The Abit AW9D-Max comes in a huge box which actually looks a lot cooler than the majority of motherboard boxes. Thankfully this isn’t a case of all style and no substance and by flipping the lid we find notes explaining several of the main features of the product. The underside features further information on the motherboard which enables consumers to make an informed purchase.

Inside we find 3 further boxes. The two smaller boxes contain the various extra items which are bundled with the Aw9D-Max. These include manuals, software cd’s, SATA drivers and numerous cables and connectors. There is one thing that can be said about Abit’s bundle and that is that they leave nothing out. There will be no need to visit the local PC store if building a new system on this product.

In the third box Abit include the motherboard itself and an external soundcard. The majority of the sound processing on most motherboards is still performed onboard however the Abit AW9D-Max breaks this mould. Having the external card which uses a PCIexpress interface means that should a 3rd party soundcard be used there are no outputs taking up space when not required. The chipset used in this particular model is manufactured by Realtek and is a HD 7.1 product and featuring an optical digital out as well as analogue outputs.

Pictured below is the AW9D-Max. The product immediately gives of a feel of quality with the polished heatpipes and black PCB. Underneath the heatsinks we have the Intel 975 and ICH7 chipsets. This is of course a Socket 775 product and supports all of the recent processors released by Intel in the Celeron, P4 and Core 2 families.

Connectivity options on the AW9D-Max are plentiful with 2 PCIe graphics slots (16x/8x), 1 legacy PCI, 2 PCIe 1x slots, floppy connector, IDE connector and 7 internal SATA connectors. It is in this area that many people will have issues with as the use of 2 dual slot graphics cards will make all but 1 pcie slot unavailable.

Shown below are two reasonably useful features. The first is an LED display which creates codes that correspond to various board statuses. The idea is that if something goes wrong the LED display will give a code to assist in finding the root cause of the concern. The other item is 2 small switches which allow resetting and power on/off without installing the board in a case. Ideal for reviewers and enthusiasts alike.

Power requirements on this board are pretty standard with 1x24pin connector and 1x8pin. If your PSU doesn’t have these connectors there is a 4 pin connector at the base of the board which allows you to add a little juice to keeps things stable. Alongside the two main power connectors we find the boards 4 DDR2 slots. These slots are able to support four 2Gb modules for a total of 8Gb. What you cannot see from the pictures is one of the boards major selling points, the ability to enable DDR2-1066 via a bios option. We’ll look later at how this enhanced memory support can benefit the board in performance terms.

The two final aspects of the board which differ from the norm are shown below, the first is the silent cooling system. Both the northbridge and southbridge are cooled by large heatsinks and heatpipes. Turning the board to look at the outputs we see that Abit have gone for the minimalist look. Present here are the PS2 ports, 4usb 2.0, 2 Gb Nic’s and an external SATA connector. If nothing else it will save the standard steps of going into the bios to disable all the serial and parallel ports no-one uses however it should also free up IRQ’s when compared to other motherboards.

So far we have seen a product which comes in an informative box, has a more than adequate bundle and is well designed. Abit continue their impressive showing with the Aw9D-Max’s BIOS. At first glance the BIOS looks pretty standard (Awardbios) however once we delve a little deeper we find an enthusiast dream.

First up is the Abit EQ bios section which gives us control over various fan settings and the ability to monitor more voltage and temperature options than any other manufacturer. Also present is the ability to control the boards LED setting. Along the edge of the product we have a number of blue LED’s which can flash in various patterns. To some this will be a real plus point, especially case modders out there. For others it is something that will be immediately turned off. We think it’s pretty cool.

The other stand out feature is the uGuru screen which allows us to explore the boards overclocking potential. The options available on this screen are excellent, especially when compared to other 975 boards. CPU voltage reaches 1.725v, DDR2 volts are available up to 2.65 and MCH up to 2.00v.

With options like these over clocking possibilities are plentiful however there is one area where the AW9D could be improved further and that is the available multipliers on the CPU. Currently the X6800 CPU we use has a maximum of 11x available where as one of our other products allows higher multipliers. Memory timings are pretty standard on the Abit AW9D-Max however as noted earlier in the review the option of booting with DDR2-1066 is a really unique option.

Software

Abits AW9D-Max comes with the standard Abit Uguru software. As motherboard tools go it is one of the best and features numerous monitoring sections (like those in the bios) as well as over clocking options for anyone not wishing to enter into the bios.