FPSLabs : abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X Review

Fatal1ty is the Michael Jordan of eSports. Does the Fatal1ty AN9 32x from Universal abit match the hype? We take a look at the AM2 flagship motherboard from the original granddaddy of overclocking.

Category: Motherboard
Manufacturer: Universal abit
Product: Fatal1ty AN9 32X
Gallery: Click Here
Price: $143.50

Introduction

Universal
abit (Uabit) has gone through its ups and downs but nevertheless
retains the allure as being one of the first motherboard manufacturers
to offer overclocking abilities beyond what others were doing in the
1980’s. Fast forward to the 21st century and ABIT, now Universal abit,
is focused more than ever on catering to the overclocking enthusiast
crowd with its brand of Fatal1ty products. Now we know what you’re
thinking, “Fatal1ty?!? Yeah right! That’s just a gimmick to jip us
gamers out of our cold hard cash, I’ll pass kthxbuhbai.” And come to
think of it, you’re right. Most products out on the market that just
have an ‘edgy’ logo slapped on the box instantly satisfy the PR
department but leave us gamers with a nasty taste in our mouths when it
comes to made-for-gamer products.

There isn’t
one news headline or forum post that goes without complaint when
someone mentions or suggests a Fatal1ty branded product. This isn’t
without merit, as many products resold under the Fatal1ty brand are
simply colored, packaged, marketed differently and present no
additional real-world performance boost. The Fatal1ty AN9 32X however
is different. Not only is this Uabit’s flagship AM2 motherboard, but it
offers the features and good performance one would expect from a board
of this brand and price.

Specifications

Test Setup

Hardware Configuration

Case: Antec Solo

Power Supply: Antec TruePower Trio 650

Motherboard: Universal abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+

Hard Drive: Western Digital 100GB IDE HDD

Hard Drive: Seagate 300GB SATA HDD

Hard Drive: Maxtor 250GB SATA HDD

Video: eVGA GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express

Memory: Mushkin EM6400 Dual-Channel PC2 6400 2048MB

Optical: Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW

Audio: 7.1 HD Realtek AudioMAX Riser Card

Cooling: Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 CPU Cooler

Display: Samsung Syncmaster 710N 17″ LCD

Software Configuration

Motherboard BIOS: v1.2 Beta 1 (03/29/2007)

Chipset: nForce 590 SLI AMD Windows XP 32-Bit v9.35 WHQL Certified

Operating System: Windows XP Media Center Edition with Service Pack 2

Video Driver: NVIDIA ForceWare Version 158.27 WHQL 32-bit WHQL Certified (May 15th release)

Audio Driver: Realtek HD R1.70 (6/28/2007)

Test Software: Futuremark PCMark 1.2.0

Test Software: Futuremark 3DMark 2003 3.6.0

Test Software: Futuremark 3DMark 2005 1.3.0

Test Software: Futuremark 3DMark 2006 1.1.0

Test Software: Massive Publishing Aquamark 1.0

Test Software: SiSoftware Sandra Pro Home XI SP3 2007 6.10.9

Test Software: SuperPI 1.1e

Test Software: Everest Ultimate 3.01.652

Test Software: Maxon Cinebench 9.5

Test Software: RarLab WinRAR 3.70

Test Software: Nero Recode 2

Test Software: Apple iTunes 7.3

Test Software: Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test

Test Game: Valve Software - Half-Life 2: Episode One

Test Game: Valve Software - Counter-Strike: Source Stress Test

Test Game: Digital Illusions CE - Battlefield 2142

Test Game: Relic Entertainment - Company of Heroes

Test Game: Bethesda Softworks - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Test Game: Monolith Productions, Inc. - F.E.A.R.

Test Game: Infinity Ward - Call of Duty 2

Test Game: GSC Game World - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Test Game: Human Head Studios - Prey

Test Game: Techland - Call of Juarez

{mospagebreak title=First Impressions }

The
first thing we noticed about the Fatal1ty AN9 was the neat carrying
strap and deluxe array of goodies inside. All the usual users manual
and driver discs were included, in addition to a neat SLI GPU cooling
fan that hangs in between the respective PCI-Express slots allows for
cool air to get sucked in through your case’s side air vents. If you’d
like to see these accessories be sure to check out our gallery page for
the full scope and additional bonus pictures. Meanwhile we’ll focus on
the motherboard itself and its rather puzzling layout. Take a peek at
the mobo below, you’ll notice she’s a real looker. Obviously a gamer
mobo that costs a lot of moolah should look the part and the Fatal1ty
AN9 doesn’t disappoint. Couple this with some blood red LED’s in a
black case and you’ll be king of the emo thug allstars. The problem
though, is gamers still tend to use discrete sound card solutions such
as the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi. As nice as the riser sound card and
the bundled software is, no one can touch Creative Labs’ choke hold on
the newest EAX technologies. This is a huge problem if you’d
like to run SLI with the newest cards on the market since the secondary
video card will either be extremely close to your sound card or be
blocking the PCI slot altogether.

