Abit iX38 QuadGT - Living Review.

[supershanks]

What have I done?

Wouldn't worry yet, it's usually like this with a new board.
I'm getting one tommorow as well.

Not as much interest in this board as I would have expected.

There has been a lot of anticipation & interest in ther board.:-
Abit ix38 QuadGT| where is it?
New Abit Ix38 Quad Gt
abit introduces the IX38 QuadGT motherboard
Default X38 - Abit IX38 QuadGT

It's just the final release of the board may have caught people unawares after the 4 or 5 false release dates with the associated supposition & speculation, mixed up with the shelving of the ddr3 max until x48..
Most stores in europe only got stock on friday so many of us will be be getting our boards tomorrow.

luck

[olliewbnn]

Friday i picked up my IX38. I was an Aw9D-Max user.
My first findings are positive.

I'm running:
E6600 @ 3.6 ghz @ 9*400 @ 1.4v with a Tuniq Tower
OCZ Titanium Alpha VX @ DDR1000 @ 5-4-4-16 @ 2.3v
Everest read 8970 mb/s
Everest write 7320 mb/s
Everest copy 8307 mb/s
Everest latency 54.2 ns
3Dmark6 13153 with a eVGA 8800 GTX @ 625/1512/1000
On the max i couldnt do DDR1000. I tried 8*450 @ 1.4v and that also works.
6*500 doesnt work very good. I have to put to much volt on the mobo and cpu so i think my E6600 is the problem.

First impressions:

Needs lower vCore to reach the same level as the AW9D_max, Great layout, build quality, overclocking works with C1E and Eist ON, @ 1.4v on the core the PWM'S are around 60 degrees celcius, super stable, uGuru is awesome again, Cmos button on the i/o panel, start and reset button's on the mobo.

Now on to the penryn !

[Clunk]

The difference that you are seeing, might be because you arent using a quad core. Can you do 9x410?

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has a G0 quad core, and this board and their experiences of over 400FSB.

I've just primed overnight at 3.6Ghz 1:1, but it took 1.5v to get there.

[BUFF]

Originally Posted by Clunk

[*] Doesnt recover well from a bad overclock - forget trying to see how low you can go with the voltage, it will just fail to post, and then when you restart, the BIOS will freeze, and it then needs to have the CMOS cleared each time, which is quite irritating - A quick example, I just set 400x9, with 1.4v CPU, 2.2v RAM @800Mhz. Two cores failed prime instantly, so I hit the reset button, went into the BIOS, and it has frozen again, from virtually doing nothing - this now requires yet another CMOS clear.

try a 2nd or even 3rd - it'll probably clear & reset defaults.

[Clunk]

I did mate, sometimes, it would give me a few seconds, and I could open the guru section, and change the FSB, doing that would stop it freezing.

Last nights mild overclock, I tried all kinds of things, including several attempts at restart, removing anything USB, removing all PS2 (with USB connected), and no matter what I did, it still froze at the main BIOS screen and had to have a CMOS clear to fix it.

Am I correct in thinking that this is a problem on other Abit boards as well, and not to expect a fix for it?

I see there was a beta BIOS for the P35 that fixes the USB/PS2 problem that I've been having, I would have thought they would have fixed something like that before releasing the board if they were aware of it?

[Clunk]

15 hours prime stable, finished the priming, then restarted windows, went into the BIOS and it froze again.

Thing is, there is absolutely no reason for this happening, it was stable, it was shutdown and restarted properly, so why does it freeze? It doesnt freeze after a CMOS clear, and then not for a few entries into the BIOS, and then once it has done it, that's it, another CMOS reset.

[BUFF]

Originally Posted by Clunk

Am I correct in thinking that this is a problem on other Abit boards as well, and not to expect a fix for it?

not really - if anything abits are known for being very tolerant & user friendly about failed overclocks.

[Clunk]

Thats just it though, it wasnt a failed overclock, I stopped prime to take the screenie below, and then restarted windows to get into the BIOS to try and lower the voltage a bit and it froze. Its hard to tell if it does actually freeze, or if there is just no keyboard function - same difference I suppose to the user

[Rofor]

Hi Clunk,

Originally Posted by Clunk

15 hours prime stable, finished the priming, then restarted windows, went into the BIOS and it froze again.

Thing is, there is absolutely no reason for this happening, it was stable, it was shutdown and restarted properly, so why does it freeze? It doesnt freeze after a CMOS clear, and then not for a few entries into the BIOS, and then once it has done it, that's it, another CMOS reset.

At first - many thanks for your review of the Abit IX38 so far!

Hope, you can give me a bit of advice: I'm building my new pc (Q6600 95W and 4x 1Gb Cellshock DDR2 RAMs) these days and was looking for an adequat motherboard for this setup. I was first thinking about the ABit IP35-Pro, but now i'm focused on the new Abit IX38.

I'm planning only to slightly overclock my Q6600 to 333MHz FSB speed - do you think the IX38 is already stable enough for this or should i better take the older IP35-Pro?

Many thanks in advance and Greetings from Vienna, Austria!

[Clunk]

Welcome to the forums

At the moment, I cannot recommend the QuadGT because its BIOS is bad, and it really shouldn't have been released to market in this way (In my opinion) - I don't believe that mine is faulty, as I have been reading of similar problems with past Abit boards.

Unless you need the extra 16x slot, go for a P35 board, or wait for X48.