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In the Forums... |
Posted: April 29th, 2002 Written by: Tuan Huynh Conclusion Abit has really taken a bold step that no one has really attempted before, this I commend them for. As for the AT7, it is an outstanding and remarkable board, with the exception of the performance issue. For some reason, it seems that the AT7 isn’t performing up to Abit’s standards, as it isn’t the board that is dominating and trampling over all the other boards KT333 boards available. The AT7 is truly a breakthrough board, being the first legacy free board; I’ll have to cut Abit some slack. The performance is very good, considering there are a lot of integrated peripherals. For those of you who don’t know, the more integrated peripherals there are, more of the PCI bus is being used by the onboard controllers, thus decreasing performance by a tad bit. Nonetheless the AT7 is an awesome board for the price, if you tally up everything that the board integrates, $151 for the AT7, and $131 for the AT7E is very cheap. Here’s a rough estimate of what you’d be paying for if you were to get a normal motherboard then all the integrated peripherals separately, $93 for a 4 Channel ATA133/RAID controller (Highpoint Rocket RAID 404), $20 for a generic NEC 5 port USB 2.0 controller, $20 for a 6 channel sound card with Optical Output, $20 for a Firewire controller, and $20 for a 10/100 Ethernet card. Pretty much you get approximately $150 worth of peripherals if you were to buy everything separately, which is more then what you can get the whole motherboard for. The only drawback of the MAX AT7 is the fact that its legacy free, which means you’ll have to throw away your PS2 keyboard and mouse to make way for newer USB keyboards and mice. Nonetheless, it’ll only be time till you won’t even see any legacy devices in general, as USB looks to be the future of the way external devices and peripherals connect to your computer. While no board is perfect in anyway, there always seems to be one little flaw in everything, I had one problem with the AT7. Unlike Kyle at [H]ard OCP, I was unable to get the AT7 to post with an Athlon MP to see if I could run an Athlon MP at 2100+ (166 MHz FSB). After talking with the nice and cool Abit PR person, it seems that it only is my board, as they were able to get the Athlon MP to run in their labs and Kyle was able to get it running correctly as well. In the end the AT7 is an awesome board packed full of features that is ready for future expansion. If you don’t need anymore then 3 PCI slots, the AT7 is a great choice if you plan on going the AMD route. For a price of $131 for the AT7E and $151 for the AT7 respectively, they’re both great choices for motherboards, with the only difference between the two is the AT7E does not come with the 4 Channel RAID. Pros
 The AT7 is an awesome board with great value, thus I am awarding it Editors Choice award, as it'd make a perfect board if you're in search for a board with a lot of features. |
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