aw9d-max?

This is the board I am using in my current build. If you are going to do crossfire, you won't be able to use the PCI expansion slot for a 3rd party soundcard. Fortunately, it does come with a nice daughterboard HD sound card, and it has 2 LAN and 2 firewire connectors and on-board raid controllers so you might not need that slot.

Do get a power supply that meets this thirsty board's needs - you want a PSU with a 8-pin 12v connector and 24-pin mainboard connector and a 4-pin molex just for the board. Then you need 0-2 (depending on your vid cards and how many you have) 6-pin graphics connectors and then enough left over for your devices.

it's certainly 1 of the best 975 boards that there is.

mines in the post should have it buy weekend  

probabyt getting some pc8500 ddr2 ram corsair and was wondering
does anyone know if there is a 1066mhz setting for memory in the bios.
os is the max setting 800mhz and to acheive 1066 you have to overclock the fsb?

Where did you buy it from? I've been trying to find one but everyone is out of stock.

got mine from www.overclockers.co.uk

but i am uk seem to be lots here.

you in usa ?

does it matter where i buy computer parts from? like there arent any differences in them? other than power suppleys

nah shold be ok i think. only powersupplies could be a problem. everything else should be indentical. apart from large shiping costs lol

ah shipping doesnt bother me

Yeah, the mobo is a non-motorized internal part. The PSU does all the transformer work, so a UK mobo should be just as good as a USA mobo for either side of the Atlantic.

There might be duty to pay on top of the shipping. Customs usually bites me when I buy computer stuff from the US; I'd be suprised if the US didn't take a bite on stuff comming in too. But yeah, if you don't mind spending the money (stuff is usually more expensive here) there seems to be plenty of the mobos about over here.

yeah im just going to order the mobo from uk if there arent any in stock once im getting my comp parts

I have the non-MAX version, and it is doing quite well... FSB at 370 (3.33GHz) using a Vigor Monsoon II TEC/HSF on the cpu and my case is an NZXT Zero (very nice case)... not done OC'ing yet. It does have quite the few bugs though, hopefully ABIT will put out another BIOS update soon. Much prefer ASUS, initial BIOS are usually more stable and monitoring programs work (and look) better, OC'ing seems the same. If ASUS had a 'Crosshair' style mobo out for the C2D I would have grabbed it in a heartbeat; put together a pc for a friend and that mobo rocks.

Someone on the Abit forum is saying that Abit is expecting new stock of these boards on 10-30. Not sure how long it takes from then to get them in the hands of the resellers.

sweet

Still waiting on this board.

Every review I've read has said its one of the more stable boards in its class. Abit also seems to be updating bios pretty regularly lately trying to boost OC performance and it already does nearly as well as any other board atm.

It looks wicked too imo but thats purely a personal taste thing hehe.

Oh one other thing, I could be mistaken about other boards but to my knowledge its the only 975 board for conroe that supports SLI unless you want to pay out the nose for the soon to be obsolete Asus 590SLI board.   Happy computing !

afaik they all do but only with hacked drivers.
Some people have said that the Asus P5WH Deluxe is also shipping with an SLI bridge in the bundle.

but it says on the abit website that it allows dual graphic cards so it isnt hacked bios

It officially supports Crossfire. SLI should be possible as it is a 975 chipset board, but it is not officially supported.

You can run 2 ATi cards alongside each other for multi-monitor (e.g. 3 or 4) support.
You can run 2 nVidia cards alongside each other for multi-monitor (e.g. 3 or 4) support.
You can run 2 ATi cards in Crossfire with official drivers.
You can run 2 nVidia cards in SLI using hacked drivers (nothing to do with BIOS) - afaik these are 80 series though so don't support the latest cards.

This board does seem like it is awesome, but the sellin point for me wasnt just board it was also the fine young lady holding it in this article.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/02/holiday_buyers_g...

Thanks Tom keep up the good work

I am currently using this board and am thinking of adding another graphic card for crossfire. I have installed a Creative Soundblaster Extreme X-fi Music soundcard in the PCI slot. You said that the board doesn't support both the soundcard and another graphic card. Is that so. There is 2 slots for the graphic cards (crossfire) why is it so that you think that it cannot support both crossfire & enternal soundcard?
I find the inbuilt daughter board soundcard a little lacking as compared to the X-fi card.
I am now using a RADEON X800 GTO Graphic card.
Please advise.
Thanks

with gfx cards that use dual slot coolers the cooler of the card in the lower PCI-E x16 slot may prevent use of the PCI slot.
Your X800GTO most likely uses a single slot cooler though.

Big cards will block your slots on this mobo - if you want 2 vid cards <i>and</i> the pci slots you need single-height cards with coolers that don't take a lot of space.