Introduction

have always been at the forefront of integrating new technologies onto their motherboards, and are renowned amongst enthusiasts as being stable and great overclockers. They were amongst the first to provide a jumperless motherboard as well as the more serious adjustments towards overclocking in there bios. Today they have taken another bold step aiming the product at those who like to remain on the forefront of the computer world.

I always enjoy doing reviews on those items that are different and new, so when gave me the chance to look at the Abit AT7 Max I was very eager indeed. Big thanks to Overclock.co.uk for providing the review sample.

Specifications

CPU
Supports AMD-K7 Athlon /Athlon XP Socket A 200/266MHz FSB Processors
Supports AMD-K7 Duron Socket A 200 MHz FSB Processors

Chipset
VIA KT333 / VIA VT8233A
Supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE protocol
Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)
Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP 2X(3.3V)and 4X(1.5V)mode (Sideband) device
Supports 200/266/333 MHz (100/133/166MHz Double Data Rate) Memory Bus Setting

Ultra DMA 133/ RAID
High Point HPT374 IDE Controller
Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
RAID 0 (striping mode for boosting performance)
RAID 1 (mirroring mode for data security)
RAID 0 + 1(striping and mirroring)

Memory
Four 184-pin DIMM sockets support PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 DDR DRAM modules
Supports DDR333 unbuffered DRAMs up to 2GB and registered DRAMs up to 3GB
Supports 6 banks up to 3GB DRAMs for unbuffered DDR200/266 modules
Supports 8 banks up to 3.5GB DRAMs for registered DDR200/266 modules

Audio
Realtek ALC650 (AC-Link)
Supports 6CH DAC for AC3 5.1 CH purpose
Professional digital audio interface supporting 24-bit SPDIF OUT
Card Reader (Optional)
Supports Memory card (MS or SD) Interface
Supports SONY Memory Stick Interface/ SD Memory Card Interface
Supports Compact Flash ROM Interface

System BIOS
SoftMenu" III Technology to set CPU parameters
Supports Plug-and-Play (PNP)
Supports Advanced Configuration Power Interface (ACPI)
Supports Desktop Management Interface (DMI)
Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS

LAN
On board Realtek 8100B single chip Ethernet controller interface
10/100Mb Operation
User friendly driver included

Multi I/O Functions
2 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 4 Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 devices
4 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 8 Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 (RAID 0/1/1+0) devices
4 USB 1.1 Connectors
On board VIA VT6202 USB 2.0 header for four extra USB channels
Three 1394a fully compliant cable ports at 100/200/400 megabits per second
Audio connector (Line-in, Center/Sub, Surround Spk , Front Spk , Mic-in)

Miscellaneous
ATX form factor
1 AGP 1.5v slot, 3 PCI slots
Hardware monitoring - Including Fan speeds, Voltages, System environment temperature

The Technology

Looking at the features of the KT333 chipset you would be forgiven for thinking you have seen this before. It is basically the same chipset as the KT266a, although for those of you with older KT266a boards the VT8233a Southbridge will be new. The main thing that this chipset brings to the floor here is the official support for DDR333 memory.

Key Features
Supports AMD Duron" and Athlon" Socket A processors
200/266MHz FSB settings
Support for AGP 2X/4X
Supports up to 4.0GB DDR200/266/333 SDRAM
266MB/sec high bandwidth North/South Bridge V-Link
Support for Advanced Communications Riser (ACR) Card Standard
Integrated 6 channel AC-97 Audio
Integrated MC-97 Modem
Integrated 10/100 BaseT Ethernet and 1/10Mb HomePNA controller
Support for ATA 33/66/100
6 USB ports, UHCI compliant
Advanced power management capabilities including ACPI/OnNow and AMD's PowerNow"
552-pin BGA VT8366A North Bridge
376-pin BGA VT8233 South Bridge

In The Box

1x Abit AT7 motherboard
3x 80 wire/40 pin ribbon cable for master and slave Ultra DMA 133/100/66/33 IDE devices
1x Ribbon Cable for 3.5" FDD devices
1x CD for Support Drivers and Utilities
1x USB Cable
1x DIY bag
1x User's Manual for the motherboard
1x Floppy disk of HPT 374 drivers
1x O/I Shield

The box contents are pretty much standard but there are one or two items that stand out here. There was some included cable ties (the DIY bag) which is a good idea, allowing you to tie off and secure your cables in a tidy and safe manner. Also of note are the black, flat IDE and FDD cables. These are just standard ATA133 leads but look very nice, emblazoned in silver with the Abit logo. The manual is very good, packed with information about the board though there were quite a few "generic" pages in there e.g. flashing the bios guide was done with a P4 board. The driver disk has some useful extras with it, such as Norton's Anti-Virus 2002 which is nice to see, as well as Abit's hardware monitor which works well.

