ABIT IS7 Motherboard Review - ABIT IS7 Motherboard Review
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BIOS SHOTS
The BIOS, basically where you tell the motherboard how to think and what to do. We're not going to spend a lot of time in here as while it's not necessarily true that "you've seen one BIOS you've seen 'em all", it's not terribly far from the truth :)
Standard BIOS Opening Screen
This is posted just to give you a reference point. Generally speaking, since I ran one of the first Softmenu BIOS's from ABIT on a BH6 (BX Chipset) motherboard, this screen has gone virtually untouched...
SoftmenuIII Menu
You'll notice that the DDR divider is pretty straightforward. Running our 3.0c P4 for this review we were given the option of running 1/1, 3/2, and 5/4. You'll notice in this configuration that there is no option to run your DDR at a higher speed than your FSB, only lower. We're assuming that ABIT figures that if you're running a CPU that defaults at 200MHz FSB, there isn't much reason to take your memory out of sync to go higher. We agree.
Front Side bus Adjustment
As you can see in the above picture, the BIOS can be set in 1MHz increments in a 100-300MHz range. There was a time not long ago that the options up to 300MHz may have looked nice in the BIOS section of a review, but were for all intents and purposes useless. With the new "C" revision P4's and reports of the 2.4GHz chip reaching FSB speeds of up to 275MHz and beyond, this is actually a nice feature to see.
CPU Voltage Adjustment
What good is a motherboard capable of 300MHz FSB if you don't have the voltage options to push your CPU? Well, ABIT asked that question and then answered it by going overboard! The ABIT IS7 can run your CPU voltage all the way up to 1.925v! Do I recommend you EVER utilize this high voltage? Um, no! That said, there are some extreme systems out there using some ultra alternative cooling systems that may indeed find usage of these crazy volts. With the P4 chips showing a dislike for high voltages for extended period, I feel it necessary at this point to reiterate the OCA site warning of USE THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! :)
I will at this point mention, without a screenshot, that the DDR voltage adjustments are not NEARLY as extreme on this board maxing out at a very tame 1.8v. While I personally would never run my DDR above 1.8v, it does strike me as odd that they went extreme with the CPU voltage and tame with the DDR voltage.
Memory Timing Settings
Move along folks, nothing to see here! Seriously, this is pretty much the standard fare. While one of the biggest new features of the i865PE is the capability for Dual Channel DDR, it is not an option in the settings. The motherboard handles that operation on it's own by checking to see how many memory banks have sticks of memory in them and then performs accordingly.
Advanced BIOS Features
While there is nothing wholeheartedly exciting in this screen, this is where you enable and disable Intel's hyper-threading when you are running HT enabled CPU's. As I'm sure many of you haven't run one considering that until recently it was only available on the MUCHO expensive 3.06GHz P4's, I wanted to give you a look.
Boot Screen
While the boot screen is usually considered insignificant, there are so many useful bits of information on here that I wanted to show you.
In just this single screen you can tell the following:
- Your BIOS Version
- The default speed of your CPU
- The current speed (overclocked) of your CPU
- Whether Hyper-threading is enabled or not
- Obviously the amount of memory you're running
- What memory mode you're in (Dual or Single Channel)
- Your Front Side Bus AND Memory Bus!
- Your AGP Frequency
- Your PCI Frequency
Now that's what I call a status screen! Regardless, it's nice after a reboot to know at a glance what everything is set to and also to make certain that your latest BIOS adjustments "took."
Alright, I've kept you in suspense long enough, let's get on with the benchmarks!
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