Abit F-I90HD review part 1

[gilgamesh]

Initial thoughts: On seeing the box art my initial thoughts were.. “Oh gods not ANOTHER fatal1ty product I.E Motherboard/mouse/case/keyboard etc. Previously I have tried to avoid Fatality products as much as I can as usually fatality products offer NO REAL advantage over any other product. Judging by the Fatal1ty mouse/case they seem just have pretty lights and glitter thrown from four feet away, and they cost extra to boot. Yes folks I must admit I have a dim view of Fatal1ty products in general and to find a ‘Fatal1ty logo’ on this board I initially looked upon this motherboard with a sceptic view.

Fatal1ty has signed his name to this board as a ‘gamer’s board’ so on this review the overclocking section will be very minimal as this board has been pitched towards the GAMER and not the Overclocker. So in essence this board has been AIR cooled only and no water cooling has been installed.

Equipment used to test


The F-I90hd Mainboard
Tagan 520 watt PSU
Corsair HX 620 Watt (re-badged seasonic, very good PSU this)
Conroe 6600 and a 6400 (quadcore testing soon)
4X512MB (2 gig in total) of Corsair XMS2 SLI memory @ DDR 2 800
Western Digital 120 and a 320gig HDD (16MB Cache)
1X Geforce 8800 GTS (320mb) XFX make

Below are a few shots of the box art (not that most people would be interested in this)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714381/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714385/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/404519817/

What is noticeably apparent is the fact that the board itself is rather loosely packed in the box. There is no Anti-static foam for the box to rest the board on, nor is there any anti-static bag at all. It has been suggested this could cause damage to the board itself, however I have had no such problems.

Next we come to the layout/design.

Even by a quick glance we can see this is most certainly pitched at the gamer, but at what gaming level?? More on this later.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714389/

The board has only a five Mosfets around the CPU area, which should make is easier for third party cooling solution. Noticeable straight away I,E it just leapt out at me was that the ATX 12 volt connector for the CPU is FOUR PIN only! Why abit has chosen four pin, in the days of eight pin connectors I have no idea? Possibly due to the fact that this is a gamer’s board only and as such it doesn’t need the extra ‘juice’ for the CPU like an Overclockers board has.

Cpu area shot

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714397/


Obviously not all components on this board are going to be in an ideal place due to the fact that this is a MINI ATX board. The only thing that DOES leap out so much that I DO have to find fault with is the position of the FDD connector (if indeed anybody REALLY needs a floppy drive these days) In essence the USB headers and the FDD connector could have been re-worked by swapping their places.

Floppy drive header placement

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489689304/

There is a HDMI socket on this board which is a nice bonus as a gamer can connect his/her Large screen HD TV straight into the main board and have both SOUND and Vision played out from the TV with this connection only. Of course a HDMI TO HDMI cable must be used. Abit DO supply a HDMI to DVI dongle however this then would only output the picture and not the sound. There is also the usual DSUB connector on this board, however the socket seems a little delicate and some over enthusiastic gamer ramming home the monitor cable could bend this connector easily.

The HDMI socket
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489715583/

The rather delicate D-SUB connector

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489718129/

I have noticed that however upon installing an add on GPU, such as a Geforce eight the card quite badly overlaps the southbrdige thus negating some of the heat dispersal, however with this board being a Mini-ATX this is to be excpected

Southbridge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714405/

GPU Overlap

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489719547/

Test setup
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489719545/

All in all considering this is a Mini ATX board the design is fine as is, with a couple of exceptions(listed above)

BIOS/Bench Marks

On powering this board and upon entering the BIOS I noticed that at default the BIOS would not detect the CAS rating correctly. The rating of the RAM I AM using is 4-4-4-12 yet the BIOS seemed to insist that the RAM was 5-5-5-18 ? Another small issue was that the BIOS were a ‘BETA NOT FOR SALE’ version. It would have been nice to have this board shipped with the Final sales BIOS. However let us carry on. On attaching a PSU to this board and shortening then ‘power on connectors’ to power on. If then I wish to power off, I.E by the switch on the PSU and then on again. The board powers itself on without shorting the pins. This happens sometimes even if the board is left 5 seconds without power.

I have included various benchmarks under ‘Everest’ to highlight the importance of getting the ram timings correct. Of course the user whom knows what he is doing then this is easily solved. However imagine this board is being used with your average pc-builder, then this user would NOT get the full advantage of the boards speed. In the initial release BIOS, windows Vista would not install due to problem in the BIOS. However it must be noted that this issue has BEEN RESOLVED, in addition to the power on issue. Please FLASH your BIOS to the latest Beta version before use!