The Motherboard

The AT7 Max isn't so much a revolutionary motherboard as it is an evolutionary motherboard, with its lack of legacy connections being a natural progression of today's technologies. It's therefore important to note what you don't get as well as the features that you do get. You won't find any PS/2 ports for your mouse and keyboard; users are expected to use USB peripherals instead. There are no serial or parallel ports either, so if you have a printer or modem that uses either of these, you had better either have/buy USB/PCI capable devices or go without. There are only 3 PCI slots on this board. It may seem a bit low to many, and in normal circumstances it is. However, if you take into account that there is already very good onboard sound as well as LAN, that's 2 slots that you don't need. Firewire PCI card? Not needed, there's Firewire onboard. There are always situations for some that will require the use of more than 3 PCI slots, in which case you may as well stop reading now, this board is not for you. Another thing to note right now is this motherboard is designed for use with a Windows ME/2000/XP OS only.

The layout of this board on first glance is very clean and lean. On closer inspection you can see it's packed with features and headers for expansion. We shall start our tour at the CPU socket and work our way around from there.

Looking into the zif socket of this board you can see the thermister for the temperature of the CPU to be taken. So for those of you using an Athlon XP the internal diode, even though board is capable of using it, is once again useless. With a board this far thinking in its design this would have been a very nice feature to see, but alas it isn't so. Speaking of Athlon XP's, at time of writing this, the latest bios has support for the Thoroughbred XP's. Looking around the socket you can a very nice holographic tape strip to help protect the traces underneath from screwdrivers if you slip whilst attaching a HSF. The socket itself is also at the very top of the board which is a great place to put it. HSF wise, the mounting points for the Alpha's and Swiftech's that use them are here, and there is plenty of room to use such a cooler. You can also see the 6 MOSFETS here once again indicating the 3 phase power design which should aid in overclocking and general stability. There is a nice gap between the capacitors here, strategically placed so that there is plenty of room to get to the clipping mechanism of a standard HSF. The Northbridge is actively cooled again this being something that Abit introduced and continues to use.

The power connecter sits between the zif socket and the DIMM slots at the top of the board. This is a great place to put it as it means that your power cable won't be draped across your HSF or any other components on the board. You can also see next to the power connecter 2 of the 5 fan headers. These appeared to be too close, but installation of a 3 pin fan wasn't a problem at all.

4 Slots for memory are found here, compared to most other boards that give you 3. I found that capacitors on the top of the board and large Graphics cards in the AGP slot, whilst not actually stopping me from removing the ram, did stop me opening the clips for the ram fully.

There are a total of six ATA133 IDE headers, two are your standard VIA offering (just right of the DIMM slots) with the other four being made available through the Highpoint HPT374 (bottom right of the board), providing you with a total of 12 IDE devices for use. The Highpoint IDE headers are lower down in the board, and being designed for RAID this is not a problem for most position wise in that chances are you tower is designed to have your hard drives in the lower half. Just below these is the floppy header, right at the bottom of the board. This is something that has personally not been a problem for me, but those of you with full towers with the floppy on top should note your going to need a long floppy cable. Being marketed as a legacy free motherboard you may be surprised to see the floppy drive available here, but even though for the majority of people it probably sits in your tower gathering dust, there are still some uses for it, such as updating your bios and on rare occasions even drivers.

There are 2 LED's on this board, a yellow and a green. The yellow LED means the board is receiving power from the PSU; it's a safety feature to let you know that there is still power available to the motherboard even if it isn't powered up. There is also a green LED which illuminates when the system and therefore the board is turned on. You can also see the battery and CMOS clear jumper. Very minor point here, and not totally unique (but something that is rare in my experience) is the jumper used here has a tail on it, which makes moving the jumper a lot easy, especially for those with dinner plates for hands.

