Abit IP35 Pro?

[Canuck1]

Hello,
I am not sure where to ask this but I am looking for a Core2Duo-based board and I have looked at Asus and Gigabyte boards mostly but I came across an IP35 Pro board. The specs and price looked good until I went to the Abit website. It's just horrible.

First of all, it doesn't look like the board is supported yet. There is an ad for the board but no drivers or bios (update) anywhere. So, if you bought the board now, you couldn't do much with it. The download section doesn't list the board anywhere. I was shocked.

I wouldn't buy an Abit product right now.

I am not done with my complaints either. Their website makes it difficult to search as I guess they want to avoid spammers. But, in doing so, they make it difficult for people who just want to look at their products and access their forum.

Anyway, I am wondering if anyone bought the mb and what is going on regarding the BIOS and any drivers. I would be worried if it is so slow to support, it is bound to have problems later on.

It is too bad as the price was not great but not bad for a P35 chipset board. I think I will stick to Asus and Gigabyte who have lots of updated support.

 

[BUFF]

Hello,
I am not sure where to ask this but I am looking for a Core2Duo-based board and I have looked at Asus and Gigabyte boards mostly but I came across an IP35 Pro board. The specs and price looked good until I went to the Abit website. It's just horrible.

well, it sounds more like a rant so far than a question ...

First of all, it doesn't look like the board is supported yet. There is an ad for the board but no drivers or bios (update) anywhere. So, if you bought the board now, you couldn't do much with it. The download section doesn't list the board anywhere. I was shocked.

Strangely enough the mobo comes with a CD with drivers, utilities etc. not to mention that you usually get the latest from the component mfrs own sites (e.g. Intel for chipset, Realtek for LAN, sound .

I wouldn't buy an Abit product right now.

That's your right & no one is forcing you others incl myself may have a different view.

I am not done with my complaints either. Their website makes it difficult to search as I guess they want to avoid spammers. But, in doing so, they make it difficult for people who just want to look at their products and access their forum.

Again subjective I suppose - personally I find the website easier & faster than e.g. Asus & the abit-USA forum is a far nicer community.

Anyway, I am wondering if anyone bought the mb and what is going on regarding the BIOS and any drivers. I would be worried if it is so slow to support, it is bound to have problems later on.

It is too bad as the price was not great but not bad for a P35 chipset board. I think I will stick to Asus and Gigabyte who have lots of updated support.

On the other hand lots of updates may mean that there were lots of problems to start with ...
The other thing that you have to remember is that Asus & Gigabyte weren't supposed to start selling P35 mobos when they did almost a month before the official launch date of Jun 4th so they effectively have a month start.
Anyway, the early reports say that the IP35 Pro works out of the box with no major problems reported so far & it overclocks very well (I've seen a 610fsb screenie). It's also well priced against the P5K series.

 

[occdavid]

It may interest you to know that the USA site is always a little behind the main Global/Taiwan site. So check the abit.com.tw site for downloads for the board. It's also good to check their ftp site now and then as files show up there first.
Buff is right - the forum linked at the USA site is full of helpful people... like Buff.

 

[T8RR8R]

Go to Abit's Global Site http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/index.php

I've had an AW9D-Max for a while now and the global site has up to BIOS V5 but the US site has V3. Also the US site just got reworked and as far as I can tell it looks like it used to. I like Abit's higher end boards but the lower end sucks and none of them get good support.

 

[Canuck1]

Thanks, guys! I guess I was a bit harsh but I was frustrated to find very few downloads on a major manufacturer's website. It didn't occur to me to go to the other site.

It does change things but I am also looking at the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R which is cheaper currently. I will have to check out the Abit page, though. Thanks for the info.

 

[T8RR8R]

If you can't find what you want locally sometimes you have to go global

 

[cowardlydragon]

I just built on the IP35 Pro, with 4x500GB RAID5, 4GB RAM, E6600, 8600GT and a 6600GT, running an Acer 24" and two Samsung 20" LCDs in triple-head, a SATA DVD and an IDE DVD, with an external HDD using the eSATA.

It all worked. All of it. No stability or driver issues with the board. Only thing I haven't used/tested is Overclocking and Sound.

My only (minor) complaints:

The CPU power plug is on the very top of the board, so in my Antec P180 case the Enermax Liberty PSU power cord BARELY made it to the CPU power plug.

The Sata ports are at 90-degrees rather than directly upright. This made plugging the four HDDs and the DVD Burner more difficult.

The minor stuff like extra firewire and USB ports and the LEDs were kinda hard to plug in once inside the box. But that was probably my fault for waiting until it was in the box, or until the two video cards were already in.

Considering the debacle with many P965 boards (DVD drives couldn't boot on the JMicron IDE ports, or a sata DVD burner would disrupt chipset raid, etc), this is an outstanding release of a new chipset. The thing even looks really good. Great feature set on the back ports (the two PS2 ports are important since my KVM is still PS2).

 

[scottoliver]

DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THIS BOARD SUPPORTS DDR3 ??

