by Ilya Gavrichenkov
09/29/2003 | 07:11 PM
It looks as if the new Intel chipsets equipped with a dual-channel memory controller appeared not so long ago. However, these several months, which have passed since the launch of i865 and i875, appeared not such a short term for the mainboard market. Starting since the middle of April all the leading mainboard manufacturers have already released a few mainboard modifications based on the new chipsets from Intel. Moreover, now we are witnessing the arrival of a new generation of i875 and i865 based mainboards. One of the most vivid representatives of this new product generation is ABIT IC7-MAX3.
There are a few reasons why a new generation of i875 and i865 based mainboards came out. These are not only marketing reasons, but also technological ones. First, let’s figure out what pushed the release the new product generation from the marketing point of view. Since i875/i865 have settled down in the today’s market as excellent solutions for high-performance systems and seem very determined to stay there for a considerable while, the mainboard manufacturers find its hard to keep the customers interested in the same products for a long period of time. Therefore, the competition forces them to invent more new innovations, which could help attract the customers’ attention. The new ideas that get born in the heads of company’s marketing people need to be put into life, which certainly results into numerous announcements of new mainboards based on the i875/i865 chipsets, which are far not that new any more, but are still pretty up to date from the performance and features point of view. So, this is how the second generation of i875/i865 based mainboards comes into this world, boasting a bunch of new interesting and not very interesting features.
From the technological point of view the appearance of numerous Socket478 mainboards is also pretty justified. This can be explained by the upcoming launch of the 90nm Prescott processors. The first CPUs on this new core will use the same Socket478 and 800MHz processor bus. That is exactly why we have every right to say that first Prescott based CPUs will be compatible with i875 and i865 chipsets and with a few mainboards based on them.
However, the mainboards of the previous generation still will experience some compatibility issues with Prescott based CPUs. It suddenly turned out that actual Prescott samples consume a little bit more power and dissipate more heat than it has been initially implied in the requirements list for Prescott-compatible mainboards. To be more exact, instead of the planned 89W of consumed power and 78A of current, the actual values for Prescott notched 103W and 91A respectively. As a result, the mainboards designed by those manufacturers, who didn’t provide their solutions with an appropriate “reserve”, will not be able to work with the new Intel CPUs: to ensure Prescott compatibility they would have to redesign the processor voltage regulator circuit.
These are exactly the reasons that pushed ABIT Company to modify their IC7 mainboard into IC7-MAX3. The new solution boasts a number of very interesting features, which we are going to discuss in detail later in this article, and is absolutely compatible with the upcoming Intel processors on 90nm Prescott core.
ABIT IC7-MAX3 | |
CPU | Intel Pentium 4 / Celeron |
Chipset | Intel 875P |
FSB frequency | 100-412MHz (with 1MHz increment) |
Overclocking friendly functions | Adjustable Vcore, Vmem and Vagp |
Memory | 4 DDR DIMM slots for dual-/single-channel |
AGP slot | AGP Pro 8x |
Expansion slots (PCI/ACR/CNR) | 5/0/0 |
USB 2.0 ports | 8 (4 on the rear case panel) |
IEEE1394 ports | 3 (1 on the rear case panel, implemented via Texas Instruments TSB41AB3 controller) |
ATA-100/133 | 2 ATA/100 channels |
Serial ATA 150 | 2 Serial ATA-150 channels (via ICH5R, with RAID support) |
IDE RAID support | RAID 0, 1, 0+1 via Silicon Image Sil3114 controller |
Integrated sound | Six-channel AC’97 Realtek ALC650 codec |
Integrated network | Intel 82547 CSA Gigabit LAN |
Additional features | ABIT OTES cooling system |
BIOS | Award BIOS v6.00PG |
Form-factor | ATX, 305x250mm |
This way, ABIT IC7-MAX3 is a continuation of a very popular IC7 mainboard, which proved a great product so far. On the new mainboard ABIT replaced the additional ATA RAID controller with a more advanced one, implemented Gigabit LAN, redesigned the voltage regulator circuit and equipped it with the OTES cooling solution. These changes, which might seem not very drastic at first glance, appeared more than enough to make ABIT IC7-MAX3 popular even before it actually hit the stores. So, I would call ABIT IC7-MAX3 the today’s most exciting Pentium 4 platform.
