Closer Look: Features

As you know, NVIDIA nForce2 is the only dual-channel chipset available for the Socket A platform. It provides 5.4GB/s peak memory bandwidth (when DDR333 is used). In fact, systems based on discrete versions of nForce2 don’t need such high memory bandwidth, as the FSB bandwidth of Athlon XP is much lower. On the other hand, the CPU is not the only component that requires data transfers: graphics card and the chipset South Bridge eat up some of the memory bandwidth, too. But the main thing is in the data prefetch algorithm implemented in nForce2, called DASP (Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Preprocessor). It serves to prefetch data that might be required by the CPU. The data are transferred through the currently unused transition band of the memory bus. As a result, this algorithm is most effective in dual-channel systems, although single-channel ones also benefit from it. The inherent drawback of nForce2 as a dual-channel solution is the necessity to buy memory modules in pairs, which may increase the overall system cost. But it’s not that pressing with the memory prices we have today. Don’t you think so?

Besides that, nForce2 supports the fashionable AGP 8x mode, although this mode doesn’t provide any perceptible performance growth for today’s graphics cards (see our article called NVIDIA NV18/NV28 and AGP 8x Investigation). It may be useful in the future. Or may be not. Anyway, additional feature support is a good thing in this case.

The South Bridge of nForce2 is bursting with functionality, too. Its advanced version, MCP2-T, includes an integrated FireWire controller, two Ethernet controllers (only one of them is available in ABIT NF7-S) and a sophisticated audio processor known as APU (Audio Processing Unit). The physical sound interface is provided by a high-quality ALC650 codec, networking and FireWire – by two more chips from Realtek (RTL8801B and RTL82018L).

NF7-S has only one additional controller. It’s Silicon Image 3112A supporting two Serial ATA-150 channels. This chip also allows uniting IDE drives into RAID arrays of level 0 or 1.

Actually, Serial ATA ports are of little use today as there are no hard disk drives in the market using this interface. In order to utilize the Serial ATA connectors somehow, ABIT includes a Serillel ATA device with the mainboard. Let’s see what it looks like.

So, Serillel ATA allows connecting ordinary Parallel ATA drives to Serial ATA ports. It’s all connected as follows: the device is plugged into the HDD, connected to the Serial ATA cable (included with the mainboard) and power-supplied by means of an inset that’s inserted into the HDD power cable. This is what it looks like all together:

Only ATA/100 and ATA/133 drives are supported. Of course, the data throughput speed will be 100 or 133MB/s, and not 150MB/s. Thus, you will be able to use one Serial ATA port with one Serillel ATA device.

Overall, you can use up to five IDE devices with this mainboard. We mean Parallel ATA devices, currently available in the market. As Serial ATA standard grows popular, you will be able to connect up to six IDE devices to ABIT NF7-S.

So, 5 IDE devices. Is it a lot or not? Well, if you happen to have a CD-ROM, CD-RW, and two hard disk drives, and want to purchase something else, like a DVD-ROM, you will have to plug one of the HDDs with the help of the Serillel ATA. On the whole, we guess it’s a rare thing for a home PC to be equipped with five IDE devices, especially as there are now combo drives, like DVD-ROM/CD-RW in the market.

By the way, at first we doubted the hard drive connected via Serillel ATA (and it must be a hard drive as Serillel ATA supports only ATA/100 and ATA/133 devices) would work at an acceptable speed. So we carried out a kind of experiment – compared the performance of 80GB Barracuda ATA V connected via Serillel ATA with the same drive connected to the onboard IDE port. We ran HDD Test from PCMark2002. The results were practically identical (differing by about a half percent).

Winding up the discussion of IDE devices support, we should mention the absence of IDE RAID support (based on the two Parallel ATA channels) as one of the mainboard’s drawbacks.

As far as USB support is cncerned, we have two connectors at the back of the mainboard and two more are “laid out” on a back panel bracket. But the chipset supports six ports in total, what about the remaining two then? Nothing to worry about: the respective connector is available onboard. ABIT just didn’t include a second bracket. We guess it’s not because ABIT wanted to save some money on it: there are just some PC cases now with the inbuilt USB connectors on the front panel.

The mainboard also carries an interesting connector called FPIO2 in the documentation. It accommodates a Media XP device. This device is installed into the 5” bay and serves to read various types of memory cards. It also carries two USB ports, one FireWire port, audio outputs for the two front speakers, SPDIF in- and outputs. The FPIO2 connector serves to output all the sound-related things through the Media XP, while the USB cable of the device can be plugged into the free onboard connector we mentioned above. Media XP comes with ABIT MAX2 series mainboards, but can also be purchased separately (for about $50). It’s up to you to decide whether you need it that much, but one more feature is definitely a nice complement.