Today we've got Abit's latest AMD based motherboard on the bench for you. ABIT has for years been known not only as an industry leader, but a technology leader in the PC enthusiast market. The first to bring you a truly jumperless AND configurable motherboard, ABIT has not slowed down since. Already known for their stellar Pentium4 and Via based AMD motherboards, ABIT has again raised the bar with their NF7 lineup.
Introduction: Today we've got Abit's latest AMD based motherboard on the bench for you. ABIT has for years been known not only as an industry leader, but a technology leader in the PC enthusiast market. The first to bring you a truly jumperless AND configurable motherboard, ABIT has not slowed down since. Already known for their stellar Pentium4 and Via based AMD motherboards, ABIT has again raised the bar with their NF7 lineup.
The NF7 series motherboards from ABIT are based on the nVidia "nForce2" chipset witch has built upon the positives of the first generation nForce and taken it to new heights. What was once considered to be a low end alternative in the nForce 1, is now all the rage and what a lot of the performance junkies are running in the nForce2.
What we plan to do here is not revolutionary. With the Rev 1.2 being the 3rd motherboard in the NF7-S line, we are going to lay out the features, differences, general specifications of the board, then we're going to push it and see what it can do.
General Specifications: I'm not a huge fan of copy and paste, but for a review such as this it is a necessary evil. Here are the specs of the board straight from the horse's mouth (via the ABIT website.)
Processor
- Supports AMD-K7 Duron™/Athlon™/Athlon™ XP Socket A with 200/266/333MHz FSB Processors
Chipset
- NVIDIA nForce2 SPP chipset with MCP2-T - Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI) - Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP 8X/4X (0.8V/1.5V)
- On board Serial ATA PCI Controller - Supports SATA data transfer rates 150MB/s (1.5G bps)
Audio
- 6-Channel AC 97 CODEC on board - Professional digital audio interface supports 24-bit S/PDIF Out - Supports real time AC-3 Encode by Soundstorm™ Technology
System BIOS
- SoftMenu™ Technology - Award Plug and Play BIOS
LAN
- On board 10/100Mb LAN Physical layer interface - 10/100Mb Operation supports ACPI & Wake on LAN
IEEE 1394
- Supports IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400MB/s transfer rate
Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 x AGP8X/4X slot, 5 x PCI slots - 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88MB - 2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 Connectors - 2 x Serial ATA 150 Connectors - 2 x USB headers, 2 x IEEE1394a header - 2 x CD-IN, 1 x IrDA
Back Panel I/O
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse - 2 x Serial, 1 x Parallel - 1 x S/PDIF Out port - Audio connectors (Front Speaker, Line-in, Mic-in, Center/Sub, Surround Speaker) - 2 x USB, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector
Miscellaneous
- ATX form factor - Hardware monitoring - Including Fan speeds, Voltages, System environment temperature
As you can see this board is not exactly on the short end of features, Abit has packed a good bit of GooSH!™ into their NF7-S Rev 1.2. Let's take a look at a few key features a bit further.
Out of the Box: The box was the typical red Abit box with a plethora of goodies that are required to take full advantage of the features of the NF7-S..
In The Box:
Motherboard
Manual
USB 2.0 Two Port Add-On.
Firewire Add-On
ATA133 IDE Cable
Floppy Cable
SATA Instruction Sheet
SATA Converer (Power and Data)
SATA Cable
SATA Driver Diskette
Drivers and Software CD
ATX Case Connector Plate
As you can see Abit threw in pretty much everything but the kitchen sink for their packaging. Let's head over to page 2 and take a gander at some of the features.
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