The Tech Report Highly Recommends the ABIT AN7 motherboard

March 26^th, 2004 - Exploring the world of Personal Computing, The Tech Report website recently took a look at ABIT's AN7; the only nForce 2 motherboard with a 2nd processor onboard. Here are the highlights:

The Tech Report was really impressed with the slick-looking AN7 packaging as well as the debug device: I always feel a little bit silly taking pictures of a motherboard's box, so I don't do it very often. In this case, however, I felt it was necessary to show the care with which Abit has designed the AN7's packaging. A nice troubleshooting tool is a dual-digit LED display on one corner of the board. As the system boots, the display flashes POST codes that correspond to each step in the boot process. If the board fails to boot, you can look the code up in the manual and hopefully get a handle on the problem.

Here is what The Tech Report has to say about the AN7 BIOS options: Abit's motherboards have historically had excellent BIOS-level control over system options, especially in the area of overclocking. There's quite a bit to cover here. Front-side bus is adjustable from 100-300MHz in 1MHz increments. Multiplier control is available as well, provided your processor is unlocked. The CPU voltage is especially impressive, as it ranges from 1.375V all the way up to 2.313V. This is an exceptionally high maximum CPU voltage, so overclockers with watercoolers or a Vapochill may find the AN7 very attractive.

The Tech Report had great overclocking results with the AN7 and an Athlon XP-M 2500+: Our experiments with overclocking via multiplier control and standard bus speeds are well documented in our look at overclocking the Athlon XP-M. The AN7 allowed us to push our 2500+ all the way to 2400MHz.

Conclusion: With SATA, Firewire, and dual channel DDR400 support, the AN7 will make a great basis for an Athlon XP system. The excellent overclocking features and bundled software will appeal to the enthusiast, and the extremely high available voltages will appeal to those with watercooling setups. For those who would like to stick with traditional cooling, the FanEQ controls will make noise levels much more bearable. We're currently seeing the last hurrah of the Athlon XP line, but that doesn't mean that support for the chip is waning. Indeed, the motherboards that support the XP are better than ever, and the AN7 is an excellent example of the trend.

For the full review go here: http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q1/abit-an7/index.x?pg=1

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