This
motherboard has been out for some time now, but regardless it’s
Universal abit’s flagship AM2 mobo and to overlook something so
glaringly obvious is inexcusable. Now if you’re the type of person that
doesn’t care about sound as long as you can hear it, you’re all good.
But if there’s still one PCI device a lot of gamers use it’s a sound
card, and we can only assume Uabit was crossing its fingers with the
sound card solution they packaged with this mobo and hoping gamers
would be content…well we’re not. On the flip side, most of the
jumpers on the board are long enough for those of us with cramped cases
such as the Antec Solo to be easily removed and re-inserted, so kudos
to Uabit for making it easy to reset the CMOS. The rest of the layout
is is OK, but still shows some strange board choices. The SATA ports
thankfully don’t interfere with long graphics cards and if you wish to
replace the existing chipset cooling solution with, say a Thermalright
HR-05, then you should have just about enough clearance to sail right
on through. At this point you might be waving your hand in a rabid
manner with froth spewing about as you cry out “what about the
craptastic floppy connector location?!??!” Answer is: “WHO CARES.”
Honestly, you’ll probably only use your floppy once, and that would be
to install RAID drivers. The digital POST code display by the SATA
ports is a nice feature if you’ve got troubleshooting issues, but it’s
the 21st century and we’re tired of deciphering stupid post codes. Why
not include a sexy female voice pumped out of a tinny onboard speaker
saying “CPU failure, you naughty boy.”

One can dream. Till then we can focus on the OTES GT system on the Fatal1ty
AN9. This is just marketing speak for chipset cooling system. See that
silver heatpipe crawling along towards the back of the mobo? Also
noticed how the second heatsink isn’t actually connected? We did too
and we pondered as to why Uabit didn’t just make it one huge package.
Upright coolers blowing air directly towards the rear of the case have
taken off like hotcakes over the years, and coolers such as the Zalman CNPS9500
AM2 won’t be able to dissipate heat from the PWM and chipset area as
good as the stock cooler due to the design. Oh well, at least they
included nice and quiet
loud as all hell cooling fans to exhaust the built-up heat. Seriously,
we know gamers like to frequent noisy, dirty, poorly run LAN
tournaments but at the very least try to keep their jetpack fans and
lucky plush animal at home. Uabit’s Fatal1ty
AN9 makes this impossible, but that isn’t the biggest gripe. I believe
a motherboard should have as many USB ports as humanly possible on the
actual motherboard. No one likes to mess around with stupid extenders
that just clutter up the case even more. Four USB 2.0 slots is pretty
weak, and it’s understandable some users may still have all those slots
left if they use the legacy PS/2 ports but that doesn’t negate the fact
that it’s lame to have to install additional ports yourself and that
there is no built-in Firewire connector. I never understood the need
for dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, but rest assured those are included.
If you’re having a tough time remembering which port is which a quick
tip is to right click the actual connections within Windows and rename
them to something more appropriate like “top jack” and “lower jack” so
you don’t have to remember where to plug in your Cat-5.

On
the far end are the 4 DIMM slots that run parallel to both the 24-pin
ATX power connector and lone IDE channel. Now this area might look a
little cramped, but the Zalman CNPS9500
AM2 CPU did manage to barely (read: scrape alongside) fit next to the
system RAM. The nice thing about using said CPU cooler is that it
accentuates the ‘blowing hot air out the case’ effect that the OTES GT
system is attempting to pull off. If you’re overclocking like we were,
you are going to want to leave the scrawny little fans plugged in, but
when we ran stocks settings we unplugged these little suckers and
noticed the immediate drop in noise levels - so heads up if you’ve got
dainty little ears. A few years back, Uabit was involved in a mess with
bad capacitors that caused motherboard failure. Since then they’ve made
sure to use Japanese only caps which have a much higher level of
quality. Stuff like this is crucial in an overclocking board such as
this one. In general, the motherboard has a less than satisfactory
layout due to the wonky PCI device placement and other little details
that add up like the PCI-Express locks being on the wrong side of the
slot (but a must due to the dumb chipset cooling solution) making it a
pain to remove a video card unless you’ve taken most other stuff out of
the way.

