Home/News
Bjorn3D Forums
Older News
Articles/P/Reviews
Laser Squad Nemesis
Site Info
Advertise On Site

 
ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Reviews for ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Pentium 4, Socket LGA775, 925X, ATX, 4GB DDR, 800MHz FSB - MPN: AA8

Shop Now
|8 reviews
  • 1
  By member: siestaguy - Dec 6, 2004

ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Strengths: Very good documentation included Includes cables: IDE, FDD, SATA(4)

Weakness: Limited number of PCI slots (2) Limited number of IDE Controlers (1)

I had never built a system before and, after searching the web for MOBO recommendations, found that the ABIT AA8-DuraMAX was among the most highly rated. Installation went smoothly and I was pleasantly surprised by all of the little "extras" included: the overclocking software, monitoring system, and the way it senses that you plugged in audio connectors. This product exceeded my expectations and I would definitely purchase ABIT motherboards in the future.
**********UPDATE***************
I powered up the computer today, it sounded an alarm, and then shut down. Now, I am unable to get it to power up long enough to get into the BIOS setting to disable the automatic shutdown when a temp or voltage exceeds acceptable tolerances. There's a display on the MOBO that reads F9, which is not documented at all. If you check the user forums on the abit-usa.com web site, you will see that this is a common problem (general concensus is that the MOBO is bad).

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Show Comments Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
Reply by member: ricoscoro
Sep 14, 2005

dude, try a different Power supply, these boards are picky about stable power, try a new Antec Neopower or Antec Truepower or Fortron.

Report this as innapropriate
  • 5
  By member: hungsolo71 - Feb 22, 2005

ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Strengths: SATA/RAID0 bios, DDR2, fast, stable, many features.

Weakness: Only PCI express cards work with this MB. Parts of user manual have poor documentation.

Decided to buy a high end computer with high end components. The MB simply rocks! Not too many bad things to say about it. Great chipset - Intel's 925X and ICH6-R. Supports DDR2/533, lots of USB connections. Has 4 SATA ports - I set mine with two WD 74G Raptors (10,000rpm) with RAID0 - fast, fast, fast. Didn't use their Onboard 7.1 HD Audio. Their uGuru program lets you watch your CPU and system temperatures while still in Windows (you don't have to reboot). The Flashmenu lets you upgrade the bios through an Internet connection. The latest bios release (18) lets you drop the muliplier on your P4 (you must have a >3.4GHz processor) and increases the external clock to 266MHz - which raises your FSB from 800MHz to 1066MHz. This almost doubles your bandwidth, a solution to a problem that bottlenecks most high end computers.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
  • 5
  By member: pparanoid - Jan 6, 2005

ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Strengths: SATA, PCI-Express, 3 Normal PCI, lots of USB 2.0, great features

Weakness: Only 1 IDE connection

This is a great board especially for a novice. I built my first computer with this board. The overclocking features are very nice since you can do simple overclocking in windows. You can set it up to where the computer runs slower when nothing is going on and to overclock itself when certain programs are started. It also has a program to view all of your temps and other stuff. The only down side is the lack of a second IDE connection. If you have two optical drives, you're going to have to use SATA drives. Other than that, this is a great product!

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
  • 4
  By member: jack_bunce - Nov 15, 2004

ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Strengths: PCI Express, DDR2, Intel925X, double Raid

Weakness: none so far

I bought this board to try all the new features it had, I was curious what the 775 pin socket and PCI Express slots looked like.
I'm not new to Abit, I've bought at least one hundred of their boards in the past. This board has excellent quality and nice lay out and the only thing I dislike are the colors. The price was right also; $157 minus a short lived $50 rebate.
One thing I find curious is the new PCI Express video cards; they are priced at around $200 or $600, with nothing in-between. You can buy a very good AGP card for around $400, which seems more that enought.

71% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
  • 5
  By member: Amith4dat - Nov 6, 2004

ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Strengths: relatively cheap 925x board; 4 sata; supports up to 4 sata RAID 0/1, 4 slots for ddr2 (553mhz) up to 4gb; 7.1 channel audio, 1 pci express 16x slot; excellent overclocking options

Weakness: only 1 ata connection which is ata100 (instead of ata133)

great motherboard for the price. however, be careful when installing the processor. if you break the pins on the board, i noticed that the abit site states they will not replace the board b/c of broken pins...don't know if this is a common practice among motherboard manufacturers. good overclocking software included. includes 4 sata wires, 1 flat ribbon ide cable, 1 flat ribbon floppy cable, & a pci card with 1 firewire & 2 usb2.0 connections. stable, option-rich board.

71% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
  • 3
  By member: ricoscoro - Sep 14, 2005

Okay, but still Intel

Strengths: Stable

Weakness: expensive, intel

This board kind of put me back in the mood of getting AMD motherboards again, they are a lot better for gaming. This board has a lot of features, including SATA RAID that works great, good onboard sound, and a stable foundation, but gaming is moderate at best. I didn't like that it only had 2 PCI slots because no one seems to know what those PCI express connectors are for.

50% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
  • 5
  By member: nice_blue_ntot - Sep 17, 2004

ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Motherboard

Strengths: very goood

Weakness: nop

very very good ....very stable very fast...
but very ugly!!!very very affordtable for the i925X price .....for ppl hav no money to buy a superior 925X... just like me

29% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top
  • 3
  By member: shredhead - Jan 15, 2006

a bit hard to recommend

Strengths: everything you need: RAID 0/1/0+1, PCI-X, lots of USB ports, they include software to overclock, control fan speed, and update bios all from within Windows.

Weakness: bad support from Abit

Although I always had good luck with this board I have a hard time recommending anything from Abit. Their support is really bad. Their RMA program always has the customer paying for shipping. They do not answer requests in a reasonable time. Overall they have a problem with quality assurance. As for the product itself, I had it running 24/7 for quite awhile without any major issues. It had all the slots and ports you would need and the FSB was 800mhz so you could use the majority of the LGA775 Pentium 4 cpus. The overclocking functionality is awesome, though I myself didn't use it too much. What's nice is you can do it inside Windows and make changes on the fly. Until the system crashes you know you have ok settings. Bottom line, I like the board but I don't like the company behind it.

Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Reply to this review Report this as inappropriate
Top



Bjorn3d.com (c) 1996-2003. All rights reserved. All editorial content, pages and graphics contained within this site is protected under international copyright treaties and may not be duplicated without the express written permission of the author. The material contained on Bjorn3d.com may be used for information and non-commercial uses if the content and its format is not modified in any way. All copyright notices must be retained.