Test memory rating shot
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489718143/

BIOS autodetect timings incorrect
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489719517/


For the price point on this motherboard, it’s a bargain really. Abit are aiming this at the ‘poor gamer’ as the onboard GPU attains only 1700 benchmarks in 3DMARK 05.
This board is aimed at the gamer whom has for example just purchased a CORE 2 DUO CPU, and a motherboard but cannot afford a GPU as of yet, so this board fits the niche nicely. However with that said this board REALLY comes into its own when a add on GPU is installed. More on this later

What follows are the ‘Everest’ Benchmarks with results with the INCORRECT (auto detected memory timings) and then the correct timings set manually.




Everest Memory results with Auto detected settings:



Memory Read
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9827335&size=o

Memory Copy
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9827303&size=o

Memory Latency
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489827329/




These are the settings with the correct timings manually set.


Memory Read
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9830543&size=o

Memory Copy
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9830521&size=o


Memory Latency
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9830533&size=o

Ofcourse when using the onboard video, and since it shares the system ram for its own memory, we can expect performance hits onthis as well.

Before
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489806982/

After
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489806986/

Having mentioned the above, this has already been reported to abit and is in the process of being resolved in a bios update.

Apart from the few niggles, if you are after a low-to-mid range gaming board, seems to be a very good choice.

Please look out for part 2, core 2 and core 2 quad tests then finally Vista tests soon.

cheers

Gilgamesh

[gilgamesh]

Initial thoughts: On seeing the box art my initial thoughts were.. “Oh gods not ANOTHER fatal1ty product I.E Motherboard/mouse/case/keyboard etc. Previously I have tried to avoid Fatality products as much as I can as usually fatality products offer NO REAL advantage over any other product. Judging by the Fatal1ty mouse/case they seem just have pretty lights and glitter thrown from four feet away, and they cost extra to boot. Yes folks I must admit I have a dim view of Fatal1ty products in general and to find a ‘Fatal1ty logo’ on this board I initially looked upon this motherboard with a sceptic view.

Fatal1ty has signed his name to this board as a ‘gamer’s board’ so on this review the overclocking section will be very minimal as this board has been pitched towards the GAMER and not the Overclocker. So in essence this board has been AIR cooled only and no water cooling has been installed.

Equipment used to test


The F-I90hd Mainboard
Tagan 520 watt PSU
Corsair HX 620 Watt (re-badged seasonic, very good PSU this)
Conroe 6600 and a 6400 (quadcore testing soon)
4X512MB (2 gig in total) of Corsair XMS2 SLI memory @ DDR 2 800
Western Digital 120 and a 320gig HDD (16MB Cache)
1X Geforce 8800 GTS (320mb) XFX make

Below are a few shots of the box art (not that most people would be interested in this)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714381/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714385/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/404519817/

What is noticeably apparent is the fact that the board itself is rather loosely packed in the box. There is no Anti-static foam for the box to rest the board on, nor is there any anti-static bag at all. It has been suggested this good cause damage to the board itself, however I have had no such problems.

Next we come to the layout/design.

Even by a quick glance we can see this is most certainly pitched at the gamer, but at what gaming level?? More on this later.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714389/

The board has only a five Mosfets around the CPU area, which should make is easier for third party cooling solution. Noticeable straight away I,E it just leapt out at me was that the ATX 12 volt connector for the CPU is FOUR PIN only! Why abit has chosen four pin, in the days of eight pin connectors I have no idea? Possibly due to the fact that this is a gamer’s board only and as such it doesn’t need the extra ‘juice’ for the CPU like an Overclockers board has.

Cpu area shot

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714397/


Obviously not all components on this board are going to be in an ideal place due to the fact that this is a MINI ATX board. The only thing that DOES leap out so much that I DO have to find fault with is the position of the FDD connector (if indeed anybody REALLY needs a floppy drive these days) In essence the USB headers and the FDD connector could have been re-worked by swapping their places.

Floppy drive header placement

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489689304/

There is a HDMI socket on this board which is a nice bonus as a gamer can connect his/her Large screen HD TV straight into the main board and have both SOUND and Vision played out from the TV with this connection only. Of course a HDMI TO HDMI cable must be used. Abit DO supply a HDMI to DVI dongle however this then would only output the picture and not the sound. There is also the usual DSUB connector on this board, however the socket seems a little delicate and some over enthusiastic gamer ramming home the monitor cable could bend this connector easily.

