IX38 QUAD GT Initial Impressions

[gilgamesh]

These are my initial impressions of the IX38 quad gt by abit

These are my initial impressions only and are NOT to be taken as a full review!

Board design

THe good

Great Layout-mostly
Like the onboard LED power off/reset and clear CMOS switches.
The usual right-angled Sata barbs
USB header placement

The bad
No overclocking strips underneath the board! Can anyone understand this move by abit??

Insane placement of the firewire header

THe 'FLOATING' heat sink extendor (this heatsink is not stuck down and literally floating above the board about 5 mm above the board surface

The extendor itself during Watercooling: Since there is not air flow here, the heat that is radiated from this will only flow towards the CPU, thus increasing CPU temps.

The northbridge Heatsink itsself, the narrow end of the heatsink is placed towards the CPU area?
My suggestion would be to place the WIDE part towards the CPU area, so as to enable the airflow generated by the CPU fan to flow through the heatsink=maximum efficiency. The placement where the 40mm fan should then go on the NARROW end so as to enable EXTRACTION of hot air. As is the 40mm fan is blowing in WARM air from the GPU.

The fins on the Northbridge feel cheap and tinny and are easily bent.

CPU thermal sensor needs to be changed=Readings are way out

Packaging

The packaging on this board is shoddy, so much so that my first board arrived broken. THe clamp on the DDR2 slot was broken. THe Northbridge Heatsink fins were also bent. Abit are at this moment intime changing the packaging design.

It is to the credit of Sean and the team at abit, that they sorted out my problem and shipped out a replacement board asap.

Need I mention the missing mounting wires for the PWM fan?

BIOS:

One word.... Immature

THe BIOS needs alot work to become viable.

Bios settings being reset
Sometimes not booting with a error code of 9.0
VDIMM settings not being retained
Pressing the reset button on the board powers OFF the board and then on again
The same with resetting under windows.
BOOT STRAP/ memory problems

These are with STOCK settings.

The bios as is actually makes the board run SLOWER than the IP35 pro!

Both under super-pi and 3DMARK 06 . It was a little disturbing to loose 500 3dmarks when using thisboard.

So far I would hate to award this board a score. In my view the BIOS needs some serious work.

EDIT beta bios 12.B05 is alittle better than the rest, so at least we can see an improvement there!

Keep working on that BIOS abit and then the board will be worthy of a full review.


Cheers

Gilgamesh

[Clunk]

That's a lot of bad, and not a lot of good.

It certainly seems that every corner has been cut on this board, either that, or there are a lot of forgetful people at Abit.

[Supershanks]

Wouldn't disagree with to much there. at all. My performance in 12.02 &12.05 is reasonable, though I think , looking at issues others are having it may be that i've a good q6600 go.

The lack of a stable 1:1.25 >400 fsb needs adressing. It would also be nice to see 1600 support. On other boards the 400 strap has proven particularly in the Gigabyte IX38 Dq6 for example.

The biggest negative with me is the way the package seems to have been cheapened. It feels like a poor second cousin too the aborted Abit IX38 Max, as the Max was going to be a DDR3 board i can't see the reason for the downgradinng of the package.

At this stage in the move to ddr3 the price of ddr3 is still holding people back from moving across,. So in effect the MAX & the Quad are aimed at separate markets. The quad is then left to be compared with the Gigabyte IX38 DQ6 & the Asus IX38's quiet frankly in such a comparison it loses out.

Though it has a slightly lower £ than it's competition I for one would rather pay the extra £7~10 for a decent package 1st time, rather than have to buy a usb pci bracket, NB & PWM fans & then struggle to mount them because the clips weren't included.

Around the enthusiasts community there is a lot of goodwill for Abit & it's products, this is my 1st Abit board for a number of years, sadly i must say that some of that goodwill may be lost at this juncture. Which is a pity as the board itself has potential.

More detail on the board Abit IX38 Quad GT - Living Review II

[abitlover]

Remember USI rescued Abit from going bust. Abit was in BIG trouble.

Now you know why!

[EtheAv8r]

I therefore see no reason to move from my Abit AB9 QuadGT which is a very fine board. Pity Abit seem to be 'loosing' it again.... thought the BIOS bugs (RAID/SATA Optical Boot) with the AB9 QuadGT were (and still are) 'schoolboy errors' and that they kept re-occuring is a sad reflection on Abit as a whole and the BIOS team specifically. Thank heavens for RichH and his 'fixed' BIOS releases.

I shall stick with my current system and use it for the tool it is, until there is a significant performance upgrade in newer offerings to justify the expenditure. And sadly the board may not be Abit it would seem... and I won't go back to the appauling support (not) provided by ASUS. At least it is readily possible to download updates from the Abit site, I found dounloading updates from ASUS near impossible.