The three PCI slots are surrounded with the various headers for Firewire and USB expansion. The IEEE1394 header is also used for connecting the aftermarket Abit Media XP drive unit. Just above the PCI slots on the right hand side is a square Chip from Texas instruments, which is responsible for the onboard Firewire. Also around here are the CD/AUX connectors for connecting to your CD-ROM drives. Being low down by the PCI slots is going to create problems for some. I'm not to worried about this positioning however as I would expect most users of this board to use digital rather than analogue to get CD sound from the drives, but thought it was worth a mention.

The AGP slot here is higher placed than the majority of motherboards I have seen, sitting in the very top slot of my tower (all other boards I have used in the tower sat just one below it) and has a retaining mechanism which should aid in holding the card in place for those of you who regularly move your PC around. I would have preferred a higher clip than the one it has, as trying to unclip the card can be difficult without a screwdriver to put between the card and the clip. Installation is pretty much the same as putting in a DIMM. You push the card in and the clip slots into place.

The audio is taken care of by the Realtek ALC650 with 6 connections available for use. 3 of these are your Line Out for front/stereo, rear and centre/sub. 2 are for your Line In and Mic In as well as an SP/DIF port for Digital out. I would have to say this is the best onboard sound I have seen, from the hardware and its connections to the software and all of its features. The sound itself is very balanced with lots of options available with the software to test and tweak it to your liking. There are presets for the 5.1 surround such as hall and stadium, as well as a 10 band EQ. Those of you using just 2 speakers can benefit from some of these more advanced features too, as many of the settings can make a nice difference to the stereo sound. And if none of them appeal to you there is always the 3D Depth slider found within the Volume Control Panel applet which basically intersperses the Stereo sound with opposite channels slightly to fool you into thinking there is a greater area for the sound to bounce around in than there actually is. Performance wise, the sound uses about 5% of your CPU power, but for those of you with high clocked CPU's it isn't something you will notice in everyday situations.

For the 4 USB 2.0 that's onboard the VIA VT6202 is employed. These are EHCI 0.95 compliant USB ports, and whilst there are newer EHCI 1.0 offering up to 20% more bandwidth I've yet to see anything with this. I was a little worried that with all these connections for USB would overload the board for those devices that draw power from the USB. On some of my earlier mainboards I had a few problems with the devices not receiving enough power and either locking up the machine totally or as was more often the case, the device being starved of too much power that the power to the USB port in question was cut off and only a reboot would bring it back on. I overloaded the USB ports with every device I could find (Alcatel Modem, Intellimouse, keyboard, Camera, Printer and Scanner), using them all at once to see if I could see any problems. No problems at all power wise.

Looking at the rear ports you can instantly see the difference from the norm. Gone are the 2 PS/2 ports replaced with 2 USB 1.1 ports. Below them are a further 2 USB 1.1 ports as seen on many boards today. Next comes 2 Firewire ports followed by the SP/DIF out and the rest of the sound jacks. Finally we see 2 USB 2.0 ports and the 10/100 LAN port. A custom I/O shield for your case is included so there aren't any worries about having to modify or lose the plate around the sockets, just simply remove the old plate and replace it with the included one.

Reviewing all of the above comments, even with the little problems here and there, this is one of the best layouts I have personally seen. The board is packed with features and expansion options even though at first glance the board seems to be very bare.

The Bios

This is an Abit board, and as such they have expectations and a reputation for a good bios full of features and tweakable options. Well, you won't be disappointed here. Being a KT333 motherboard, the Bios includes the 1/5 divider, so if you want to run your CPU at 166 FSB, but your PCI cards don't like it they can easily be made comfortable again. The FSB on this motherboard goes to an incredible 250 MHz, which may seem like overkill, but with the pace that the PC enthusiast world continues to set, it could be a useful feature later on assuming AMD release further chips that are seriously overclockable. There are people who have set 200+ FSB successfully so this would certainly appeal to them. Being able to key in an FSB choice is great, and a lot easier and quicker than going through a list of numbers to get to the last one.

