Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. June 24th, 2003 -
LostCircuits, one of the most informative and literate sites on the internet
about new computer hardware, has just reviewed the new ABIT IS7 mainboard.
Game Acceleration for the Masses
"No idea ever thought out can be unthought again. No workaround of artificially
imposed restrictions, once it was leaked, can be canned again. In this case, the
name of Pandora's box is PAT and its content are the bits of information
necessary to keep the additional pipeline stages out of the loop that are
activated at the 800 MHz PSB for stability and performance throttling.
All of this boils down to the fact that to PAT or not to PAT is no longer a
question. Rather it is: figure it out and get a piece of the cake while it is
still warm or lose market share to those who actually manage to get the extra
performance to work.
Add the salmon-colored PCB with some aquamarine IDE connectors and a MCH cooler
in matching color, pitch a low retail price and no-nonsense features, and all of
a sudden, a new wind is blowing in Springdale country.
Feature Packed and Future Proof
the IS7(-G) feature the ICH5-R with built in support for RAID 0, meaning that
those applications that are bottlenecked by raw need for write speed can be run
off a pair of SATA drives in RAID 0 configuration, whereas more sensitive data
or simply data that are not write limited can be run off a RAID 1 configuration
of the Silicon Image controller. In other words, the end user has the best of
both worlds, at least with respect to the initial choices.
One area where ABIT has done pioneer work for the last 5 years is the BIOS.
Hardly any manufacturer can claim as many BIOS updates and beta versions as
ABIT"
Conclusion
"On a personal level, I think, the IS7(-G) is a great board. …after all the
myths surrounding the Canterwood / Springdale "differences" have been dispelled
in our last two reviews, it is hard to justify the more expensive solution with
the sole exception of ECC requirements in mission-critical applications. In that
case, Granite Bay still looks very appealing, too. All in all, the ABIT IS7 is
high on our list of recommended mainboards."
For the full article go to:
http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/abit_is7/
For more info on ABIT and ABIT products go to: http://www.abit.com.tw
About ABIT
ABIT Computer Corporation designs, and sells a complete family of award-winning
mainboards and video cards that support industry-leading technology and provide
leading quality and performance for system integration of computer components
supporting a broad range of PC applications, such as for 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 |