ABIT F-I90HD Review

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Skott

Supreme [H]ardness
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I had originally put this link in the 'Gaming mATX board FINALLY' thread but then thought it might be better to give it its own thread so later on people can do a search for it instead of reading through a 1300+ posts there. Ontop of that we could even add more links to reviews if more become availble. I just thought it'd make it easier for the user searching for reviews.



http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1705_1.html
 
You beat me... :) Haven't read it yet I wanted to share it... will read at lunch time.
 
its a great mobo!! working great for me and stable, the intergrated sound is nice!!!!
 
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this review yet:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/stu775mobo/index.php

I question the real value of comparing this board directly to ATX boards at twice the price. They do mention this fact throughout the article but still manage to make a few good comparitive points.

Actually, a quite positive take on the board in the end. If Abit actually works out the compability issues and bugs with this board it could prove to be the reference board for matx performance at the current time. This would be good for us.
 
Thanks adixon! Nice find. AnandTech is coming soon with one also...

It took a while but we finally start to see a few review of it.
 
adixon said:
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this review yet:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/stu775mobo/index.php

I question the real value of comparing this board directly to ATX boards at twice the price. They do mention this fact throughout the article but still manage to make a few good comparitive points.

Actually, a quite positive take on the board in the end. If Abit actually works out the compability issues and bugs with this board it could prove to be the reference board for matx performance at the current time. This would be good for us.
Click to expand...

Person doesn't deal with mATX motherboards often I see :rolleyes:
 
adixon said:
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this review yet:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/stu775mobo/index.php

I question the real value of comparing this board directly to ATX boards at twice the price. They do mention this fact throughout the article but still manage to make a few good comparitive points.

Actually, a quite positive take on the board in the end. If Abit actually works out the compability issues and bugs with this board it could prove to be the reference board for matx performance at the current time. This would be good for us.
Click to expand...

It appears they got a 355fsb OC on it which isnt shabby as far as Conroe mATX goes. I see they also mentioned the lack of proper packaging in their review. They didnt give it a stellar rating but not a bad one neither judging their words. An average rating maybe? Not that thats a bad thing.
 
seriously this is a great mobo, and very stable. those people chose to do a m atx for some reason, and like steeeve said they haven't seen too many of them. i cant wait to start overclocking, but gotta wait for a new cpu cooler, which you guys think would be better or the best for me, i am interested in the fatality 7700 one(its red like all my other stuff) and good temps i heard, or a cnps 8000. which u guys think?

an also the packaging was gay, it didnt come with a antistatic bag!! it was just sitting on the card board, i was afraid it was gonna be doa because of it.
 
Yeah, you'd think ABIT, or whoever does the packing, would invest a couple more dollars to ensure a good delivery protection. Heck, at the prices they want for the mobo I personally wouldnt mind paying a extra couple dollars for the product to be properly protected. For it to be packed like it has so far is just cheap and doesnt make ABIT look good as far as quality of product goes. Thats just my own opinion though. ;)
 
i second u on that, i always thought abit was a top of the line company, yet they cant put some protection for my 110 dollar board to make sure i am satisfied?
 
I didn't know you could second your own post ;) Cardboard is statically neutral so unless someone violently molests it with something charged like a piece of polyester, you have nothing to worry about. Even then I am not sure...

You should fear ESD, but you have to know what causes it. For the most part, carpet is also electrically neutral, unless you have recently dragged your rubber shoes along it.

People complain all the time when they think static precautions are not there, but ignore proper precautions themselves and then blaim the manufacturers when something it "DOA."
 
terrible layout .....what the f... im gonna do with 2 PCIE 1 slots , collecting more dust ??? ....and just one PCI slot ??? When i look at the connectors layout of this board ...it cant get much worse .
just my 2 cents
 
game14 said:
terrible layout .....what the f... im gonna do with 2 PCIE 1 slots , collecting more dust ??? ....and just one PCI slot ??? When i look at the connectors layout of this board ...it cant get much worse .
just my 2 cents
Click to expand...
the two pci e 1's are future proof. almost everything that was on pci will go to pci e 1. just my 2 cents
 
lillimon04 said:
the two pci e 1's are future proof. almost everything that was on pci will go to pci e 1. just my 2 cents
Click to expand...

i agree... and there is already some PCI-1x stuff... you could get the wireless network card and a tv turner to put in those 2
 
im thinking about getting a pci e 1 wireless card instead of my pci one, but they liek 100 bucks!
 
Personally I plan on putting a PhysX in one PCI-E and a Asus Xonar in the other. :p
 
Neist said:
Personally I plan on putting a PhysX in one PCI-E and a Asus Xonar in the other. :p
Click to expand...

isnt this board HD onboard audio.... i dont know exactly how it is yet since i havent tested it but why bother with a different sound card? (assuming this board is good audio)

ive always really wondered this.... i had an audigy 2 and it didnt sound any better the onboard on my gigabyte board??
 
atherton213 said:
isnt this board HD onboard audio.... i dont know exactly how it is yet since i havent tested it but why bother with a different sound card? (assuming this board is good audio)

ive always really wondered this.... i had an audigy 2 and it didnt sound any better the onboard on my gigabyte board??
Click to expand...
ya i think this onboard audio is great, and i have a self built home theater system, and now its sounds better than ever, and then imma use the optical audio plug to make it sound even better once i get one. so theres no need for a sound card, unless u dont want ur cpu to have any stress on it, the audio uses like 4% of my cpu usage. and thats not bad
 
lillimon04 said:
ya i think this onboard audio is great, and i have a self built home theater system, and now its sounds better than ever, and then imma use the optical audio plug to make it sound even better once i get one. so theres no need for a sound card, unless u dont want ur cpu to have any stress on it, the audio uses like 4% of my cpu usage. and thats not bad
Click to expand...

