For our tests we used Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU, DDR400 SDRAM with 2-2-2-5 timings and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra graphics card.

Strange as it might seem, but the maximum performance can be obtained with Street Racer settings and it doesn’t correspond to what ABIT actually claims. However, let’s take note of this fact, because I personally trust the benchmarks results I obtain much more than the statements of ABIT marketing people. Moreover, we should also take into account that correct Game Accelerator configuring ensures a significant performance increase. For instance, the difference in fps rates in Quake3 can even reach 4.5%.

I would also like to say a few words about the hardware monitoring feature implemented in ABIT IC7-MAX3. This mainboard can control a lot of various parameters, including the CPU temperature, processor voltage regulator temperature and system temperature, rotation speeds of processor, chipset North Bridge and OTES fans, and a complete set of voltages (totaling 9).

Besides that, ABIT was also going to provide its mainboard with FanEO technology, which allows reducing the noise produced by the CPU cooler fan. The idea behind this technology is very simple: if the processor temperature gets below a certain limit set manually in the BIOS Setup, the fan rotation speed gets automatically reduced. However, in the current BIOS version 2.1 this technology does not work, even though there are all necessary settings in the BIOS Setup page. The fan rotation speed doesn’t change during the system operation, but remains equal to the value set in the BIOS. And even when the CPU reaches its critical temperature, the fan doesn’t speed up, for some reason.

Summing up our detailed investigation of ABIT IC7-MAX3 BIOS Setup features, we decided to overclock a few CPUs. The tests were carried out in two steps. First we tried to figure out if the mainboard would remain stable with high FSB frequencies. For this test I took Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU with unlocked clock multiplier. The multiplier was reduced to 12x and the FSB frequency was set to the maximum. The memory frequency divider in this case was set to 3:2 in order to eliminate any influence the memory could have on the results of this test. This way I managed to overclock the ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard to 300MHz FSB. Further overclocking was impossible because of the CPU, and ABIT IC7-MAX3 shouldn’t be blamed for that. The system proved perfectly stable even at this high FSB frequency, and it once again proves that ABIT IC7-MAX3 can really work well at the FSB frequencies up to 300MHz (or 1200MHz in the terms of Quad Pumped Bus). So, the board stood this test really honorably.

The second part of our tests was devoted to the mainboard’s work with the memory subsystem at higher frequencies. We again took the same processor and OZC PC4000 DDR SDRAM. Now we smoothly increased the FSB frequency synchronously with the memory frequency. This time we notched 261MHz FSB, and then the system started experiencing some stability issues. Judging by my previous experience, I can state that we managed to reach the maximum frequency for stable memory functioning, which indicates excellent stability of ABIT IC7-MAX3 solution also during memory bus overclocking. This way, our verdict about pretty good overclocking potential of ABIT IC7-MAX3 proved absolutely correct.