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ABIT KV8 MAX3 Taking it to the streets
(Review by MS, November 24, 2003)

Onboard Sound

ABIT is using the relatively new Realtek ALC658 with a better feature portfolio than the older ALC650, in short, the The ALC658 allows for operation of six 20-bit DAC (analog output) channels. On the input side of things, there are two pairs of stereo 18-bit ADC, and an AC'97 2.3 compatible six-channel audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems. According to the specs, the ALC achieves 100 dB sound quality (whatever that means with active speakers).

Whatever the specs are, no integrated controller can be better than the environment that it functions in and this is where we really found some disappointing results lately. That is, as soon as we moved to the Zalman Theatre6 surround sound headphones for testing, often enough what first passed as acceptable audio solution started to exhibit very unpleasant levels of static white noise and non-specific signal pick-up such as HDD accesses, or even mouse scrolling and clicks that became rather dominant at low volume. The ABIT KV8 turned out a pleasant surprise in that we did not find any of these annoying issues with the board at hand. Audio quality was overall very good, including positional audio for both horizontal and vertical cues. Needless to say that there were no issues with cackling and scratching in games either. In summary, the KV8 MAX3 deserves top grades for the audio quality.

The excellent impression is further reinforced by the fact that there are, in fact 5 analog jacks. Three-jack solutions, even with autosensing are becoming more and more obsolete since it is not possible to use 6-channel audio and a microphone at the same time. That is, every time the speaker / recording configuration function is toggled, it will result in excessive reconfiguration of the audio on the software level. This exactly is where, often enough, the correct recognition of a microphone becomes a very cumbersome endeavor requiring uninstalling and reinstalling of the drivers. Again, ABIT is setting an example here by adding the extra two jacks. Moreover, digital audio fans will take delight in the presence of S/PDIF for both input and output.

Connectivity

IEEE 1394 Firewire is enabled by the TSB43AB23 OHCI PHY/Link controller made by Texas Instruments, whereas the network controller is the established 3Com Marvell Gigabit Ethernet controller used widely anywhere other than on CSA solutions. Neither of them were giving us any problems (even though we did not test for Gigabit transfers). Keep in mind, however, that the Ethernet connectivity uses the shared PCI bus and, therefore, at simultaneous HDD and network accesss as it occurs in situations of file copy, both devices will be limited to roughly 35 - 45 MB/sec data transfer (plus overhead).

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