The
bottom end of the motherboard houses the internal USB and Texas
Instruments based Firewire header pins for those of us who have some
type of front panel connectors.One thing you can’t see here is the
rave-like red LED lights that line the back of the motherboard. If you
install the included software from Uabit you can actually select a
lighting pattern or whether you want the LED’s on or off completely.
Thank you Uabit for including this option as it makes sense to give
users a choice unlike the Razer Tarantula keyboard we reviewed a few
weeks back. Overall not too bad right? Maybe you don’t really want an
SLI board and you’re more of an overclocking junky that craves endless
BIOS options? Then click next ’cause you’re gonna like what you see.

{mospagebreak title=BIOS & Overclocking Software}
If you don’t like red, start poutin’ because the BIOS continues the Fatal1ty
color scheme. The great thing about this motherboard is the endless
array of overclocking options available that cater to even the most
hardcore users. Apart from your usual settings and tweaking options
you’d find on your grandma’s Dell, the µGuru utility (µ = micro) is the
main tweak setting place where you want to be. It houses the two
principal categories of options. First is the OC Guru and second is
ABIT EQ. Within OC Guru you’ll notice settings such as the CPU
operating speed and voltage control settings. As for what you can
actually do, well rest assured you can tweak your CPU bus in 1MHz
increments from 200 to 400MHz. For CPU voltages, you can go from
1.3000V to a toasty 2.0750V in 0.025V increments. DIMM (RAM) voltage
can go from 1.75V to a high 2.30V in 0.05V increments. Lastly, the
Northbridge and Southbridge voltages can range from 1.20V to 1.50V and
1.50V to 2.00V in 0.05V and 0.10V increments, respectively.

Obviously the Fatal1ty
AN9 is no joke when it comes to overclocking options. Having been
around for so long sometimes people forget that Uabit is one of the
earliest overclocking-friendly companies on the block. The second half
of the µGuru
menu is the ABIT EQ. This area primarily pertains to temperature
indicators, warnings, voltage indicators, and fan speeds. We haven’t
touched the DRAM configuration yet, but rest assured every single
option available ever is included in the menu settings. Trcd, Trp,
Tras, Command Rates, it’s all there, and for that Uabit has to be
commended for not pussyfootin’ and giving gamers exactly what they want
in a BIOS. We all know the saying goes that NVIDIA’s odd numbered
chipsets are inferior compared to their even ones, but it’s really a
hit or miss proposition since overclocking even with identical gear on
great systems may not result in the overclock you’re looking for.

Besides the BIOS options that most avid overclockers are comfortable with, Uabit includes the µGuru
applet within the Windows OS for ultimate tweaking. Now I know what you
might be saying to yourself, “bleh, it’s just a cut-down crappier
version of what the BIOS is, I’ll pass!” Well go ahead and pass but you
won’t collect $200 since the real deal about the chipset tech and µGuru
is that it allows for real time seamless tweaking of the principal
motherboard BIOS options for even finer tuning. The application itself
is easily one of the ugliest I’ve ever seen in my life, but in reality
no one is going to care when they realize how invaluable this
application is to fully tweaking their setup. The three primary menus,
ABIT EQ, OC Guru, and FAN EQ, offer different stats on what your
current system temperatures, voltage settings, and real time low and
high readings are. It’s obvious Uabit software designers tried to make
the interface Winamp-esque in the customization aspect, but the other
skins you can choose from are just ten times uglier. Still, at least
they tried.

The real meat and potatoes is found in the setup menu where you can
really configure your overclocking options to the nth degree. The
endless array of warning indicators, beeps, and automatic shutdowns are
a real convenience and can save your system from potential disaster by
reseting your CMOS to default settings upon reboot. You may or may not
have fried a processor, but getting that sinking feeling in your
stomach that you just fried a couple of Ben Franklins with a mouse
click sucks. Undoubtedly someone will try to push their system too far,
so big ups to Uabit for including such a necessary safety feature. The
OC Guru section allows you to increase CPU clock speed and voltages for
DRAM, Northbridge and Southbridge among other options that can really
put you in the drivers seat. As you begin tweaking your system you
realize that it’s nice to be able to overclock and run a stress testing
application such as Orthos without having to reboot. By the way, under
LED Effect Control is where you can change the repeat pattern of the
mobo’s red LED lights that swirl and pulsate at your desire.

