The BIOS and tweaking software
Abit's original SoftMenu set the bar for what enthusiasts have come to expect from BIOS-level tweaking and overclocking. Although it was the only game in town at the time, mobo manufacturers were quick to emulate its capabilities. Decent tweaking and overclocking options are common in nearly every enthusiast-oriented motherboard BIOS these days, forcing Abit to raise the bar again if it wants to set itself apart from the masses.

Unfortunately, the AN8 32X's memory timing options do little to distance the board from the rest of the field. All of the essential timing options are there, of course, but they're there on just about every other Athlon 64 motherboard. Granted, there are limits to what one can do with memory timings. However, Abit could have at least offered a more diverse array of supported memory speeds. As it stands, the BIOS only offers the necessary dividers for DDR200, 266, 333, and 400 memory.

Support for four flavors of DDR may be enough for the average user, but overclockers would benefit from a greater range memory dividers, especially considering that the board's HyperTransport clock can be cranked all the way up to 400MHz. It would also be nice to have a feature similar to DFI's Max Cool'n'Quiet FID, which allows HyperTransport overclocking to coexist peacefully with C'n'Q clock throttling. Still, the AN8 32X's BIOS has everything you'll need for traditional overclocking, including processor and DDR voltage options up to 1.9 and 3.2V, respectively.

Although the AN8 32X's memory timing and overclocking options are pedestrian by today's standards, the BIOS's fan speed control is second to none. Users can set independent temperature thresholds, reference temperatures, and fan voltages for all five onboard fan headers, making it easy to balance noise levels with cooling performance. The range of FanEQ variables is more extensive than most motherboards provide for just the CPU fan, making it especially impressive that the AN8 32X offers similar controls for every header on the board.

If you think the AN8 32X's fan speed controls are impressive, check out its BIOS-level temperature, fan speed, and voltage monitoring capabilities:

The AN8 32X's BIOS tracks a staggering number of onboard variables, and allows users to set alarm and shutdown conditions for each. Those alarm and shutdown conditions are what make the board's hardware monitoring capabilities really shine, as they can protect against hardware damage from a catastrophic cooling failure or even a slowly sagging power supply. What's more, these variables can be monitored from Windows with Abit's uGuru software suite.

uGuru moves much of the AN8 32X's BIOS functionality into Windows, allowing users to monitor system variables, set alarm and shutdown conditions, control fan speeds, and even do a little overclocking from the comfort of their desktops. It's also possible to save a number of different BIOS profiles, each with unique overclocking and fan speed settings. Users can even tie profiles to individual applications, allowing the system to fire up its overclocking profile automatically when a game is launched, or slip into a low-noise mode during DVD playback.

It's a good thing that Abit's uGuru Windows software is so robust, because the AN8 32X doesn't support any of nTune's hardware tweaking or monitoring capabilities. That's unfortunate, especially since uGuru lacks the memory timing options and hardware monitoring logging present in nTune. uGuru has nTune beat on just about every other front, though.