Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., May 30th, 2003-Hardware website XHardware.net
reviewed the IS7-G and gave it a full 10 out of 10 Stars. Here are excerpts from
the review.
"ABIT is a well-known manufacturer in the PC enthusiast crowd. There is no
doubt that ABIT produces some of the highest performing motherboards that excel
when it comes to stability and overclocking. With their recent success with the
IC7-G, which is an i875P (Canterwood) board that had tons of features, dual
channel DDR 400 support, and supports the new 800MHz bus Pentium 4 processors.
Their newest board is the IS7 is based on the i865 (Springdale) chipset, which
is very similar to the Canterwood except for two minor differences. The
Springdale, doesn''t have PAT or ECC memory support. Now with that aside, let"s
take a look at the IS7.
What is Springdale? The i865 chipset is similar to the i875 that they both
support dual channel DDR 400, SATA raid, gigabit Ethernet, support 400/533/800
bus Pentium 4s, USB 2.0 and hyper threading. The i865 is a cheaper solution
geared toward mainstream users, where the i875 is more for those people that
need every little feature.
There are three different types of i865 chipsets that correspond to what
features they have. The i865PE chipset offers high-bandwidth interfaces such as
dual-channel DDR400 main memory, 800 MHz system bus, AGP8X graphics port,
Gigabit Ethernet, dual independent Serial ATA ports and Hi-Speed USB 2.0
connectivity to ensure the performance you expect. The i865G is the same as the
PE except it has Intel Extreme Graphics 2 that supports the latest 2D and 3D
APIs, to deliver real-life environment and character effects.
BIOS. It is similar to other ABIT boards out there, and of course it includes
the famous softmenu setup for tweaking your CPU settings. Inside the softmenu
setup, you get a wide variety of options to set the CPU speed, FSB:RAM dividers,
voltages, and the AGP/PCI lock. The FSB ranges from 100 to 300, Vcore can be set
from default voltage all the way up to 1.9v, max vdimm is 2.8v. FSB:RAM dividers
are 1:1, 5:4, and 3:2. In the Advanced BIOS features you can disable or enable
hyper threading, set the boot sequence, etc. The Advanced Chipset features part
of the BIOS is important when tweaking the RAM. You can set different timings
for the RAM, set the AGP aperture size and choose between 4x or 8x AGP. I think
this is one of the most important parts of the BIOS, the PC Health Status
Section. Here you can set the warning and shutdown temperatures, monitor the
temperatures of the CPU and system, and monitor voltage rails like the +3.3v and
so on.
The ABIT IS7 is a great performer that supports a lot of features like hyper
threading, dual channel DDR400, Serial ATA, 8x AGP and so on. The IS7 also has
an attractive price of around $110. You can also find ABIT''s other Springdale
boards, the IS7-G that has onboard video, and the IS7-E that is the cheaper,
more stripped down, version of IS7. Overall I am impressed with this board, it
is a great performer, has great overclocking results, is inexpensive, and
contains a lot of features."
- Great overclocking board
- Good performance
- Lots of features
- Inexpensive
For the full review, go here:
http://www.xhardware.net/reviews/motherboard/abit_is7/page1.php
ABIT Computer Corporation designs and sells a complete family of award-winning
ABIT Engineered mainboards and multimedia products. All ABIT products support
industry-leading technology and provide leading quality and performance for
integration of computer components supporting a broad range of PC applications,
such as e-commerce, e-business, entertainment and education. Corporate
headquarters are located in Taiwan. For more information, visit the Company''s
web site at http://www.abit.com.tw |