The HDMI socket
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489715583/

The rather delicate D-SUB connector

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489718129/

I have noticed that however upon installing an add on GPU, such as a Geforce eight the card quite badly overlaps the southbrdige thus negating some of the heat dispersal, however with this board being a Mini-ATX this is to be excpected

Southbridge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489714405/

GPU Overlap

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489719547/

Test setup
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489719545/

All in all considering this is a Mini ATX board the design is fine as is, with a couple of exceptions(listed above)

BIOS/Bench Marks

On powering this board and upon entering the BIOS I noticed that at default the BIOS would not detect the CAS rating correctly. The rating of the RAM I AM using is 4-4-4-12 yet the BIOS seemed to insist that the RAM was 5-4-4-18 ? Another small issue was that the BIOS were a ‘BETA NOT FOR SALE’ version. It would have been nice to have this board shipped with the Final sales BIOS. However let us carry on. On attaching a PSU to this board and shortening then ‘power on connectors’ to power on. If then I wish to power off, I.E by the switch on the PSU and then on again. The board powers itself on without shorting the pins. This happens sometimes even if the board is left 5 seconds without power.

I have included various benchmarks under ‘Everest’ to highlight the importance of getting the ram timings correct. Of course the user whom knows what he is doing then this is easily solved. However imagine this board is being used with your average pc-builder, then this user would NOT get the full advantage of the boards speed. In the initial release BIOS, windows Vista would not install due to problem in the BIOS. However it must be noted that this issue has BEEN RESOLVED, in addition to the power on issue. Please FLASH your BIOS to the latest Beta version before use!

Test memory rating shot
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489718143/

BIOS autodetect timings incorrect
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489719517/


For the price point on this motherboard, it’s a bargain really. Abit are aiming this at the ‘poor gamer’ as the onboard GPU attains only 1700 benchmarks in 3DMARK 05.
This board is aimed at the gamer whom has for example just purchased a CORE 2 DUO CPU, and a motherboard but cannot afford a GPU as of yet, so this board fits the niche nicely. However with that said this board REALLY comes into its own when a add on GPU is installed. More on this later

What follows are the ‘Everest’ Benchmarks with results with the INCORRECT (auto detected memory timings) and then the correct timings set manually.




Everest Memory results with Auto detected settings:



Memory Read
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9827335&size=o

Memory Copy
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9827303&size=o

Memory Latency
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489827329/




These are the settings with the correct timings manually set.


Memory Read
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9830543&size=o

Memory Copy
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9830521&size=o


Memory Latency
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...9830533&size=o

Ofcourse when using the onboard video, and since it shares the system ram for its own memory, we can expect performance hits onthis as well.

Before
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489806982/

After
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71909665@N00/489806986/

Having mentioned the above, this has already been repoted to abit and is in the process of being resolved in a bios update.

Apart from the few niggles, if you are after a low-to-mid range gaming board, seems to be a very good choice.

Please look out for part 2, core 2 and core 2 quad tests then finally Vista tests soon.

cheers

Gilgamesh

part 2 out next monday


gilgamesh

[Recoil]

the only thing that I have found out is that if you want to have an 8800 GTX on this system - is that it covers the SATA ports - so i guess right angled connectors are needed to avoid that problem.

[gilgamesh]

the only thing that I have found out is that if you want to have an 8800 GTX on this system - is that it covers the SATA ports - so i guess right angled connectors are needed to avoid that problem.

A good point with a gts it overlapped the southbridge and game close to the sata ports. Right angled connectors hsould be the de-facto standard on every board.

gilgamesh

[Highland3r]

What are the SPD timings of the dimms? Noticed their SLI-memory badged but you don't metioned whether the board supports it. If it doesnt (and from playing with another 650i which didnt support it) then the default bios timings should be whatever is specified in the rams SPD. Those timings are usually looser than the "advertised" timings just to ensure compatibility.

[Burtoner]

oops wrong thread, delete this post plz

[K404]

Finally registered

Theres 13 MOSFETs directly around the CPU. Its a 4-phase design with 2 caps per phase (larger ones nearest the 12V plug.

Theres little point in making the plug an 8-pin effort with "fewer" power phases, as you said the board isnt really aimed at overclocking. The current all goes to the same place, from the same PSU rail.

A well designed board doesnt need 8/12 phases if quality components and filters are used...its cheaper to implement lots of cheap phases than a few good ones, despite the space it takes up on the PCB

K

[burgerri]

Nice review...

I think i notice when using this board is the temps for the PWM...it gets pretty toasty...I once had it reading around 90C but then again I did stuff it into a SFF casing but a heatsink should have been nice.