For our particular purposes we went easy on the AMD
Athlon 64 X2 4600+ with a mild 10% overclock to 2640MHz from a stock
2400MHz as detailed in our AMD Athlon 64 Overclocking Guide. This can
be done at the flick of a switch and further overclocking will
undoubtedly let you reach higher speeds, but a 10% overclock isn’t too
shabby and puts our CPU at the level of a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
processor. Sure it ain’t Intel’s Core 2 Duo, but you play with the
cards you’re dealt, and for the rest of this review we’ll give you a
peek at the boost that even a mild overclock such as this one can do to
your system performance numbers. We know you are accustomed to seeing
monster overclocks around here, but not every chip is made equal, and
sometimes even the biggest boost does jack squat to help out in the
most demanding games of today (in real world situations).

{mospagebreak title=Testing - Software}
As you may have noticed in our Test Setup we didn’t include another
system to test this against. It’s not that we don’t have available
systems, but since this is our first AM2 motherboard review (of many)
consider this our reference system from which future AMD motherboard
reviews will be compared to. That being said we’ll be showing you what
just a modest overclock can do for some programs and what it doesn’t
really affect in others compared to stock settings. We don’t have to
tell you twice, but everyone knows that synthetics aren’t indicative of
real world performance but are still a valuable asset in determining
the how well the system’s performance scales. We are open to ideas
around here and if you feel we should test something out shoot anyone
on the staff a message. Let’s begin with the renowned Futuremark
Corporations’ testing suite.

We want to let you know that everything was run on a fresh install with
no background programs running and each score is an average of three
runs. That being said, it’s easy to see what a 200MHz boost can do,
especially in PCMark where there was a 444 point difference. We
understand you’d like to see some monster numbers, but this just goes
to show you that this motherboard is mighty capable of pushing the edge
if you can do a low level overclock with simply flicking a switch.

Some of you may be wondering, “what in the hell is Aquamark?”. Well,
it’s an old DirectX9 benchmark from Massive Publishing which doesn’t
even exist anymore, but we figured we’d toss these numbers in anyway as
the benchmark itself reminded us of Aquanox series with it’s impressive
visuals at the time. A 7284 point difference isn’t something to scoff
at even on this old benchmark.

Now we’re getting to overall system performance benchmarks. SiSoft
Sandra has been an industry favorite for many years and as you can see,
a simple 10% OC is proving to immediately show good performance
increases across the board. These days AM2 chips are being priced
considerably lower and if you manage to snag a really great processor
such as an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ then you’ll really be in the position to see some monster performance numbers on the AM2 platform.

SuperPI
is a favorite of OC junkies to show their level of performance by
calculating digits of PI. Sure it isn’t Counter-Strike, but it still
shows what a system can do compared to others. On this front we see the
overclock shaved just a few seconds already so imagine what you can do
with excellent components. That’s the thing, although the nForce 590
platform isn’t the greatest overclocker, it still puts up quite a fight
for the enthusiast crowd.

{mospagebreak title=Testing - Software: Continued}

To accentuate our SiSoft Sandra performance numbers we’re also
including stats from the Everest Ultimate testing suite since many
users also use this program to gauge their overall performance. Yet
again, it’s easy to see just how much a petty overclock can do to boost
system numbers and reduce the latency across memory benchmarks.

Before getting to games we like to show off other parts of the system
to give the motherboard a crack at an array of well rounded tests. As
this is our AM2 reference system, we’ll be testing each of these
programs in the future and will replace them when necessary for optimal
real world results comparison. Now if you’re into content creation then
you know Maxon is a major player in the 3D animation software realm and
having something such as Cinebench that can show the performance
difference a capable motherboard can achieve is nice to have. No
surprise here, a pretty nice increase for a demanding benchmark is
pretty good considering the overclock.

For our WinRAR test we took 990MB worth of images and compressed them
using standard settings and timed how long each instance took. In a day
and age of downloads and Bit Torrent, you may find yourself unpacking
numerous archives and uploading long online matches for others to see
after a night of competitive gaming. So you might say to yourself 20
seconds isn’t that much, but those are 20 seconds that you might have
to do on a weekly basis, or perhaps nightly depending on how much of an
avid downloader you are, so don’t take these numbers lightly,
especially when considering this is just a mild overclock.

Continuing with our multimedia benchmarks is Nero Recode 2, a favorite
among the staff for ripping DVDs into high quality movies for PC use.
We took a trip back in time with Paul Newman and measured how long it
took to rip Cool Hand Luke to our hard drive. Enhance ripping was
disabled so as to have an even playing field when it came to ripping
the DVD. Three seconds isn’t a lot, but if you’ve got a library of DVDs
you want on your system then you’ll quickly realize that the time adds
up.

For our Apple iTunes test, we took this popular app and let her rip a
standard audio CD of Santana to the .AAC standard. As you can see, the
difference isn’t something to scoff at. Sure if you are ripping a disc
once every few months you might not care, but if you’re ripping your
entire library of Vanilla Ice then you might be inclined to care.

