SiSoftware Sandra 2003

Although a synthetic benchmark, it's a popular one, freely available if you wish to make comparison benchmarks. We will be testing the CPU, MMX, and memory speeds.

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark

CPU Multimedia Benchmark

Memory Benchmark

As we've been able to observe through our last few nForce 2 reviews, there is little difference between all the boards when it comes to performance. Keep in mind that during testing, we're using an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, and not the IGP. When using the IGP, it will cut into the total memory, so how is memory performance when using the IGP?

	With 9700 Pro	With nForce2 IGP
NF7-M Ram Int. Buff. @ 166	2391	2274

Using 64MB of system ram, overall memory performance is deminished somewhat. If you're looking for maximum memory performance, you're best to use a dedicated video card, but even when using the IGP, performance is not bad at all.

PC Mark 2002

Pretty close across the board, but the NF7-M holds a slight lead at both bus speeds.

PiFast

A good indicator of CPU/Motherboard performance is version 4.2, by Xavier Gourdon. We used a computation of 10000000 digits of Pi, Chudnovsky method, 1024 K FFT, and no disk memory.

Lower is Better

This is a real-world benchmark, and will stress the memory subsystem. The NF7-M easily beats the MSI board in this test, shaving about 2 seconds off the computing time.

3D Mark 2001SE, 1024x768 - Default

3D Mark is one of those benchmark apps that will eat up as much processing power as it can. Benchmarks were run at default 1024x768, as I felt 640x480 is getting to be fairly pointless.

No real difference. Any nForce 2 board will do, but if you want to nitpick, the NF7-M does improve upon the MSI.

Unreal Tournament 2003

UT2K3 s a real system killer, and can bring many systems to its knees. We used the scripts written by , which are excellent tools in testing various resolutions and detail levels. We selected the CPU test, which uses the dm-inferno map.

Dead even this time around. Neither board will let you down if gaming is your thing.

Quake 3 Arena, 640x480 - Fastest

It's getting old, I know, but Quake 3 is still a decent benchmark for almost anything. For motherboards and CPUs, we run at the lowest settings and fire away.

It's not a large difference, but the NF7-M ends up pulling out a win here.

Jedi Knight 2, 640x480 - Fastest

Another dead heat. Overall, the NF7-M has proven to be slightly faster than the K7N2G-ILSR, but not by much.

IGP Benchmarks

Since I'm sure a few of you may be considering this motherboard as an overall replacement to your current mobo and video card, I've included some benchmarks so you can get an idea of the performance with the nVidia IGP. All video tests will be with the IGP configured at 128MB, and at the highest image quality available in the game options. The exception is 3D Mark 2001SE, which will be run at default. AntiAliasing was not used in any of the tests.

3D Mark 2001SE, Default Settings, No AA

Quake 3 Arena

Jedi Knight II

Unreal Tournament 2003

Nothing too notable, and performance differences between the resolution is expected. At 1024x768, with no AntiAliasing, framerates are very playable, though at 1600x1200, things will get choppy. Between the two different boards, The NF7-M wins by a little, and loses by a little.

Audio Testing

We downloaded and installed to test its CPU utilization. CPU utilization was extremely low though all the tests, where the performance was more or less in line with the nForce 2 boards we've tested earlier. Sound quality was excellent, as it usually is with the nVidia MCP, but not quite as warm as it was with the MSI board, which supports SoundStorm.

LAN Testing

We used to test the networking speed, and Windows Task Manager for CPU usage. We copied a variety of install files, varying in size of 300kb to as much as 70MB per file from the MSI machine, to our Shuttle XPC.

Download speeds averaged about 9.1MB/sec, and upload speeds about 9.8MB/sec. The CPU usages was very low, averaging about 7%, which is about 7% lower than other onboard solutions I've worked with in the past.

Final Words

The Abit NF7-M has proven to be the fastest nForce 2 we've tested to date. A few percentage points here and there isn't much, but the difference is there. Overclocking ability was excellent, as was the stability.

For a nForce 2, it isn't top-of-the-line in terms of feature support, as it lacks SoundStorm support. Compared to the NF7-S, their non-IGP nForce 2 offering, they omit SATA support. Given the addition of the IGP, it's understandable why they did this, which is to lower costs, and at , it is very cheap for a quality board with the IGP. I would like to have seen a fully loaded board, and although it'll cost more, I'm certain many enthusiasts wouldn't hesitate to spend a little more.

For overclockers, you have a wealth of options available in the BIOS, and although the v2.0 PCB adds 200FSB Barton support, as we've seen here, the v1.2 PCB appears to be up to the task. Just remember to disable the onboard IGP if you plan on memory overclocking, and to make sure your BIOS is at least v1.6 to gain access to additional FSB options.

Although the addition of the four heatsink mounting holes are present, there may be a problem with large lugs in the upper right hole as a chip is precariously close. The ATX and AUX power connections could be better placed as well, since the power cord may interfere with large heatsink installations. This is easily fixed by proper cable routing, but I prefer my power connections around the DIMM area. The last issue I have is the way the AGP slot is lined up with the DIMM slots. I didn't have many issues with the Radeon 9700 Pro, but when experimenting with an Asus Ti4400, it was necessary to remove the card when I needed to change the ram.

We gave an Editor's Choice with the last nForce 2 we've reviewed, but I feel that the NF7-M also deserves the honour given it's price and performance. Other than SoundStorm support, and SATA, the NF7-M does support a fair number of features, though it can be argued that items such as LAN, video and sound are common on a lot of boards. Keep in mind that the nForce 2 IGP is the best performing integrated video on the market, and the CPU usage when using the LAN and sound are among the lowest as well. It's tough to beat Abit when it comes to overclocking and stability, and the NF7-M continues this tradition.

Pros: Excellent stability, great performance and overclocking potential, competitive price.

Cons: Possible BIOS issues (upgrade to v1.6 or higher!), large heatsink lugs may not fit in upper right hole.

Bottom Line: It's not as loaded as we would have liked, and the MCP-T is missing, but for , you get one of the best performing nForce 2 boards available, and when you get tired of it, just add a CPU, memory, and HDD to put together a secondary system.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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