Abit F-I90HD micro-atx Review

[MrBean]

Hello Guys,
Lately it doesn't happen that often that I wait in anticipation for the arrival of computer components. Having been in the top-end overclocking business for the past 8 odd years, you get spoilt with the latest and greatest hardware.

Well, having first heard about this Motherboard, which would be classed Media-PC range rather than top-end overclocking, did not stir much interest, but the last few weeks my Wife has been slowly applying pressure to put together a decent Media PC for her daily needs.

Now, don't get me wrong, she has a 6600 Core 2 Duo, Asus P5W Dh with 7950 GX2 card as her daily gaming rig, she just wanted something stand-alone for recording those late-night shows, and I always seem to miss the Super 14 Rugby Union games (I am South African in Oz), so it would suit me perfectly. Good thing the Wife initiates this, no problem spending money then - hehe

I started doing some research, and short before long, stumbled upon this: Abit F-I90HD

Quick and dirty of the specs of this board - not all, just the most important, check out the rest for yourself on Abit's site - don't be lazy now

CPU
- Supports Intel® Core™2 Duo, Core™2 Quad, Core™2 Extreme, Pentium® Dual-Core, Pentium® Extreme Edition, Pentium® D & Pentium®4 Processors with 1066/800MHz FSB

Chipset
ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1250

Memory
4 X 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. memory capacity 16GB
Supports Dual channel DDR2 800/667/533 Un-buffered Non-ECC memory

LAN
Gigabit Ethernet controller supports 10/100/1000Mbit LAN connections

Audio
7.1 CH HD Audio CODEC
Supports Auto Jack Sensing and optical S/PDIF Out

Expansion Slots
1 x PCI-E X16, 2 x PCI-E X1, 1 x PCI

Serial ATA
4 x SATA 3Gb/s with SATA RAID 0/1/0+1

Back panel I/O
1 x HDMI™ connector
1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x S/P DIF Out
7.1 CH Audio connector (Front, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Surround, Rear Surround)
4 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 LAN connector

and the conscise edition:

CPU Support Intel® Core™2 Duo, Core™2 Quad, Core™2 Extreme CPUs
System Bus 1066MHz FSB
Chipset ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1250
Graphics Technology ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1250 Integrated (X700-based)
HDMI™ HDMI™ 1.2 supports 1080p HD video output
LAN Onboard PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet
Memory Dual Channel DDR2-800/667/533, up to 16GB
SATA 4 x SATA 3G RAID 0/1/0+1
Audio 7.1-Channel HD with optical S/P DIF Out
USB Up to 10 x Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports
abit engineered™ Silent cooling, 100% Japanese caps, solid state caps
Extras Onboard Power On & Reset buttons

[MrBean]

Herewith a few pictures of the board.

As usual, Abit is one of the leading Companies when it comes to marketing their components, and this board is no exception - it is well presented, with a decent description of the functions and features of the product within.





Althought the packaging does it for some, and others are more concerned about the actual contents, let's take a looky inside, shall we?

Once removing the outer skin, the board sits there, in all it's glory, behind a protective plastic cover:



Underneath the motherboard, in it's own individual compartment, we find the manual, system CD, I/O plate, 4x Sata2 cables, and standard, 1.44" Stiffy (who still use those anyway) and 80-pin ATA IDE cables.

Please note the (first for me) HDMI adapter, that allows you to connect to any HDMI capable television set:



Taking a closer look at the board, here is a shot of the 4x Sata2 headers, right next to the new ATi SB600 Southbridge chip underneath a passive cooled black aluminium heatsink - a nice touch.



The CPU socket-area is surrounded by solid-state capacitors, which makes for cooler running caps under load, ultimately extendinding the life of these caps, and in the longer run will have a good positive effect on system stability.

Even though the rest of the board has standard electrolytic caps, they are of the topmost Japanese quality, and will be good for years to come.



a Close-up of the LGA775 Intel socket, which in my system will house the well-balanced E6400 Core 2 Duo CPU:



a Shot of the rear I/O ports, where you can see immediately to the right of the PS2 ports, the new 1080p HDMI output - jeesh, I can't get over this



a Bit of a disappointment is the fact that there is the standard SPDIF output, but the area where the input would have been, is well, there -but no supporting components.

[MrBean]

Here's 2 photos of the board installed in my Anted Fusion case, it was painless, easy to install, yes, even thought the Antec Fusion is not the easiest case to install a Micro-ATX board in:





Last, but not least, my TV card, the decent all-rounder Video-Mate T750:



Initial Setup
I have decided to test this board not with high-end ram, or the fastest cpu out there, but rather the standard kit we all would use on a setup like this.