The accessories set supplied together with the ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard is certainly the richest you can think of. Namely, when you open the box, you will find:
However, there is one thing missing in this list: the bracket for the case rear panel with two additional USB 2.0 ports. As a result, two of the eight USB 2.0 ports, which are theoretically supported by ABIT IC7-MAX3, remain not connected to the corresponding outputs.
Speaking about the features of ABIT IC7-MAX3 I would first of all like to mention that this solution is aimed at the most demanding users, who build their systems with all the latest and fastest Intel processors. That is why this mainboard simply has to support not only the newest Intel CPUs, but also the upcoming ones, and offer a wide range of supported interfaces and protocols for external devices. ABIT IC7-MAX3 meets all these requirements in full.
The list of CPUs supported by this mainboard is not limited by the contemporary Socket478 processors on Willamette and Northwood cores. ABIT guarantees that all the upcoming processor based on Prescott core will also work fine in ABIT IC7-MAX3. To ensure such broad compatibility the mainboard is equipped with a enhanced four-phase CPU voltage regulator supporting higher power consumption rates and hence compatible with Prescott FMB 1.5. By the way, although the official specification for i875P doesn’t promise that it will support Celeron processors, ABIT IC7-MAX3 works just fine with them too. So, I think I can state that the new ABIT mainboard supports all Socket478 CPUs with 400MHz, 533MHz or 800MHz bus with or without Hyper-Threading technology.
Like any other mainboard on i875P chipset or even on i865PE one, ABIT IC7-MAX3 supports up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR SDRAM. If the FSB frequency equals 133MHz, the board supports DDR266 and DDR333 memory, while in case of faster 200MHz FSB the list of supported memory types starts including DDR400 SDRAM as well. There are 4 DIMM slots located in pairs: a pair for each memory channel. If you install memory modules in pairs, you can use dual-channel mode. Since ABIT IC7-MAX3 is based on a more expensive i875P chipset, the board also supports ECC.
Moreover, ABIT IC7-MAX3 definitely supports PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology), which you can actually often see among the features of the i865PE based solutions, too. Even though Intel didn’t imply this technology to be supported by i865PE at all. However, ABIT decided to play safe and didn’t design its high-end mainboard with the less expensive i865PE chipset. They probably were concerned about the rumors that Intel was blocking the possibility to enable PAT in i865 chipset family. However, I haven’t yet come across a single i865PE based mainboard, where it would be impossible to enable PAT :)
As soon as i875 and i865 chipsets came into the mass market, AGP 8x also became a mass standard, which definitely pleased the graphics card makers. Now all mainboards supported AGP 8x. Of course, ABIT IC7-MAX3 supports this graphics interface, too. However, I have to point out that contemporary graphics cards hardly lose any of their speed if they are used in AGP 4x mode. Moreover, AGP 8x interface is very unlikely to last long and will probably become just a transitional solution until the graphics chip developers and graphics card makers move to the promising PCI Express interface. According to the preliminary info, this should happen some time in the middle of next year.
The AGP 8x slot implemented on ABIT IC7-MAX3 is equipped with an additional power lines and allows installing AGP Pro graphics cards. In fact, I think this is a pretty arguable solution. The graphics cards for AGP Pro slot haven’t become that popular at all. At the same time, the use of the AGP Pro slot, which is longer than the regular AGP 8x, deprives non-AGP Pro graphics cards of more reliable fastening with the clip at the end of the slot. And taking into account that many contemporary graphics cards are quite big and heavy, this is a serious drawback.
