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Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S775 by geoffrey @ 2007-06-24

Abit released its latest Fata1ty product, being the FP-IN9 SLI. As a member of the Fatal1ty line this board is specifically designed for the hard-core gamers out there. SLI and First packet technology for less than €120, is it possible?

ABIT Fatal1ty FP-IN9-SLI: Inside the box

ABIT Fatal1ty FP-IN9-SLI: Inside the box

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ABIT Fatal1ty FP-IN9-SLI mainboard

4 x SATA cable

1 x FLOPPY cable

1 x IDE PATA cable

Wide SLI bridge

SLI Bracket (holds the SLI bridge in place)

Rear I/O Panel Bracket

Driver CD

English Manual

Safety paper

Short board overview paper

Thank you letter from Jonathan Wendell

ABIT Fatal1ty FP-IN9-SLI: Board overview

Madshrimps (c)

Traditional red and black Fatal1ty shades are used with the FP-IN9 SLI, and I must confess that this is one of the best looking boards I ever came across. DIMM slots, PCI(e) slots, SATA/PATA connectors, power connectors, heck even the heatsinks have the Fatal1ty striping, it would be sad to put this board away in a closed pc housing. The board design is well thought out and covers compatibility with most PSU's even those with short ATX connectors. The IDE and SATA connectors are located close to the board's border which might please the casual case-modder as only a minimum of cables have to be cross the PCB. Same goes for the floppy connector; the only negative thing we could think of is the location of the power connectors at the center of the board, though it is not an obstacle by any means. The 'PCIe 16x to double PCIe 8x' converter is not ideally placed as it cannot be changed without having to uninstall the master VGA card, but on second thought this bridge is essential to implement SLI technology in the NV 650i SLI chipset and from a technically viewpoint there isn't a better location to place this bridge then right between each VGA card (short signal trace for higher quality PCIe communication).

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Depending on which CPU is being installed, the northbridge will run on different FSB speeds (not only at 1066MHz as shown in the picture above). DRAM can be used in Dual Channel with a wide range of bios options (adjustable DRAM frequency and latency) and PCIe lanes are configured as 8-8-1-1 or as 16-1-1 by using the PCIe link converter. The familiar HT bus connects the Southbridge with the northbridge and functions at 250MHz. Depending on which NVIDIA 600i series chipset you choose the Southbridge will have a different feature set. The high-end 680i board for example can connect up to 10 SATA drives. Mainstream gamers will never use this high amount of SATA devices and so NVIDIA developed the 650i chipset where the NF430 Southbridge still covers more than enough useful features to please the mainstream market. In the end you can connect up to 4 SATA devices, 4 IDE devices, 1x floppy and 8 USB 2.0 devices, and with onboard HD Audio and Gigabit LAN this mainboard should be very attractive for the gamers and enthusiasts among us.

Comment from Cranox @ 2007/06/25

Nice review Geoffrey.

Comment from geoffrey @ 2007/06/25

Thx

Comment from sandstorm @ 2007/07/01

Nice review idd. Wouter will be pleased

Comment from Sidney @ 2007/07/08

May be Abit could let us know any forthcoming BIOS update. That would be nice

Comment from jmke @ 2007/07/08

We're waiting for an answer since release of review

Comment from geoffrey @ 2007/10/10

BIOS 14 still latest available so I've heard. Here is how I added a fan to my NB heatsink:

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