Abit previews next overclocker-friendly mobo
Abit has been showing signs of returning to the good old days ever since the USI takeover that resolved all of the company's financial problems.
Abit's new overclocker friendly mobo is the AW9D-MAX.
MAX is Abit's flagship brand for overclockers - the MAX series boards are primarily designed with enthusiasts looking to overclock in mind, whereas the Fatal1ty series are primarily designed for rock solid stability and gaming - everything else is secondary.
The AW9D-MAX is by no means finished yet, as the company is still contemplating adding more features, and tweaking the aesthetics of the board before it reaches the market. It is based on Intel's 975X/ICH7R chipset, and features support for the upcoming Core 2 Duo processors and DDR2-800 memory speeds. There are a total of eight SATA 3Gbps ports included - one is an external e-SATA port, and all other SATA ports seem to be in reasonably accessible locations. There is also support for a pair of ATI video cards in CrossFire mode, thanks to the dual PCI-Express x16 slots.
However, the lone PCI slot will be blocked if using a pair of Radeon X1900's in CrossFire. Having said that though, the additional AudioMAX slot for the included Realtek ALC880-based HD Audio daughter card, the need for an add-in sound card isn't quite as crucial as it is on some solutions.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/06/10/abit_previews_aw9d-max/