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Introduction Features and Specifications Installation Setup and BIOS Photos and Pictures Test Setup and Procedures Benchmarks: Sandra Pro 2007 Benchmarks: 3DMark 2005/06 and PC Mark05 Benchmarks: Quake 4 and UT2004 Benchmarks: AquaMark3 and X3 Reunion Benchmarks: Far Cry and Serious Sam 2 Benchmarks: Science Mark 2 Overclocking Memory Bandwidth Comparison Verdict and Conclusion

Abit proves that the nForce 570 SLI can give performance users something more than they bargained for ...

INTRODUCTION

Nvidia's nForce 500 series is fast becoming the next platform in terms of motherboard chipsets for both AMD and Intel. The original nForce4 SLI did well supporting socket-939 processors, but now it's time for the change to socket AM2 with DDR2 ram.

According to Nvidia, there are several flavours in the 500 series chipsets. The 590 SLI is designed for enthusiasts and the 570 SLI for performance users, while the ordinary 570 and 550 are for the mainstream and budget markets respectively. The 570 SLI chipset is a single chip solutuion and only supports 2x8 PCIe is SLI mode, while the 590 SLI chipset has usual northbridge and southbridge combination and supports 2x16 PCIe in SLI mode.

 

 Abit have really pushed forward this year, producing some really nice motherboards including the AW8D and the AN8X-32. Their new Fatal1ty range of motherboards, have been very popular among gamers and enthusiasts. These motherboards have been endorsed, tested and approved by fivefold professional world champion Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. So, you can see that Abit have been trying very hard to capture the enthusiasts and gamers market.

 

 

 

Unfortunately ... it's not economically viable to cater just for the enthusiast market. It's not profitable. You have to capture other "bread and butter" markets too ... and that's the performance, mainstream and budget markets.

In this review we take a look at Abit's KN9-SLI motherboard. It's a direct replacement for their socket-939 based KN8-SLI and it's designed for performance users in mind. It features the nForce 570 SLI chipset and supports 2x8 PCIe in SLI mode.

 

During our preliminary tests, we were surprised to see that there wasn't much difference between the 590 SLI and the 570 SLI chipsets in terms of performance. The benchmark scores were virtually the same, approximately  +/- 5% difference.

 

With this in mind, does it mean that motherboards based on the 570 SLI chipet is a better buy than the 590 SLI. OK, we won't waste any more time ... let's take a closer look at the Abit KN9-SLI motherboard.

 

 

 

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Introduction Features and Specifications Installation Setup and BIOS Photos and Pictures Test Setup and Procedures Benchmarks: Sandra Pro 2007 Benchmarks: 3DMark 2005/06 and PC Mark05 Benchmarks: Quake 4 and UT2004 Benchmarks: AquaMark3 and X3 Reunion Benchmarks: Far Cry and Serious Sam 2 Benchmarks: Science Mark 2 Overclocking Memory Bandwidth Comparison Verdict and Conclusion