I was also very pleased to find out that ABIT IC7-MAX3 was equipped with Gigabit network controller. Moreover, it is implemented in the Intel PRO/1000CT Gigabit LAN (Intel 82547) chip, which means that the network controller is connected not to the chipset South Bridge via the PCI bus, but directly to the chipset North Bridge via a special dedicated CSA bus with 2Mbit/sec bandwidth. It means that the integrated LAN of ABIT IC7-MAX3 will work faster than similar solutions connected via the PCI bus. Besides, the PCI bus of ABIT IC7-MAX3 will be less loaded and will have more resources free for other devices, this way.
It was a bit of a surprise for me that ABIT used 6-channel AC’97 codec – Realtek ALC650. Of course, I don’t deny that during its relatively long lifetime this solution proved to be pretty good. It supports S/PDIF, is equipped with high-quality drivers and provides good sound quality. However, there are much more advanced ALC codecs from Realtek in the market today, as well as a lot of top-end solutions from Analog Devices and VIA. I believe that ABIT could have selected a more up-to-date product for their IC7-MAX3 mainboard.
Since ABIT IC7-MAX3 is in a way connected with the ABIT MAX-products family, it also features a lot of external ports, just like its predecessors. Due to the ICH5R South Bridge, the board is equipped with eight USB 2.0 ports. Four USB 2.0 ports are laid out on the mainboard rear panel, while the remaining four can be obtained by connecting a few external brackets. Unfortunately, there is only one bracket with two additional ports on it included into the mainboard package. The same bracket also carries two IEEE1394 ports (one 6-pin and one 4-pin port). Besides, one more 6-pin IEEE1394 connector is situated on the mainboard rear panel. The integrated Texas Instruments TSB41AB3 controller is responsible for the work of these three FireWire ports.
In fact, there is one more feature which indicates that ABIT IC7-MAX3 belongs to the MAX-product series: this mainboard has no standard COM or LPT ports. It’s true that these low-speed interfaces fade out little by little, however, the absence of the LPT port may upset many people who use NewTek Lightwave 3D and other similar programs protecting against illegal data copy, because many of them require a parallel port. Well, I still didn’t manage to find out what ABIT actually suggests for those users who still have older devices supporting these interfaces.
And in conclusion to our features coverage I would like to tell you about the most exciting tidbit of ABIT IC7-MAX3. The most remarkable feature of this product is the possibility to connect a lot of SerialATA hard disk drives. The mainboard is equipped with the total of 6 SerialATA-150 ports.
Two of them are implemented in the ICH5R South Bridge, and you can also arrange RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays there. Other four ports can be connected to the integrated PCI SerialATA controller from Silicon Image – SiL3114. Note that Silicon Image Sil3114 is not a hardware RAID controller, however, you can still build RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 arrays of the drives connected to it. This feature is implemented on the software level with the help of special SATARaid programs. If your system features a fast contemporary CPU, the performance of this solution will not be any slower than that of the classical RAID controllers (see our Dual-Channel SerialATA RAID Controllers Roundup for details). Moreover, even though you can connect up to six HDDs to ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard, there are only two standard ATA/100 channels implemented in the chipset South Bridge. I was greatly surprised that ABIT didn’t supply its Serillel adapters together with the board, which could allow connecting regular ATA-100/133 drives to the numerous SerialATA ports.
One more drawback of ABIT IC7-MAX3, which I would like to mention is the absence of any diagnostic tools onboard. If I am not mistaken, ABIT used to equip some of the products with a POST controller. Unfortunately, this initiative didn’t take root.
ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard is also supplied with a very interesting additional controller aka Secure IDE. This controller is a daughter card, which can be installed between the HDD and the mainboard. The major function of this Secure IDE controller is to encode the data going through it. Secure IDE works in real time and is compatible with Parallel ATA interface. Due to the eNOVA X-Wall LX-40 chip, Secure IDE uses a well-known DES algorithm with a 40bit cipher key for data encoding. Some of you may think that a 40bit long key is still not enough for reliable data encoding, because this code can be easily “cracked”. However, if you are that skeptical, you should also keep in mind that breaking a code created with a 40bit key will require enormous resources, so that the game will be worth the effort only if you store some State secrets on you hard drive.