I have settled for Samsung ram, 2x 1gig sticks, which should give the memory subsystem a decent workout, they are rated at 4-4-4-10, and then a semi-decent E6400, clocked stock at 2.13Gig, but which can easily (and stably) do 3.2gig on stock Intel aircooling.

Though one would hardly overclock a board in this application, there are a few amongst us who would most likely use this in a very portable gaming rig, dump a big-momma gfx card in, and clock the hell out of the E6400 - yes, the Bios has some options for overclocking, we will get to that a little deeper into the review.

For now, intital setup, installation:

As always, the top-tier suppliers do a decent job of accompanying documentation, and in this case Abit did not fail to produce - even a non-techie will most likely succeed in mounting, and setting this board up.

All onboard socket pins, orientation, numbering etc are clearly marked, and if you have done a few setups in your life, you can actually get away without even browsing the manual - for those not so confident, the manual will get you there.

Once all hardware mounted, it's time to connect the power, and switch it on. The Bios supports the CPU outof the box, no need to use D820 or similar older generation cpu to get this baby going.

Boot-up is without issues, and a quick browse of the Bios.....damnnnnn.....

The Bios is as red as the board, a welcome change from the oh-so-boring blue Kewl, I like it.

All the standard features you come to expect of the Award Bios is there, from Advanced Chipset to System information.

I will revisit the Bios section a little later, this is just a quick break-down.

All the voltages are spot-on, but it seems the 3.30V needs a little calibration, as my Fluke Process Meter reveals 3.3V, but bios is indicating 3.16V - quite an error actually.

Temperatures in hovers around 40-41 deg C with the CPu at stock speeds on aircooling, with ambient around 25 deg C, and the 2x Antec 120mm sidefans spinning at a lowly 5V.

Quite good, and accurate, similar idel temps on my Asus P5W Dh, and P5 WS Pro boards - glad to see manufacturers are getting more accurate calibrating these values.

Did a quick check to set CDRom boot preference, Save and Exit, and mounted new Vista Premium rom.

Vista Setup

Setup started without a glitch, and to be honest, I could not detect a measureable difference loading Vista on this setup, and my P5 WS Pro X6800 clocked at 3.51gig speeds.

Vista detected all drivers, and within 20-25 minutes I was greeted by the Vista Desktop.

a Quick glance in Device Manager revealed the only missing drivers were those for my T750 TV card, which I downloaded and installed the latest set of supporting Vista from Compro's site.

Testing FM and TV on that card showed all working well, no noticeable audio problems, crackling etc, but more thorough testing under various load conditions will be performed on this board to test complete suitability for Media PC use.

One glaring omission on this lovely board is onboard WiFi, as my only PCI slot is occupied by the TV card, and 1x PCI-Express devices is still pretty scarce Down Under, well, I am sure it would have been easy for Abit to include this as a standard.

Something to think about.

So, it would be very easy even for the most green amongst us to get this board up and running, and performing without issues.

Even using not-so-carefully selected/researched components, will still be much easier than say, a year ago, when we had batches of boards from both Intel and AMD which will only work with this or that high-end brand memory.

This new ATI Express 1250/1300 series chipset seems to be quite tolerant of different memory brands, low-to-high end, and I will be testing Samsung, OCZ and G-Skill on it to verify.

Please check back for testing and conclusion sometime over Easter.

Feedback would be appreciated.

Kind regards,
MrBean.

[MrBean]

Hello everyone,
a Few Everest Ultimate benchies below - I won't comment on all, as the results are quite self-explanatory, suffice it to say that the board performs well against a variety of competitors out there, I just used memory throughput and cpu performance as a yardstick, and even though this is a HTPC board, it would do well in the gaming environment.

I cannot post overclocking results, as there is a few small additions Abit needs to make to the Bios before this can be attempted with success, and keeping the stability of the system priority one, so I will be in discussion with the Powers to Be to address these small issues.

Anyway, see Everest results below - take note all tests are performed with CPU at default, and Memory SPD settings in the BIOS.

Please observe the slight descrepancies between Overall, and individual tests - I had some differences in background applications running, as the purpose of these tests are not to showcase MAX performance, rather what you can expect on a "Daily User Rig"


Overall Test





Memory Read Test




Memory Write Test




Memory Copy




Memory Latency





CPU Queen Test





CPU Photoworxx Test




CPU ZLib Test

[MrBean]

FPU Julia Test



FPU Mandel Test



FPU SinJulia Test



More extensive benchmarks to follow after Bios refresh

[NickS]

Looks like a good board

Nice review dude, keep up the good work!

[MrBean]

Thanx for the f/back, NickS.

