Abit IL-90MV Motherboard

Zitat

Well, who thought Abit was dead is definitely wrong. After being bought by USI they are pushing hard on new products, including IL-90MV, a motherboard based on Intel 945GT chipset targeted to media center PCs, i.e. Viiv-compliant desktops. Abit chose socket 478 for this motherboard as mobile socket 478 CPUs like Core Duo and Core 2 Duo (for notebooks) consume less power thus produce less noise (as they run cooler they can use quieter coolers) than desktop CPUs, an important factor when you think of building a PC to stay on your living room. But this product highlight is its on-board HDMI output, being the first time we’ve seen such feature embedded on a motherboard. Let’s take a look on this new product.

[...]This seems to be a terrific motherboard if you want to assemble a high-end Viiv-compliant multimedia PC using the latest HD video connection technology available: HDMI supporting up to 1080p (1920x1080 progressive scanning). If you don’t have a HDMI-enabled display today, no problem, this motherboard comes with a HDMI-to-DVI cable and you won’t need to make any changes to your PC when you replace your display with a newer one supporting HDMI.

Add this to its two Firewire ports and you will have the perfect machine for watching and even editing HD video.

It is not only that. The audio quality is impressive, with an outstanding 103 dB signal-to-noise ratio (any number above 100 dB can be considered professional level), 24-bit quality and up to 192 KHz sampling rate, plus this motherboard comes with optical SPDIF input and output connectors soldered on it. There is one drawback, though. The input quality isn’t the same: 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio, 20-bit resolution and up to 96 KHz sampling rate. A pity.