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Since we're dealing with the Intel ICH8R southbridge, SATA RAID 0/1/5/10/JBOD is standard. Of course there's more to the AB9 Pro than just Serial ATA, this Socket 775 Intel P965 Express based motherboard has a lot going for it.
80% Rating: 
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Overclocking the AB9 Pro
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| Overclocking Results: |
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ABIT is
usually pretty darn good at the overclocking game, but as the company has been
quick to point out to PCSTATS, we haven't had much luck the companies boards
lately. Perhaps the E6600 we use for testing is jinxed? Will the ABIT AB9 change
our overclocking streak from good to fantastic? Let's see..
For the
following tests, we sprinkled some holy overclocking water on the P965 Express
chipset, muttered some trade overclocking chants, and set about installing the
AB9 Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor and 2GB
of Corsair's finger licking good Twin2X2048-6400C4 memory. I'm willing to bet these two components are not
the limiting factor in this test senario.
 Before the
overclocking begins we are going to first set the memory to run at DDR2-533 MHz
mode, this way the memory will not hold the motherboard back.
Starting
at 266 MHz, the AB9 Pro motherboard clock speed will be increased in 5 MHz
increments.
Without
much difficulty the ABIT AB9 Pro sailed passed the 300 MHz mark. Pushing the
board to 320 MHz required a slight processor voltage bump to 1.4V to stabilize
the system. At 350 MHz FSB the Northbridge needed a voltage increase, going up
to 1.3V.
At 380 MHz FSB the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 required more
juice, this time to 1.45V. That tweak allowed the ABIT AB9 Pro motherboard to
crack the 400 MHz FSB mark, which is pretty darn sweet.
A few minutes later and the ABIT AB9 Pro motherboard
settled down with a top speed of 420 MHz. Another chipset voltage increase was
necessary for this, so the P965 was getting 1.4V in the end. An overclocked
front side bus of 420 MHz is pretty good from an Intel P965 Express based
motherboard. Let's see what type of BIOS options the AB9 Pro has next.
The AB9 Pro's
BIOS:
ABIT only gives the AB9 Pro motherboard basic
memory timing adjustments. That's okay though these are the options that affect
overall performance the most anyway.
Here is where all the fun happens. ;) The
ABIT AB9 Pro motherboard clock frequency can be tuned between 266-600 MHz in 1
MHz increments. Sweet! Maximum CPU voltage is 1.725V, DDR2 voltage 2.5V,
Northbridge 1.45V and Southbridge 1.7V. Please keep in mind that the maximum CPU
and memory voltages are high enough to damage your hardware if you're not
careful.
Prelude to Benchmarks
The
details of how the ABIT AB9 Pro motherboard test system was configured for
benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating
system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the
general specs for the reference platforms this Intel P965 Express based system
is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system
configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.
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| PCSTATS Test System Configurations |
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