 

[occdavid]

Per Abit's website: 4 X 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. memory capacity 8GB. Supports Dual channel DDR2 800/667/533 Un-buffered Non-ECC memory

 

[VChuck]

Scottoliver,your thinking of the Abits 2 X-38 mobo's that should be out in Q-4 one supports DDR2 and DDR3.One was the revised Quad Gt which supports DDR2,The other (can't remember the model #) supports both.
That Abit IP-35 Pro looks to be the one for me,when N.E. gets em back in stock

 

[Canuck1]

What about the regular Abit board with 'Dark Raider' on the box?

I think that board looks good. Is anyone here familiar with that board? I'm comparing it to the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R board. They seem comparable but the Abit board is a little more expensive. I've narrowed it down to those two boards.

 

[gooman]

I'm building a system this month also and I've narrowed my Mobo search to those two boards as well. Most folks seem to think the P35 is the way to go if your trying to future-proof your build a bit. I don't build often. Both boards seem to be reviewed pretty well and the comments on Newegg seem positive. I don't see a lot of difference between the two boards except price. The Gigabyte board is $50 cheaper which is considerable though. I don't have any experience with Gigabyte boards. This would be my first. Seems like they have been on a roll lately from what I've been reading (last 9 months anyway). It's high time I pulled the trigger huh. I plan on putting a Q6600 & DDR2 in one of those two mobos (Antec 900 case). Anybody have any major positive for either board that should make one a clear cut winner? If all things were equal...I'd pick the Abit as I've had good experience with them in the past (hmm...$50 more though...I could by the CPU cooler with that $). I'll have to look at the location of the PSU connection on the boards as I've seen several comments about difficulty reaching the connection when you use a case like the 900 (PSU at bottom of case).

Good Luck

 

[BUFF]

What about the regular Abit board with 'Dark Raider' on the box?

I think that board looks good. Is anyone here familiar with that board? I'm comparing it to the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R board. They seem comparable but the Abit board is a little more expensive.

mwave have it for $113 after rebate so it's not that expensive

principally what you miss out on from the Pro are the 2nd x16 (physical, x4 electrical) PCIE slot, uGuru, 2nd Gb NIC, 2x eSATA.
Actual performance is similar supposedly.

& it has firewire where the DS3R doesn't.

 

[Canuck1]

I have to order it from a Canadian retailer/seller.

I'm also looking at the MSI P35 Platinum but holding off to see if it reduces anymore in price. It's $15 cheaper now and who knows, it might reduce even more soon? The problem with the Gigabyte board is the reported noise that it makes. I will go to the Gigabyte forum section to see what Gigabyte owners are saying. I like the Abit but on the hardware.info website, it is last in a graphics and memory comparison. It also has the 'double boot' problem?

 

[BUFF]

There's something very wrong about the hardware.info site figures & it doesn't mesh with all the other reviews.

The start-stop-start from a cold boot (doesn't do it on restarts) is more of a behaviour than a problem.
It's beeen reported to abit & it's probably just a BIOS fix.

 

[spotter]

Does this board allow you to use the 1x PCIe slot if you're using the x16/x4 slot? I was about to get a the DQ6 from gigabyte until I found out tech report's description was wrong (they claim if one is using double wide cards in both x16 slots, one still has 2 1x slots, while "physically" one does, they are disabled).

Just want to verify that I can stick a 3ware card in the x16/x4 slot and use the 1x slot for future upgradibility (want to future proof myself a little).

thanks.

 

[BUFF]

yes, it does - it's probably the main reason that abit elected to go with a PCI Gb LAN rather than PCI-E.

 

[spotter]

Just bought this from MacMall for $160

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=7278904

They have a promotion where they rebate you the price of ground shipping. Even w/ ground shipping, it's cheaper by $10 than everywhere else.

 

[spotter]

and macmall jacked up the price to $200 today. but my order is still in place.

 

[Canuck1]

Two questions about this board:
1) Has anyone tried to install a Linux distro on it?
2) I wanted to try wireless and wonder if anyone has installed any USB adapters with this board (in particular, a Belkin USB adapter).

Thanks for any answers.

 

[spotter]

I had some issues w/ ubuntu gutsy (need to be with irq=nopoll or something like that to get it to work, otherwise it couldn't detect HDs on sata reliably), but that was a while ago and w/ a boot CD. Whatever the error is, if you pay close attention to boot messages, it will tell you what to try.

 

[Casey712]

I built my first system with this MB. It's fast and runs cool. BUT I'm having a problem with the sound. I've tried everything to resolve it - stuttering and freezing audio with both the onboard and the pci sound card. Speakers work fine with another computer.

There is a bios update and I hoped this may help. But I can't understand the directions. Someone who doesn't speak English very well wrote them. I downloaded the files but they don't fit on a dos-bootable floppy. I've sent two emails so far with no response.

I've read a lot of feedback from owners of this board and no one says a thing about problem with sound. I'm beginning to think there's a problem with the pci bus.

The board worked right out of the box, it's fast and easy to set up. Just feeling a little frustrated with the sound thing and the support at ABIT. Anyone else hear of a problem like this?

 

[BUFF]

I downloaded the files but they don't fit on a dos-bootable floppy. I've sent two emails so far with no response.

they do if you get rid of the unnecessary hidden files that MS puts on the floppy when you format a bootdisk in XP etc.
personally I use the driver free floppy for BIOS flashing from www.bootdisk.com but you can actually use 2 floppies if you want swapping over or you can do it from a bootable USB memory stick.