ABIT AA8 DuraMAX Motherboard (Intel 925X)

ABIT is probably not a name that many of you are unfamiliar with. Always innovating and striving for top performance, ABIT has been an industry leader for over 15 years. When you think about the top enthusiast-oriented motherboard and video card manufacturers, ABIT will definitely make the list. The company produces many of the best performing products on the market.

With all that said, I have very high expectations for ABIT products, especially for the products that are aimed at performance and overclocking enthusiasts. ABIT loves to include a lot of tweaking options and to innovate in ways that really help to separate its products from the competition. No exception was made when creating the AA8 DuraMAX, which features ABIT's µGuru technology.

The AA8 DuraMAX is based on the newest flagship desktop chipset from Intel, the 925X Express Chipset, and therefore includes the latest motherboard technologies, such as PCI-Express graphics and DDR2. Awesome features, such as Intel's High Definition Audio and SATA Matrix RAID, are also present on this mainboard. Since the AA8 DuraMAX features one of Intel's latest chipsets, it features the new LGA 775 socket, which is also called Socket T. With this socket, the pins are found in the motherboard's socket and not on the processor.

If you read my recent Pentium 4 560 article, you already got a glimpse of the performance offered by the AA8 DuraMAX. Now, it's time to take a closer look at the board and figure out if it's worth planting a shiny, new P4 into.