Board layout
Like Abit boards of late, the AG8 is dressed in a unique shade that falls somewhere between orange and red. It's an attractive color, perhaps in part because it's distinctive. However, unless you're going to be displaying the board behind a case window, the AG8's aesthetic appeal will probably go unnoticed.

With space-saving PCI Express X1 slots and no auxiliary storage controllers hogging board real estate, the AG8's layout is pretty clean. The board's power connector placement could use some work, though. The auxiliary four-pin power connector is well placed near the top edge of the board, but the main 20-pin power connector is almost halfway down the board, potentially making cable routing a little messy.

The area around the AG8's CPU socket is peppered with tall capacitors, but none get in the way of Intel's stock cooler for LGA775 Pentium 4 processors. Since the P4 Prescott's cooler is already pretty huge, I suspect few aftermarket coolers will be large enough to create clearance problems on the AG8.

Clearance definitely won't be an issue around the board's PCI Express X16 graphics slot. There's plenty of room between the PCI-E slot and the board's DIMM tabs to allow memory modules to be swapped in and out without removing the graphics card. The board's low-profile south bridge heat sink and stubby capacitors shouldn't get in the way of longer graphics cards, either.

Although the 915P's memory controller supports both DDR and DDR2 memory, Abit goes with plain old DDR for the AG8. Given the wide availability of low latency DDR400 DIMMs and the scarcity and price of DDR2 modules, DDR is a smart choice for a mid-range board like the AG8.

The AG8 serves up four DIMM slots and can support up to 4GB of DDR400 memory. As with all dual-channel designs, memory must be added in pairs for optimal performance. Abit conveniently color-codes the DIMM slots to identify each dual-channel pair.

The AG8 sports four Serial ATA ports and a single channel of ATA/100. The ports are located along one edge of the board, putting them right next to the hard drive cage in most cases. The location of the board's floppy port is considerably less convenient, though. It's buried at the far edge of the board beyond the last PCI slot.

In addition to two 32-bit, 33MHz PCI slots, the AG8 delivers three PCI Express X1 slots and a single X16 graphics slot. It's a good mix of expansion slots, although I've yet to see PCI-E X1 peripherals available in North America. Let's hope that changes soon.

Out back, the AG8 serves up the old standards: serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports. The board also offers a full array of audio ports, including three analog outputs, two analog inputs, and digital S/PDIF input and output ports. There's also an RJ45 jack for the board's Gigabit Ethernet, a Firewire port, and four USB ports. Abit provides a PCI back plate header for an additional two USB and Firewire ports, and there are pins for two more USB ports on the board.