Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Introduction

Like the IT7 Max that came before it, the Abit IT7 Max2 is designed to support Pentium 4 processors with 400MHz or 533MHz FSBs, as well as Intel's new Hyper-Threading technology.

The IT7 Max2 is based around the Intel i845PE chipset, and comes with the PS2 ports that its predecessor lacked. The USB 2.0 ports have made it back though, and the Abit's new baby is simply bristling with them. In addition to them, the Max2 also comes complete with two Firewire ports, and an integrated network controller -- thus rounding out the IT7 Max2's external I/O options.

For internal data storage, the board has been equipped not only with a standard IDE ATA100 controller, but also a four-channel RAID 0+1 controller: the Highpoint HPT374 -- a chip we had the pleasure to test a little while back. One particular note of interest in this case is that both RAID channels use Serial ATA drives.

The Abit IT7 Max2 also comes with six-channel Realtek ALC650 sound-card, a nice and very useful, big LED diagnostic-panel, and support for DDR333 memory -- thus rounding-out its list of features.

On the downside, the IT7 Max2 has only four PCI slots to its name, and comes without USB v1.1 ports -- all of the onboard USB ports are of the v2.0 variety.

With all that said though, you've also most certainly had your curiosity wetted. So, without further ado, lets get to the review.

Audio

The Abit IT7 Max2's audio circuitry is based around a Realtek ALC650 sound-chip. The ALC650 supports AC3, and 5.1 Surround Sound, and allows users to hook-in up to six audio channels, including a center base channel.

From a fidelity standpoint, the Realtek AL650 is quite good at what it does, and should satisfy most users.

Optical connectors, unfortunately, have not been included.

Configuration

The Abit IT7 Max2's design is Jumperless, which means that there is no need for users to tangle with jumpers to get their board up and running.

In short, all configuration matters are handled from within the BIOS's SoftMenu III system.

Once there, user's can set the FSB to frequencies ranging from 100Mhz to 250Mhz in 1Mhz increments.

The clock multiplier value can also be set manually to a value ranging from 8X to 32X.

Users also have the option to set the Vcore and DDR voltages to any of the values indicated in the table above.

The PCI bus ratio can also altered to any of the following values: Clock/3, Clock/4, or fixed values of 33Mhz, 37Mhz or 44Mhz

Next we have the ability to adjust the memory bus frequency-to-CPU bus ratio, which can be set to 1:1, 3:4, or SPD ("Serial Presence Detect"), which allows the system to determine a proper frequency automatically. When the FSB is operating at 133MHz, for example, the memory bus frequency value is determined by multiplying the FSB value by 1.33, thus obtaining the operating frequency of DDR333 memory.

Finally, as expected, the "Advanced Chipset Features" menu allows a number of memory timing values to be tweaked. Options include the ability to set the system to "SPD" (Serial Presence Detect), which allows the system to determine a proper frequency automatically.

In short, all the Overclocking features of the original IT7 Max have made a comeback with the IT7 Max2.

Next: Technical details.

Abit IT7 Max2