ABIT is a fan favorite of many computer enthusiasts, and has been for a long time since the company began openly embracing overclocking. To further that agenda, ABIT have introduced several enthusiast friendly features, designed to careful notch out a "performance oriented niche," and ensure market survival. If you're thinking to yourself "I have no interest in overclocking," that's okay, ABIT's motherboards are usually full of features, and priced competitively to boot.

So what exactly makes ABIT motherboards special? It is dark magic, solid engineering, or a little bit of "The Force" at allows overclockers to reach such lofty heights? No, the secret is in more practical features, like a wider variety of voltage options, the onboard diagnostics, ABIT's µGuru technology, and good solid motherboard layouts.

It's been several months, and a few PR reps since PCstats last reviewed one of ABIT's performance platforms, so today is of special note as we examine ABIT KV8-MAX3 motherboard.

ABIT KV8-MAX3 Motherboard Includes: Users Manual, Quick Installation Guide, Driver CD, SATA Driver Disk, Secure IDE Package, One Rounded Ultra/133 IDE Cables, One Rounded Floppy Cable, Four Serial ATA Cables, two Molex Y Serial ATA Power Cables, I/O Bracket, ABIT Sticker, IEEE 1394/USB Bracket

The KV8-MAX3 is an Socket 754 Athlon64 motherboard based on the venerable, and highly recommendable VIA K8T800 chipset.

The KV8-MAX3 features a standard assortment of features that you would expect to find on any number of K8T800-based Athlon64 mainboards, including three DDR DIMM slots which can accommodate up to 2GB of PC3200 memory. By limitation of the chipset, if all three slots are occupied, PC2700 DDR is the highest speed memory supported.

Other items to get excited about on the ABIT KV8-MAX3 include an additional Silicon Image Serial ATA RAID controller which has four headers, IEEE 1394a, 3Com GigABIT LAN, 5.1 audio, a Port 80 diagnostics card, ABIT's µGuru technology, Secure IDE and of course the unique OTES MOSFET cooling system.