Voltages for the CPU and DDR are here too as well as all of the memory timing's such as the CAS Latency and Bank Interleave. The PC Health Status screen has all of the usual suspects available here as well as some safety features. You can set a temperature warning for the CPU as well as a shutdown point.

There is also a CPU Fan Fail setting that can instantly shutdown your computer if the HSF fan fails. The Raid Bios contains all the options to configure a Raid array, select your boot device. The Raid bios does of course add to the reboot time, taking 6 or 7 seconds longer than normal whilst it scans for devices, but this is to be expected.

Testing

I'm going to be testing this motherboard as a direct replacement for my old Asus A7V266 with the VIA KT266 chipset. I'll be testing the AT7 MAX with both PC2100 and PC2700 ram. Each benchmark will be run 3 times and the average scores taken to ensure consistency between results. Main thing I will be looking for here is to see what kind of increase the new motherboard will provide over the older KT266 chipset, as well as of course it's overclocking prowess. The usual line-up of benchmarks will be used here, so let's see what this board can do.

Test Systems

1.4 Athlon Thunderbird

A7V266/AT7 Max

256 meg of Crucial PC2100 Ram

256 meg of Kingmax PC2700 Ram

GeForce 4 Ti4600 (standard clock settings)

Via 4in1's 1438's

Detonator 29.80's

Windows XP

As I stated earlier I am going to test both PC2100 and PC2700 in the AT7 Max to see what if any diffrence the board alone makes to the scores. During the PC2100 testing, the FSB was at 133. Now when I swapped the Ram for the PC2700, there was only a marginal difference in the scores. So why is this? Well, adding PC2700 is not enough on it's own. The Ram and the Northbridge of the motherboard may be communicating at 166mhz, but the CPU having an FSB of 133 is not, so the extra potential of the communication of 166mhz between the Ram and the Northbridge is wasted. To see the true difference that the KT333 chipset can make you have to make sure that the FSB, Northbridge and the Ram are all communicating at the same speed. As the AT7 Max has the 1/5 Divider this is a simple thing to do. Setting the FSB of the CPU to 166 and lowering the multiplier to 8.5 gives us the same speed (or close to) as before of 1400mhz, and having the divider at 5:2:1 means that the AGP and the PCI are still running at there standard 66mhz and 33mhz respectively. I also had to raise the DDR voltage from 2.55v to 2.65v to get full stability from the board.

SiSoft Sandra

First test here is the CPU Arithmetic benchmark.

In this instance you can see that the scores are all of a muchness, with the AT7 max coming in just a little bit ahead. The difference is very marginal indeed.

The Multi-Media benchmark shows a steady increase in performance with the two AT7 Max results being ahead of the A7V266 by a clear amount. Utilizing the 166 FSB on the CPU provides an increase in the performance here as is to be expected.

Next up is the Memory Bandwidth scores, again tested in SiSoft Sandra.

You can clearly see an increase from the A7V266 to the AT7 Max when useing PC2100. The AT7 Max seems to communicate a lot faster than the A7V266 in both instances. Running the AT7 Max with the PC2700 and an FSB of 166mhz really shows the true potential here with the scores rocketing ahead of the other 2 results. Very nice performance from the AT7 Max.

PCMark 2002

Next up is PCMark 2002 from MadOnion.

PCMark again shows that the AT7 Max puts in a good performance, with a decent increase over the A7V266. It's clear that increasing the FSB to 166mhz with PC2700 ram offers a clear boost here, with the memory scores not being held back with slower communication between the Northbridge and CPU.

3DMark 2001 SE

This benchmark, again from MadOnion, tests your computers graphical prowess. The test was run at the default settings, 3 times with the average taken for each.

The results speak for themselves here. There is only a very marginal difference between the A7V266 and AT7 Max with PC2100. This is to be expected as this test will stress the graphics card more than the subsystems. Increasing the FSB to 166mhz, yet again shows a definite increase of nearly 700 marks.

Quake III Arena

This is a game that is getting a little old but still provides a good benchmark system. Point release 1.31 was used and Demo Four was run three times under each configuration, with the averages used for the results.

Here the AT7 Max shows a nice boost over the A7V266, adding another 8 FPS to the PC2100 scores. Going to the PC2700 offers the biggest boost, with just over a 20 fps increase from the A7V266.

