After a very rough period that saw ABIT almost wiped out, the company has risen from the ashes of its former self. ABIT merged with its close partner Universal Scientific Industrial, and earlier this year re-launched as Universal ABIT. The new company has for the time being given up on previous attempts to capture the entry level and mainstream markets, and instead has focused on the high end side of things. So far, the quality and innovation seem to be there, but it's still a bit of a gamble if Universal ABIT will hit the performance highs it once so easily captured...

Scanning through ABIT's product lineup of late is like reading the menu at an enthusiasts restaurant - it's easy to see that ABIT is taking its new role seriously and producing performance oriented motherboards that may just rival the great LanParty series from DFI. Heat pipe based chipset cooling systems that operate silently, board level motherboard cooling fans, a peppering of LEDs for that special effect, outstanding voltage options in the BIOS and good overclocking ability - ABIT has crossed its i's and dotted its t's.

The ABIT FATAL1TY AN9 32X motherboard PCSTATS is evaluating today is a prime example of what lengths ABIT is traveling to demonstrate its prowess. The FATAL1TY AN9 32X motherboard has a nice chipset and MOSFET cooling system, comes with a mountain of accessories, and certainly looks great in striking shades of red and black.

ABIT FATAL1TY AN9 32X Motherboard Includes: User's Manual, MicroGuru Manual, Driver CD, Quick Installation Guide, Rounded Ultra/133 IDE Cable, Rounded Floppy Cable, 6x Serial ATA Cables, USB/IEEE1394a Header Bracket, SLI Retention Bracket, Slot Fan, I/O Shield, Audio Daughter card.

The ABIT FATAL1TY AN9 32X is built on the flagship nVIDIA nForce 590 SLI 'C51XE' chipset and MCP55PXE Southbridge. The board supports socket AM2 AMD Athlon64/FX/X2 and Sempron processors, and thus 64-bit and 32-bit operating systems. There are four DDR2 memory slots which accommodate up to 8GB of DDR2-800 RAM. On board goodies offer nothing less than dual PCI Express x16 slots and nVidia SLI compatibility at a full 16 PCI Express lanes apiece, dual GigABIT Ethernet network jacks, an Intel Azalia High Definition 7.1 channel audio controller, IEEE 1394a 400Mpbs Firewire, and six 3GB/s SATA 2 jacks for storage devices. An audio daughter card provides every imaginable option for truly mind-blowing multi-channel speaker systems, leaving the rear I/O largely free of ports. If anything, that's the one downside to ABITs motherboards, but we'll discuss this in a moment.

When it comes to peripheral expansion we find two PCI Express x1 slots for high bandwidth devices, a 32 bit PCI slot, and the two PCI Express x16 SLI compatible slots for videocards. Data storage is supported by one single Ultra 133 IDE channel and six 3GB/s SATA II ports. Nvidia RAID (0/1/0+1/5/JBOD) comes standard with the nForce 590SLI chipset of course. There are four USB2.0 jacks at the back of the board, three USB2.0 headers (for six additional jacks) and two IEEE1394 headers too.

The FATAL1TY AN9 32X motherboard retails for $200 CDN ($173 US, £88 GBP), which is about average for a high end nForce 590 SLI AMD motherboard these days. The big question on our minds is whether the AN9 32X is really built for the gamer at heart? Does it have enough of what a gamer needs? Well, actually...