Abit iP35 Pro, LGA 775/Socket T, Intel Motherboard

The Abit AB9 QuadGT was a very popular board if word through the tubes is to be believed. Stemming on from this P965 success, Abit has made the IP35 Pro with many elements of the QuadGT in mind. Gone are the digital PWMs though, and in place are the traditional analogue ones.

This may seem like a step backwards, but Abit is actually listening to users who complained they ran too hot and caused CPU voltage drops (Vdroop). Already there are reports of some insane overclocking on these boards, even with very early BIOSes, so we just had to take a look to see what all the fuss was about.

Abit IP35 Pro Features

Support for LGA775 Intel Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo, including 1333/1066/800FSB and 45nm processors;
Intel P35 Northbridge;
Intel ICH9R Southbridge;
Supports up to 8GB of dual channel DDR2 667/800, using four 240-pin, 1.8V DDR2 DIMMs;
Two PCI Express x16 slots (x16 and x4 electrical);
One PCI Express x1 slot;
Three 32-bit v2.3 Master PCI bus slots (support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface);
One IDE port;
Six SATA 3Gbps ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 or JBOD;
Realtek ALC888 High-Definition audio codec supporting 7.1 channel surround sound up to 32-bit/192KHz with optical S/PDIF in and out;
Two PCI Gigabit Ethernet controllers provided by the Realtek RTL8105SC chipset;
JMB363 controller supplying one PATA port and two 3Gbps eSATA devices with RAID 0, 1 and JBOD;
Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A IEEE1394a Firewire controller;
Abit uGuru technology.

No floppy disks are provided, mostly due to the fact that since Vista they are no longer required, but if you still need them for installing RAID on XP you can make them from the CD.

In all, there could be a few more bits thrown in especially since this is the more expensive “Pro” board, but it’s not all bad and Abit has most of its bases covered.

After finally remembering to disable all the extra CPU Features in Advanced BIOS Features we finally unleashed the board's potential. Sure, you lose the extra CPU features, but it's necessary for the high FSBs. We managed to get the board all the way up to 495MHz FSB with a Core 2 Duo E6750 processor, but it wouldn't boot at 500MHz for anything. We've seen 500+ capable on this board but you need a really good CPU to get there.

We did manage a superb 485MHz FSB stable, which is one of the highest stable overclocks we've obtained, but it did require a bit longer to find the right voltages to make it happy. It's a touch of "DFI-syndrome" in that respect, where you can get quite frustrated narrowing down the various options finding a combination that works for your hardware. In all though, a fantastic result for the Abit IP35 Pro although we had wished to finally crack 500MHz FSB.

Quad-core overclocking was also very successful as we managed to get 400MHz FSB straight out of a 1333MHz quad-core CPU, however we suffered inadequate cooling from our Zalman CNPS9700 as the CPU shot straight to 83°C.

We also experienced a large Vdroop where our 1.40V applied voltage was read as just 1.34V in uGuru and that dropped to just 1.21V when the CPU was loaded. So, a classic overclocking dilemma presented itself: lower the voltage to drop the temps and the CPU will become unstable, but we can't upgrade the cooler since we have nothing more powerful. Instead of testing stability, we aimed for the highest possible and managed 465MHz that was able to boot into Windows with relative ease:

got this motherboard for a few month now and got no regret after switching from Asus P5N32E-SLI Plus.Comes with 1600mhz FSB and 800<1066 RAM which is P45 specs but with P35 better overcloaking capacity. The board design and lay out is spot on to facilitate cable management and blue PCB looks the part. All nescessary fittings are on I/O backplate and board feature plenty aux connection point for extra cooling. Overcloaking is good as with any good P35 Mobo but the higher FSB gives you even more lever, will work wonders with new slacr Q6600 which I believe will reach easily 3.5Ghz with stock settings and decent heatsink. Only problem so far as been Uguru who refuses to work on my set up but not a problem since most manufacturer overcloaking software sucks.
Overall a great buy and especially good value considering the level of both quality and overcloaking this board offer.You don't get SLI but good CPU and graphic card will make it obsolete. BUY it NOW!!!

Excellent mobo, overclocks perfect, works stable. One minor issue, there is no quick selection of startup devices in BIOS. You have to manually set 1st starting device each time. Apart that the best mobo on P35 chipset ever made.