ABIT IS7 Motherboard Review - ABIT IS7 Motherboard Review

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OUT OF THE BOX

In this highly competetive business of manufacturing motherboards, few things (well, except performance!) count as the first impression of a board.  Let's not kid ourselves, this is the nucleus of our entire system.  There's not a single thing in our system that doesn't interact directly with our motherboard.  From the mouse to the CPU to the memory, it's all routed thru it.

   

   

What you see here is your standard fare really.  ABIT chose for this board to go with the orangeish (I know it's not a word but you get my point!) color PCB that was made popular with their NF7-S motherboards.  The features are pretty straightforward and don't stray far from the list of supported i865PE features, but here they are all the same.

I'm not tickled to see ABIT is still using what has become the industry standard in sound for P4 motherboards, the RealTek ALC650, but I must admit it's performance has come a long way.  During the testing and subsequent use of this motherboard I used the onboard sound with my Klipsch 4.1 speakers and wasn't wholeheartedly disappointed but then rarely am I disappointed with the sound out of my Klipschs.  The CPU utilization remains low as well. 

LAYOUT COMMENTS

Board layout is probably the biggest part of the "First Impressions" for users with even a semi-experienced eye.  Everything from where the ATX connector is to how many and the location of fan headers.  We're going to touch briefly on a number of the layout details that we find relatively important.

ATX Connector

Props out to ABIT for placing the ATX connector against the edge of the PCB.  There's nothing worse than cabling your board cleanly only to have to stretch the bulky power connector over or on top of your CPU socket to reach the connector.

ATX2 Connector

While ABIT broke the mold and placed the ATX connector in a convenient location, they didn't break any new ground with the mounting of their ATX2 connector, it is in it's customary location behind the I/O panel.

CMOS Battery Location

This is not necessarily good or bad, just different.  Instead of the CMOS being located in the bottom right hand corner of the board, this one is located in the top right.  I can see this being a little bit of a pain to reset as it's right behind the floppy ribbon cable connector and right above the ATX connector.  All the same, you "should" not have to be messing with this too much.  It's also nice to see that ABIT has stuck with the horizontal CMOS battery rather than the vertical (standing up) batteries we saw on the IT7 and the KD7 motherboards from them.

IDE Connectors

Now this is something I really like to see.  Instead of the IDE ribbon cable connectors being placed off the edge of the motherboard and standing up, these are laid down on their side and at the direct edge of the motherboard.  I cannot tell you how much easier this makes it to have a clean looking case.  By the cable ports being laid down you can lay your cables flat, bend them at a 45deg angle and run them cleanly along your case side to their destination.  Props to ABIT for this.

Let's head to page 3 for more layout comments, the BIOS, benchmarking, etc.

Next: ABIT IS7 Motherboard Review >>
 

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