For
our Adobe Photoshop speed test we changed our history states to 1 and
set our cache levels to 4. In addition, memory usage was set to 100%
and we used a 3504 x 2336 image weighing in at 3.34 MB and ran a series
of filters and effects to test how fast our system could pull these
commands off. There doesn’t seem to be that much of a difference,
likely because the memory is the deciding factor over everything else,
but it’s still worth noting.

{mospagebreak title=Testing - Games}
Overclocking in games is what we know our readers are interested in,
and the results below speak for themelves. Remember each test is an
average of three runs at the lowest possible resolution for each
individual game, be it 640×480 or 800×600, so as to not limit the
results based on the video card. This way we can truly see the systems
performance and just how much the overclock is affecting it. Clearly
some people won’t notice a difference of about 10 frames, but getting
an average of 108 FPS in the Source Engine is pretty good.

We know the Counter-Strike: Source Stress Test may not be the harshest
system performance killer around, but it’s a game that is being played
in most of the major North American tournaments today, so performance
numbers are in great demand. Here we can see the huge difference in FPS
even at really high levels. If you’re used to low resolution play with
Counter-Strike 1.6 and think it might be better to keep your low
resolution in Counter-Strike: Source, then by all means go ahead. But
realize that widescreen gamers do have a distinct advantage in Source
over those who play on traditional 4:3 ratio screens.

BattleField
2142 is a futuristic take on the Battlefield universe fought with 22nd
century weapons and vehicles. At this point you may be thinking about
whether or not it is worth voiding your warranty in order to garner an
imperceptible boost in FPS, but remember these numbers mark only the
beginning of what is capable with this motherboard. This is indicative
of the rest of these performance numbers from here on out, so you can
take a look at the numbers for yourself to see the difference in
performance. In some benchmarks you may not see a lot of a difference,
in some you may. Just remember that, overall, this what you are getting
with this motherboard especially if you are opting to go with an AM2
setup.

{mospagebreak title=Testing - Games: Continued}

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Overall the Fatal1ty
AN9 is a OK motherboard. There is no denying that Uabit has tried to
mash in as many options as possible into this motherboard for the
purest overclocking experience you can get. With that being said,
however, I’m a bit reluctant to recommend a motherboard that not only
isn’t the best platform, but has seen limited support from the
manufacturer itself. The last time a BIOS update was posted was last
year, and since then users have had to rely on beta BIOS updates so
that any problem they might be encountering would get corrected. Of
course if anything goes wrong you are hosed since beta BIOSes aren’t
supported - so shame on Uabit for playing this game. Early on as I
tested the motherboard I couldn’t get it to work with my RAM at all. I
ended up replacing one brand of RAM sticks for another and testing
Uabit customer support by asking if they provided a BIOS update via
flash drive. They didn’t even know how to do this, just as they didn’t
figure out how to design a proper motherboard with a half-way decent
layout. It may seem like I am pummeling on the motherboard at the last
minute, but if I’m in the
position to purchase a motherboard even as a die-hard overclocking
fanatic, I’d have to seriously weight my options on whether or not the
inherent board layout peculiarities would be a detriment.

Pros

+ Great overclocking potential and stability
+ µGuru software is easy to use and makes overclocking a breeze
+ Perfect for flashy system builders, LED system will impress.
+ No garbage legacy connections included.
+ Included accessories such as SLI cooling fan and extra long secure cables.
+ Quiet with rear fans deactivated

Cons
- OTES GT chipset cooling erratically designed
- Lack of built-in USB and Firewire ports on rear I/O panel
- Customer support is lacking, no current updates
- Motherboard layout choices are poor
- Noisy rear fans: just because they are small they doesn’t mean they have to be loud
- AudioMAX sound card claims EAX but can’t actually do it
- Inability to work correctly with 3rd party system monitoring programs such as SpeedFan
- Sensitive RAM issues caused stability issues; where is the RAM compatibility list?

Rating
7.0 out of 10

Although
Universal abit has much experience in designing and creating
motherboards that have a broad appeal to overclocking hungry gamers,
they seem to have made a rookie mistake with the Fatal1ty AN9
motherboard. From the just plain dumb layout to the sporadic issues and
lack of customer support, I’d have to say that you must really, really
want to overclock hard because there isn’t any other reason to want to
purchase this motherboard. You’ll be toying for weeks with the options
settings but you have to realize what you’re getting yourself into when
purchasing this motherboard, otherwise it may come back to bite you.