yeah i didnt think it stressed the cpu too bad... i never noticed a hit in performace w/ onboard vs the audigy 2 i had

ughh is it the 22nd yet i want my e4300 so i can finish this computer
i ordered the HX620 last night :)
and i think i might order my ram tomorrow
 
atherton213 said:
yeah i didnt think it stressed the cpu too bad... i never noticed a hit in performace w/ onboard vs the audigy 2 i had

ughh is it the 22nd yet i want my e4300 so i can finish this computer
i ordered the HX620 last night :)
and i think i might order my ram tomorrow
Click to expand...
nice!! hang in there, its almost the 22nd! lol man so r u gonna mod anything? or overclock as much as u can? cus i wanna see ur build! maybe some water cooling? and wat case is it? oh u wanna buy me one of those hx520s? on an enermax? lol
 
Well, something like the Xi-Fi sound cards are better than the onboard for gaming but more importantly if you plan to overclock this mobo people that use a seperate sound card are having better luck with OCing. It just depends on what you plan to do with the mobo basically. Gamers will go for seperate cards whereas the non-gamers will not.
 
Well, the review at motherboards.org is ho-hum and makes the F-I90HD look bad, but the review from DriverHeaven.net, makes the board look much better (thankfully).

I have a few questions on two topics: What BIOS rev did the board ship with? what is the latest BIOS? does it fix all the issues that early buyers had? Is there a newer Mobo rev in the works?

I see that the on-board audio is the Realtek ALC885, which is great for HD audio, but, did Realtek fix their EAX compatibility issue? I dont play much BF2 now, but when I did, my old mobo with a Realtec chip, it sounded like crap.
 
atherton213 said:
isnt this board HD onboard audio.... i dont know exactly how it is yet since i havent tested it but why bother with a different sound card? (assuming this board is good audio)

ive always really wondered this.... i had an audigy 2 and it didnt sound any better the onboard on my gigabyte board??
Click to expand...

Its good yes, but eventually when I upgrade mobo's I'll need a decent sound card (which I dont have right now). Plus I have high hopes for the Xonar.
 
Skott said:
Well, something like the Xi-Fi sound cards are better than the onboard for gaming but more importantly if you plan to overclock this mobo people that use a seperate sound card are having better luck with OCing. It just depends on what you plan to do with the mobo basically. Gamers will go for seperate cards whereas the non-gamers will not.
Click to expand...

imma gamer and i use onboard sound, but imma wait till the newer ones come out.
 
This thread @ AnandTech has a LOT of information on this board. They even link to the OTHER F-I90HD thread here at the [H].

They have the Specs, tons of Pictures, links to Benchmarks, to reviews, to OC'ing, BIOS info on issues and links to new/beta Revs, etc.
 
From AnandTech:
The abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD motherboard is based on the ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 and SB600 chipsets featuring the ATI X1250 onboard graphics capability. The board offers support for 16GB of DDR2-533/667/800 memory, four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, a single ATA133 IDE connector, Realtek ALC885 Audio, and Gigabit LAN. The board has VGA and HDMI outputs along with support for 10 USB 2.0 ports. This motherboard offers excellent performance for a uATX board with our E6320 CPU reaching 7x366 in the overclocking tests.​
 
My problem with the board is the absolutely crappy driver support for the integrated RAID
  • There is no way to monitor RAID-1, 5 or 10 status inside of windows
  • After breaking my RAID-1 array, I couldn't rebuilt it in any way, not even in the BIOS. Tell me what good RAID-1 is supposed to be then?
 
drizzt81 said:
My problem with the board is the absolutely crappy driver support for the integrated RAID
  • There is no way to monitor RAID-1, 5 or 10 status inside of windows
  • After breaking my RAID-1 array, I couldn't rebuilt it in any way, not even in the BIOS. Tell me what good RAID-1 is supposed to be then?
Click to expand...

This is really good information, I'm glad you posted that. I was going to pick this up for my portable work computer (can't game on a laptop), but I need RAID 1.

If this board has crappy RAID support, I may have to pass.
 
PrkChpXprss said:
This is really good information, I'm glad you posted that. I was going to pick this up for my portable work computer (can't game on a laptop), but I need RAID 1.

If this board has crappy RAID support, I may have to pass.
Click to expand...

Crappy support is an understatement. I have posted on Abit's forums and sent an e-mail through their messaging system. I have yet to hear anything. I understand that the large majority of people are interested in RAID-0, for which a status monitor is absolutely superfluous, but why advertise RAID-1, 10 (maybe even 5?) when it's not really supported.
http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=122378
 
drizzt81 said:
Crappy support is an understatement. I have posted on Abit's forums and sent an e-mail through their messaging system. I have yet to hear anything. I understand that the large majority of people are interested in RAID-0, for which a status monitor is absolutely superfluous, but why advertise RAID-1, 10 (maybe even 5?) when it's not really supported.
http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=122378
Click to expand...

The forums are not staffed by Tech folks so you won't get a response to a question there.
 
indeed, it's a user-to-user forum not an official abit support channel.
try emailing abit UK support as they seem to be a bit more responsive than the US.
 
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