Installation & Testing:

For testing purposes, the board was installed on the Danger Den Torture Rack. After everything was double checked, the system powered up but there wasn't any display. If you purchased or are purchasing this board, you may or may not have noticed that the system boots using the onboard graphics processor by default via the HDMI port on the back of the motherboard by default. If you have an LCD monitor, Abit includes a DVI to HDMI adapter which you will need to use. If you try booting up to your added graphics card, you won't get any video. Once you have the system up and can see the BIOS, you can change the default video adapter to PCIE. None the less, installation had no problems and the system was eager to fire up.

Powering Up

Close Up

For further comparison, the onboard 7.1 HD audio was tested in terms of quality against the Bluegears 7.1 HD Theater Audio Card. The major things looked for are system stability, sound quality, video quality, and audio format capabilities. These tests were compared mainly to other HTPC motherboards tested in recent months in order to provide a more apples to apples review. Any add on cards were used to simply to fully test the system and certify it capable of working under any environment.

A quick browse of the BIOS reveals a different layout than I commonly see from Intel and NVidia chipsets. It's always nice to see something new once in a while to keep a variety going. Everything is manageable, decently configured, and easy enough to understand. I would naturally compare it to the Fatality FP-IN9 650-SLI BIOS. Voltage options are a little different, but are still in similar configurations and placement. The major change to the BIOS concerns mainly the HDMI options. Thankfully, Abit chose to go with the 7.1 High Definition Audio to support the HDMI, otherwise everything would have seemed a little off.

Splash Screen	Main	Advanced Features
PC Health Status	Advanced Chipset	Softmenu Setup

Since the Fatality F-190HD comes with the Integrated Graphics Express 1250 Chipset, benchmarks were mainly performed using the integrated graphics. A 7900 GT PCI-E graphics card was used just to confirm that there were no issues in terms of 3D Performance. Obviously, an external graphics card of this or any other nature more powerful than the onboard graphics processor will certainly perform. With that in mind, the board was tested for successful HDMI graphics performance and interface. The bottom line on that feature is that the video quality results are superb. Your current desktop LCD monitor can show you a lot more of what's being missed through the HDMI interface. Also, you can really enjoy an HD LCDTVs or Plasma TVs that are capable of higher, crystal clear resolutions. One single cable straight to your screen and you have an awesome picture.

Talladega Nights - Using HDMI and 7.1 Audio

Does the integrated 7.1 HD Audio out perform a 7.1 HD audio card? Some of the past HTPC boards came up a bit short when it comes to sound quality, support, and play back. Fortunately for the F-190HD, the 7.1 High Definition Audio is more than decent enough to offer a better than average quality of sound. Using a Klipsch speaker package (courtesy of Computersonics) configured to produce the best sound support revealed just how nice the extra speakers can help improve a movie experience. It helps a great deal if the speakers you use have plenty of power to offset the movie and have the ability to be set up. Being a theater connoisseur of sorts, I can appreciate a better than average experience, and at the same time, pick out the things that aren't all so great. If you're quite picky, you'll probably be choosing your audio card upgrade anyway.

Abit 4896 PCMARKS vs ASRock 4879 PCMARKS

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