ABIT KV8-MAX3 (VIA K8T800) Motherboard

ABIT KV8-MAX3 Onboard Features:

The rear I/O configuration for the KV8-MAX3 is fully loaded as with all of ABIT's MAX series. There are 2 PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, SPDIF in and out, audio jacks, 4 USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE 1394 connection, and a Gigabit Ethernet jack. It is easy to see that ABIT did not leave much out concerning the I/O configuration.

The Sil3114 chip brings extra Serial ATA support to the board as well as the SATA offered by the VIA chipset. The Sil3114 supports up to 4 independent SATA drives as well as RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 configurations, which makes the board a perfect candidate for large storage systems such as small servers or workstations. The Silicon Image Sil3114 is also present on other boards such as the EPoX 8HDA3+ and the Chaintech ZNF3-150 Zenith.

The Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 chip provides the KV8-MAX3 with its IEEE 1394 FireWire support. The chip has the capability to offer 3 connections but only two are present with the motherboard. One can be found on the rear I/O panel, while the other is on an add in PCI bracket. IEEE 1394a supports up to 400Mb/s data transfer rates and is commonly used with external hard drives, printers, digital camcorders, as well as digital cameras.

As we have seen with a few ABIT motherboards in the past, ABIT has once again decided to go with 3COM to give the board its Gigabit Ethernet capabilities. Most of the high end boards based on nForce 3 or K8T800 come with Gb support. This is nice to have if you host a small server, transfer large files, or just want an extremely fast connection.

Guru is an added feature to ABIT's product line. It is basically a chip paired with Windows based software that allows users to change system settings as well as monitor voltages, fan speeds, etc. We will go more into detail on the features of Guru later in the review.