i'd always get the most fully featured chipset/board if only because the difference in price usually isn't huge (~€20), and its always better to have something you don't need, then not have something you do need.

Kintarō Hattori

Ahh I don't need or want a new board really, I was just curious what the advantage was as I didn't see anything really that made it better than the Fatal1ty.

BadCharlie

I like abit boards my self. But i have noticed a big change since the barton chips where the have CPU's everone at that time were using abit boards. Or at least it looked like that. But now its DFI or Asus whos king.

astrofool

They ran into financial trouble, which they have sorted now.

Also their boards went off on a tangent a bit with the whole fatality thing, more fans, more noise, not as many features, they also tied themselves to VIA for too long and missed the nforce 3/4 boat.

If a company can come out with a passively cooled board, with 1 PCI slot and the rest PCI-E (2 x16's), + lots of SATA and firewire/usb i'll be happy, the ASUS a8n32-SLI deluxe comes close, but is lacking on the PCI-E slots.

Also, boards need to start putting some USB extenders where the IDE ports currently are.

conzy

Abit had Oscar Wu back in the socket A days when abit were the best overclocking boards, but he moved to DFI for the Athlon 64 era and now DFI have the best overclocking boards, do you see a pattern:D

Oscar Wu is my hero:o