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Performance

The AN8 Fatal1ty SLI ran without any problems during testing and installation. ABIT have the right mind to bundle a S-ATA driver disk with all their boards, and the AN8 Fatal1ty SLI is no exception. Unlike the other two ABIT boards we tested (the AN8 and AX8 3rd Eye), the AN8 Fatal1ty is only using Command Rate 2T so ABIT is more conservative with this board. The default FSB is also 'normal' - 200,9 MHz. We're using the new Catalyst 5.8, so keep that in mind while viewing the results. We've included the scores from our socket 939 PCI Express motherboards round up for comparison.



Before looking at the test results, we encourage you to read our 'How We Evaluate' article so you understand how we conduct our test and benchmarks. More importantly, you will also see how each benchmarks react with our test setup. We only put the average, minimum and maximum fps in this evaluation to keep it brief.

Our test setup
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ socket 939
2 x 256 MB Kingston KVR 3-3-3 PC3200 DDR-SDRAM
ASUS EAX700 Pro 256 MB
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
ASUS E-616 DVD-ROM
450 watts ATX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
ATI Catalyst 5.8 reference driver
NVIDIA NForce system driver version 6.66
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest, final builds.

The results:

Quite surprisingly, even with Command Rate 2T, the AN8 Fatal1ty SLI is faster than AN8 Ultra and very close to AX8. The other boards with Command Rate 2T are Gigabyte's K8NF-9 and MSI K8N SLI Platinum and the AN8 Fatal1ty SLI is noticeably faster than the K8N SLI Platinum (around 16 fps). But let's hold passing judgment for now and see how does the AN8 Fatal1ty fares in other tests.


Here we could see that AN8 Fatal1ty falls in line with the other boards. It's only slightly faster than the K8N SLI Platinum, most probably due to its lower minimum frame rates. But you won't notice that difference in gameplay. All the boards here offer the same level of performance, except for the ASUS A8N SLI which 'overclocks' our memory.


While this test is somewhat similar to Dungeon Siege (from its range of fps), the AN8 Fatal1ty is slower than the two ABIT boards, offering pretty much the same performance with K8N SLI Platinum, but again with lower minimum and maximum fps. Once again, that difference is not noticeable in gameplay so again, all boards essentially offer the same level of performance.

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