Overclocking

With all the Bios options available on the AT7 Max, the overclocking is a joy. Keeping at the 5:2:1 divider and starting at 166mhz, I slowly increased the FSB. I hit the 171 FSB mark before not being able to run 3DMark and PCMark. I then reset back to the 166FSB mark and tried the multiplier. Raising it from 8.5 to 9 took me to near the 1.5 gig mark and all was fine. Any higher and Windows wouldn't boot. I expected as much as previous experience has taught me that overclocking with the FSB and this chip yeilds higher results. The best overclock I could get was 1.533 with the multiplier at 9 and the FSB at 170. Going to 171 on the FSB with 9 on the multiplier was possible but not stable enough to run 3DMark or PCMark every single time. As I stated earlier I had already raised the DDR voltage to 2.65v and further increases didn't help me in my overclocking endevours.

Overclocking this 1.4 Thunderbird before I was able to reach the same speeds but not with this high an FSB. The divider and DDR voltage controls have been the most use here. Memory settings in the Bios are able to run on agressive if I maintain the chips rated speed which again, is pretty damn good considering the high FSB I'm useing here. I get the feeling that the board isn't holding me back, but rather the CPU and/or mem is. As soon as I update both of these I'll be sure to post my results in the Forums. All in all I'm impressed with the stablity and ease of overclocking this board.

Final Words

Well, this has certianly for me been a fun review looking at a very interesting and forward thinking design. Although the board is marketed as a legacy free motherboard, we can see that it isn't totally the case. The majority of legacy options are however gone and replaced with updated and newer technologies such as USB 1 and 2, as well as Firewire. The 3 PCI slots will seem at first to many to be a very low number, but when you consider that there is onboard 5.1 sound as well as onboard LAN, Firewire and the USB, that's 2 or more cards you won't need. Having 6 IDE headers seems personally to me to be overkill for the home market, but it does offer cheap Raid without the use of a separate PCI card. Those who want to use Raid arrays and have the hard drives for it will love the extra headers, providing double the usual amount from onboard solutions. The lack of Serial and Parallel ports for those with LCD or VFD units is going to be a problem; guess it's about time someone invented a USB version. A lot of Keyboards and Mice use USB for connection either natively or through the use of an adaptor, and with more and more devices such as printers, joysticks and speakers using USB or Firewire, the time would certainly seem to be right for such a board as this.

The lack of legacy support makes it very important to note what you don't get with this board as much as what you do get. Those people using PS/2 Mice and Keyboards will have to either buy new devices or have such devices to use beforehand. If you need a printer, again make sure you have another way of connecting besides the Parallel port because there is none. Serial Modem? Forget it, not going to happen. You could I suppose get a PCI card to give you back these lost ports but that would seem to me to defeat the object of buying the motherboard in the first place, which is to remove the older technologies and make way for the new. The Abit AT7 MAX is also only for use with Windows ME/2000/XP, so those of you using 95/98/98SE will need to upgrade. Performance with PC2100 ram is good, but the biggest increase is only fully realized when using PC2700 Ram and having an FSB of 166mhz on the CPU. Overclocking the board is a peice of cake, with the myriad options in the bios and the general stability of the board aiding in this process. If you can get around the lack of legacy support using USB and Firewire devices in there place, this board would be a great addition to your system and is personally the best board I have ever had the pleasure of looking at. Once again, many thanks to our supplier of this review,

Personal Note - I know there is at least one person out there who would have been looking forward to seeing my Raid results. My apologies for not being able to provide any to you, as before I could even set up an array on this system, I lost a drive I was going to use in another. As soon as I can get another drive or 2, I will be able to update this review with results for the Raid.

Pro's
No legacy support!!
Boatload of USB and Firewire connections
6 ATA133 IDE headers for a total of 12 devices
4 ATA133 Raid headers onboard
Decent 5.1 surround sound onboard
LAN Onboard

Con's
No legacy support!!
WinME/2000/XP compatible only

Bottom Line
This motherboard performs very well and is a very interesting idea packed with features for expansion. Just make a note of what you DON'T get with this board as well as what you DO get before you buy.