The BIOS
The Fatal1ty-AA8XE's hardware clearly caters to overclocking enthusiasts, but can the BIOS keep up?

Yes. And then some. The AA8XE's BIOS offers a staggering assortment of overclocking options, including support for front-side bus speeds up to 400MHz. A total of five different CPU:DRAM bus dividers provide plenty of flexibility for different memory speeds, and the BIOS also offers arbitrary PCI and PCI-E bus speed control

In addition to a wide range of bus options, the AA8XE's BIOS also delivers a generous collection of voltage tweaking options, including support for CPU voltages as high as 1.925V. Users can also manipulate front-side bus, DRAM, and north bridge voltages.

The AA8XE's BIOS has all the memory timing options you'd expect from a Pentium 4 board, including a nebulous "Game Accelerator" setting that tightens timings even further.

Tweaking options don't stop with performance, though. The Fatal1ty board's BIOS also offers control over all five of the board's temperature-controlled fan headers.

Users can easily tune temperature thresholds, reference temperatures, and fan speeds to find a balance between taming toasty Prescotts under load and maintaining low noise levels at idle. The BIOS also features a mind-numbing array of monitoring features thanks to the board's uGuru chip.

uGuru allows users to monitor and set alarm or shutdown conditions based on temperatures, fan speeds, and even voltages. No other motherboard manufacturer even comes close to offering this level of hardware monitoring, and if you're shy about poking around in the BIOS, Abit offers identical monitoring functionality in Windows with its AbitEQ software. Many of the BIOS's overclocking and tweaking options are also available via Abit's uGuru software for Windows.