[Nelly.]

the BIOS bugs (RAID/SATA Optical Boot) with the AB9 QuadGT were (and still are) 'schoolboy errors' and that they kept re-occuring is a sad reflection on Abit as a whole and the BIOS team specifically. Thank heavens for RichH and his 'fixed' BIOS releases.

Yes must agree, its kinda sad when it takes an enthusiast with some programming experiance to fix bios issues with Abit motherboards, when Abit Bios Engineers seem to have a problem in solving these issues quickly - personally if I was in charge of Abit I would sack them due to their lack of skills in producing fixes on a reasonable time scale & bring in people who know exactly what their doing.

Heavy user of both Asus & Abit motherboards here, I usually had switched between the two as I like both manufacturers, but I had a problem with my Asus A8V Deluxe last year & due to the terrible support by Asus, I never did get the RMA sorted out so jumped back to Abit.

I have one RMA within the last year with Abit for an Abit IN9 32X-MAX - I got a new board sorted out within 5 working days which was excellent service.

Asus are great at bringing new bios out on a regular basis, always trying to improve. With Abit it always seems like 3 or 4 bios updates within a 8 month period & thats it with them (although betas seem to be more regualar now), also its not that usual to aquire a motherboard from abit without any bugs from a bios persective. Saying that look at the Asus P5K Premium - sata2 problems still after months & months I feel sorry for owners of that board with these issues.

All in all, I think all companys have their positive & negative points - I'll still stick with Abit now for better or for worse. (The Abit X48-Max DDR3 Motherboard better run smoothly on release!!!)

[BUFF]

I therefore see no reason to move from my Abit AB9 QuadGT which is a very fine board.

if you don't need dual x16 Crossfire (or possibly a Penryn as abit haven't siad anything about support on P965) then there is no need as both P35 & X38 bring minimal gains.
The IP35 series are fine mobos in their own right though & I'm sure that the IX38 will be too after the usual shakeout period.

Asus usually have better initial BIOS because they are far more involved with the original developments of the CPUs/chipsets as befits a company of their size (you can take the next 3 largest competitors, add them together & Asus is still bigger) & therefore simply have more time to work bugs out before launch.

[Fraz]

Weird that they can go from producing a board as all-out awesome as the IP35 series to this. I've got an IP35 Pro and I'm very impressed with it, but if I keep reading stuff like this about their boards, I'm going to be steering well clear in the future.

[Supershanks]

Hi guys
If moving from the Abit AB9 QuadGT. the IP35-Pro offers better value for money & bios, unless as Buff says

if you don't need dual x16 Crossfire (or possibly a Penryn

.


Having had 2x Asus boards Commando & p5k , i fancied a change & this seemed a good option. Think the board is good , but not the cheap package., be sad if we have to rely on RichH for bios
One of the attractions of Abit was the good reports i've had about support. Was in fairness primed for poor bios support, after following QuadGT & Ip35 launches.

Be interesting to see when the Abit X48-Max DDR3 comes out given Intel X48 chipset put back seems there's a glut of X38 chips - Asus or Gigabyte: who do you fancy?

[BUFF]

Weird that they can go from producing a board as all-out awesome as the IP35 series to this.

Tbh I don't think that it's quite as bad as gilgamesh makes out.

The firewire header is in a bad place if you want to run a cable to a port on the front of the case but it's fine if you want to add a second/different type to the rear via PCI slot plate*.
& how many people actually use firewire - far, far fewer than USB.

The fact that the extendor heatsink floats isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it could have been improved.

I imagine that the nb heatsink is narrower toward the CPU end to allow for clearance with more HSFs. Placement of the fan isn't really a problem because whether it blows or sucks through it's still largely going to draw it's air from the same area.

Afaik the board is reading from a sensor in the CPU not 1 in the mobo socket so it should just need a calibration offset.

So really the main complaints are the bundle & BIOS.
Everything I've read/heard about the bundle suggests a cock-up rather than planned not to have the usual USB/2 different firewire sockets PCI slot plate* & also the fan mounts mentioned in the manual.

BIOS: tbh I think that we all expected it to be immature on release as abit just don't get the time to play with stuff pre-launch that Asus & Gigabyte do.
Even though the Gigabyte's X38 has been around longer from what I read on other forums it's BIOS still is distinctly immature too.

I've seen reviews of other X38/DDR2 mobos where P35s outclassed them too - at least on DDR2 X38 performance isn't compelling.

[Fraz]

Thanks - interesting.

[Supershanks]

So really the main complaints are the bundle & BIOS.
Everything I've read/heard about the bundle suggests a cock-up rather than planned not to have the usual USB/2 different firewire sockets PCI slot plate* & also the fan mounts mentioned in the manual.

Yes pretty much so.
Though to imply it's accidental, a cock-up, might appear to gives a worse impression than they misjudged the market