Showcasing the real power of the Abit AB9

[Johnny Bravo]

After a recent UK overclocking competition held by Abit I thought I should bring the results of the winning setup just to show what £80 worth of motherboard can do!!


Setup:

Abit AB9 with vdimm & vmch mods
Intel E6700 Retail (L629A) lapped
PC5300 Tenth Anniversary (Micron D9GMH [B6-3])
ATi Radeon 7000 PCI
PC Power & Cooling 510W


Cooling:
Johanns Benchbox (an epic SS cooler cheers man )



MMouse Alu pot Rev 3




Mods:
Special thanks to Crotale

Vdimm


Vmch


Vcore



Results:

Maximum CPU speed

Validation


Maximum FSB Speed

Validation

SuperPi 1M



Some comments about the setup:

The pot used is a solid aluminium Mousepot from Jason, loaded with dry ice and acetone, on loaded temps -72oC, idle temps @ 1.74vcore -63oC loaded temps @ 1.74vcore <-60oC

Benching was carried out with a phase cooler mounted on the northbrige, loaded temps with 1.83vmch >-63oC

voltmods onboard include vdimm (2.6volts) vmch (1.83volts) and vcore (~1.7volts)

cpu has been lapped to improve contact with mousepot

BIOS' used were official v1.5 and beta v1.9 (multiplier manipulation performed in windows with crystalcpuid for beta BIOS)


Additional pics from Benching :









Conclusions :

Abit have returned in form! This is one of their cheapest boards on the Intel chipset platform and performs great. What is impressive and can't be conveyed by the photos is the stability, I know alot of you have been giving off about Asus P5B boards being a pain in the backside when they fail a POST, requiring blanking of the BIOS and even just being inoperable. The Abit is great, just restart ti and it normally recovers going into a safe mode, plus you can save BIOS profiles anyway in the BIOS so once you've got a good overclocking profile just save it and if anything goes wrong just restart in "safe mode" and reload the profile. Ace. Good work Abit now keep it up for the 680i board!!!!!

[Johnny Bravo]

Great stuff John!

How much does the chipset cooing gain you?

Tom

Cheers Tom

Cooling the chipset gains ALOT! Even using a decent chipset air cooler like the microcool thats in one of the pics got me a good 20-30MHz. The phase cooler tho really allowed me to crank up the FSB. I still believe the BIOS is holding me back. Once the folks over there at Abit sort it out I think the FSB speeds seems on the P5B boards will be achievable. Having read alot of stuff from Tony and FCG it seems to be all in the strap.

[K404]

Congrats on winning the compo!

That PCPC+C still holding up after all this time?

[dinos22]

oh i really like that.........................................it makes it a heck of a lot easier than any other form of insulation....there's no way you're killing that CPU with all the grease around heheheh

[Johnny Bravo]

That PCPC+C still holding up after all this time?

What has Andy been telling you!??!

[crotale]

Nice! Keep pushing it!

[Rovtar]

great job guys

[ownage]

w00t, AB9 power.
love the pictures.
I know the bios is holding me back, 1,45vmch isn't enough. I don't believe the vmch will be cranked up in the new 1,6 bios (beta 1.6 doesn't have more vmch).

[Revv23]

i really have liked this board from the beggining. its a great budget 965 board.

[Highland3r]

I'll second Johnny on this one.
The board doesn't quite have the legs of the P5B at the moment (probs strap related as mentioned) but stability wise its awsome. It's actually a nice board to clock too, the bios is well laid out and there's no reboot issue as per the P5B's. For the ease of use and stability its in my 24/7 rig over the P5B vanilla, despite not being capable of the same FSB's as the P5B is.
Running 450 FSB (1.57vMCH stock NB cooling) with E6300 (1.26v) and 2GB Crucial Anniversary (1:1 4,4,3,8 2.04v) It's an easy clock too, only real limit is vMCH/NB.

Managed 512FSB from mine (for same Abit comp, link in sig) using less extreme methods than Johnny, so there's certainly the headroom in these boards if you can keep the NB cool. It was very interesting to see how the stability varied as the NB temps increased.

For the price, its probably a better option for higher multi chip uses (E6600 >) that the P5B, 400 FSB isn't a problem and it's more usable as a 24/7 board than the P5B. Only slight niggle is the requirement of a SATA optical drive to install windows. With these weighing in at ~ 25GBP tho its not a huge problem.

I'd be a little wary of 1.6MCH with the boards cooling, the NB sink is pretty poor. It struggles with 1.57 without additional airflow.

[ownage]

Many of you guys are talking about 1.5vmch set in bios, but my max vmch in bios is 1,45, how about that??

[Highland3r]

vMods

[Johnny Bravo]

I think Abit might even be working on increasing the vmch in the bios too

[Norz]

Awesome speed man
My abit did 463fsb on stock cooling with bios .15 orginal.
Then i did the vmch mod and yessire
Now i can give her some moore juice,and she love it
Fitted an old AC nb watercooler,give her 1,64 vmch and she took off...lol..
Havent been testing much,but will do some this weekend,
It took some time for me to figure her out,but now im in charge
My goal with this abit was 500fsb,because i know my E6300 was up for it.
Now i have to reach higher...lol..
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=146410

[Emillos]

Gratz johnny!

Amazing OC with such a cheap board. Actually, I've just bought the same. And now i'm really looking forward to play with it

[Johnny Bravo]

Good stuff Norz, I'll have to see what I can do on air/water

[Bl4ck^!]

ING |"A"| man ! must shop for some resistors ect. and do that mod to my AB9 ;F rock on great stuff

[Leon2ky]

So ABIT's getting back into the game I assume.

[Pipi]

And people say sub-zero on the chipset doesn't help

[Norz]

Good stuff Norz, I'll have to see what I can do on air/water

Heres what you could do with water
.......im not finish yet..lol..

[alpha0ne]

I have an AB9 non pro that is unusable

It will only boot to bios IF you clear CMOS first, once you save and exit it is incapable of recognizing my DVD rom and when I press reset nothing happens, I have to clear CMOS again to get back into bios

I have flashed to the latest 15 bios using dos and this has made no difference so its back to the supplier for a refund