Taipei, Taiwan, May 13, 2003-Top
hardware review site Hot Hardware has recently done a "shootout" of ABIT and
ASUS Canterwood boards and come to the conclusion that the ABIT IC7-G board is
superior to the ASUS board in many ways.
Loaded With Extras
Hot Hardware particularly liked the ABIT package compared with
the ASUS: "ABIT''s IC7-G was delivered in typical ABIT flair, with swank
packaging and lots of add in peripherals to sweeten the deal. ABIT also took the
Canterwood layout and dressed it up a bit, fleshing out many of the innate
capabilities of the new Intel ICH5 Southbridge, as well as a few supporting
enhancement components."
In comparison, ASUS offered a weak retail package" "Asus only offered 2
SATA cables, two standard ATA cables, a back trim plate and a driver/utilities
CD, in addition to the User''s and "Getting Started" manuals. There are no SATA
Power cables and no additional USB2.0 connector plates, like were included with
the ABIT bundle. In short...the bundle is ''economy''."
ABIT Softmenu™: The Heart and Soul of a Motherboard
Hot Hardware loved the rich BIOS features in the IC7-G: "In
our opinion, the BIOS setup menus are truly, the "soul" of a motherboard. In
this case the ABIT IC7-G definitely has soul. This BIOS is driven by the latest
Award Software BIOS, with standard issue ABIT "SoftMenu" innovations. You can
tweak pretty much anything, from processor, to memory and AGP, to your hearts
delight and with a wide range of voltage controls. Yes sir, this BIOS is ready
to rock."
In contrast, the ASUS BIOS was problematic at best: "This board uses an AMI
BIOS that sends a weird 56Hz frequency request to the VGA card that a few flat
panel monitors may have an issue with, since it is below the standard 60Hz
frequency for LCD displays. Why Asus elected to go with an AMI BIOS instead of
the industry default Award BIOS, is beyond us. All told, the AMI BIOS used in
the P4C800 is fairly feature rich but a little less user friendly than the
IC7-G''s Award BIOS with ABIT''s "Softmenu". Additionally, those interested in
extreme overclocking, may find themselves with out the needed voltage boost,
above and beyond 1.7V."
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Enthusiast Priced
"The difference in cost can most likely be attributed to the
fact that the IC7-G bundle is much better than the P4C800 kit. ABIT gives you
the additional USB 2.0 backplate, SATA data and power cables, as well as their "Serillel"
converter, in their bundle, which drives the cost up a bit but gives you
everything you''ll need to build up a new system from scratch and then some.
What''s more impressive perhaps, is that you can also get an
ABIT IC7
(note no "G" on the end here), which doesn''t have Gigabit Ethernet on board, nor
the extra Silicon Image SATA controller but lists for around $150 at several
online resellers."
For the full review, click
here. |