Initial impressions are very positive, I am currently setting up the unit to record (PVR) from my Foxtel Decoder, as I will be testing general perfomance for Home Entertainment usage too - this is where this board should perform well, as this is the target market.

No glitches so far, FM radio working well from the T750 card, next to test TV recording, image quality, recording, and playback.

Might look at some MPEG2 encoding performance too, but will keep you posted.

Br,
MrBean.

[irev210]

quick question, what is the min CPU voltage you can select voltage?

Im looking to check this out as a HTPC, just wondering how little voltage I can make this thing sip.

Thanks for the review

[MrBean]

1.325-1.70Vcore

1.75-2.50Vmem

1.80-2.088Vnb

Abit might give us lower options in later Bios releases.

Let's hope so

[erwinz]

nice voltages..

[MrBean]

Yep, the range is good, al we need now in the Bios would be an option to lock PCI-Express bus frequency.

Then I can test the overclockability of this neat little board

[erwinz]

waaaaa... the no lock in the pcie???

[s e t h]

i have seen overclocks up to 366fsb so i'm not sure there is a problem with pci/-e locks...this is after all an AMD chipset and from the start they are async chipset...sync mode is actually challenging for these chipsets it appears

edit:...these board seem to need a pci-e card ideally for serious clocking though..to take the gpu strain out of the NB

[Lestat]

the pci-e and pci already lock, no need to add that option if they are already locked.
but being able to raise the pci-e is always nice to help achieve higher FSB.
but since this thing cant even do 400fsb, its doubtful anything is going to help.

its a nice board but watch it, they are dieing left and right.
its a shame i was hoping to get one, but i dont think i will now.... too risky.

[irev210]

the pci-e and pci already lock, no need to add that option if they are already locked.
but being able to raise the pci-e is always nice to help achieve higher FSB.
but since this thing cant even do 400fsb, its doubtful anything is going to help.

its a nice board but watch it, they are dieing left and right.
its a shame i was hoping to get one, but i dont think i will now.... too risky.

Compared to other mATX boards, this thing is a god.


I would buy one, but I got a 1/2 dozen core mobile based processors, and no core desktop based processors.

I really want something very low power... not sure what to get. Maybe an E4300 or something after the price drops.

[FLMJIGGY]

Sweet review. Neat and VERY well laid out. Unlike most if a 4300 could get to 3Ghz I'd be MORE than happy. Heck, even 2.8 is good for me!

AMD has Crystal CPU for lower V and Multi options. Does Intel have something similar?

[Blaineikans]

I have this board as well, actually I'm on my second. Using an e4300 and OCZ memory. First one died when I tried to push the FSB to 350 while using onboard video. The RMA arrived Wednesday and I OC'd it to a modest 2.7Ghz which it Orthosed for over 16 hours at perfectly fine.

Tomorrow I'm throwin an 8800GTS in it so hopefully that'll give me some more headroom. On the first board I couldn't get into Vista @ over 333 which seems to be the point that people begin to have problems.

Even though I had a bad first experience I'm excited to use this board and looking forward to a nice and small gaming rig.

[MrBean]

the pci-e and pci already lock, no need to add that option if they are already locked.
but being able to raise the pci-e is always nice to help achieve higher FSB

and

First one died when I tried to push the FSB to 350 while using onboard video.

Yep, PCI-e locked, but would be nice to have the option available to change as you wish.

And of course, as Seth has mentioned, would be good to use standalone GFX card instead of onchip one.

[Solarfall]

thanks for the review bro, i really enjoyed reading it.

[zerotol]

very nice review

Could you test the onboard in a few games like fear so we could see its real performance ?

[MrBean]

Hey Guys,
Thanx for the feedback

I will test onboard with eg FEAR, see how it goes.

Br,
MrBean

[Lestat]

fear's gunna choke it to death.

so your boards still running eh?

[Blaineikans]

My board and 4300 are running at 3.0 Ghz just fine right now on stock cooling. It orthos'd for over 14 hours overnight.

One question, for this to run stable the voltage is at 1.375, is it safe to go higher than 1.4 on the cpu voltage? It seems that's what it is going to take to run stable at 3.1 ghz or higher.

[MrBean]

@ Lestat - you're right, the card will take a bit of a knock with FEAR.

Will test it anyway should be playable at 800x600 - rofl.

@ Blaineikans: You might find temps getting a little high on air at 1.45+, so keep it 1.40-1.425, and watch temps to stay within spec.

Mine is running 3.65gig, 1.45Vcore, but on water - and it's a X6800.

Happy with it there.

[Meaker]

Yep I am pretty sure now that turning on the onboard video and doing any serious overclocking will kill it quick (24 hours in my case).

My new board is running at 334mhz fsb with my e4300 running 3ghz 24/7. =)