Unfortunately, Secure IDE works only with Parallel ATA interface, which is a requirement set by the DES algorithm. This is a block code that is why the performance would drop dramatically in case of streaming data flow. And the encoding of the data transferred along the parallel ATA bus really happens in real time. The chip used on Secure IDE card provides up to 1.1GB/sec data coding speed, which is actually more than enough for hard disk drives with ATA-100/133 interface. The tests we carried out prove that Secure IDE doesn’t affect the HDD performance at all.
From the constructive point of view, Secure IDE is designed as follows. The controller card is connected to the HDD on one end and to the mainboard on the other. Moreover, Secure IDE requires external power supply and a hardware key. The hardware key (there are two copies of this key supplied together with ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard) is connected to the Secure IDE card via a special cord leading outside the PC case. If the key is connected during the system boot-up, Secure IDE starts decoding the data stored on your system HDD and continues with this until the next system rebooting. If there is no key connected to the cord during system boot-up, you will be unable to access the HDD. Secure IDE is much more reliable than any alternative software solutions, because in its case the entire HDD is completely protected, including the boot-sector and other system info. Besides, Secure IDE doesn’t require any specific software and drivers. All encoding tasks are performed on the hardware level. Therefore, the system CPU is not loaded with extra work, and Secure IDE is compliant with any operating system.
The only disadvantage about Secure IDE solution is a not very neat design of the key cord. Unfortunately, the external part of the cord cannot be disconnected from the case rear panel that is why if you are using Secure IDE you computer will feature a funny “tail”. I think it could be much more convenient to have the port for Secure IDE key integrated into the front panel of the system case, which means that ABIT would have to provide a corresponding front panel bracket for the 5” or 3” bay.
One of the major peculiarities of ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard is the CPU voltage regulator circuitry. Trying to design a mainboard, which could be compatible with all Socket478 processors including those based on the upcoming Prescott core, ABIT decided to equip its solution with a more powerful voltage regulator. Especially, since Prescott processor will consume tangibly more than 100W of power. Therefore, the CPU voltage regulator on ABIT IC7-MAX3 differs significantly from regulators implemented on other mainboards.
First of all, I have to stress that it is based on a four-phase circuit, while most contemporary Pentium 4 mainboards use only a three-phase one. The use of more complex approach has a few positive consequences. First, the stability and “purity” of the supplied current increase a lot. And it is crucial for higher system stability when working not only in nominal conditions but also during overclocking. Second, the use of more complex circuit allows reducing the amount of heat dissipated by this part of the mainboard, which definitely improves the thermal conditions for the CPU. Moreover, the CPU voltage regulator is built of high-quality electronic components, such as high-quality Japanese capacitors, which ABIT has recently started using for its products.
ABIT engineers considered four-channel power supply to be not enough for higher system stability that is why they equipped this unit with additional cooling solution. Another remarkable feature of ABIT IC7-MAX3 is ABIT’s brand name OTES cooling (Outside Thermal Exhaust System) intended to cool down the CPU voltage regulator components. The corresponding part of the mainboard PCB is covered with plastic housing leading to the mainboard rear panel equipped with a special fan ensuring proper air circulation through the housing outside the system case. This way, ABIT solved the overheating problem for power transistors used in the CPU voltage regulator. If other manufacturers are at all concerned about the overheating of their voltage regulator transistors, the maximum they do is cover them with small standard heatsinks. ABIT went one step further here by designing active cooling solution for the processor voltage regulator and… seems to have gone way too far.
Of course, the OTES solution located on the right side of the PCB looks very impressive. Especially since it is lit by three green LEDs during operation. Those of you who have windowed cases will definitely adore it:
However, OTES cooling on ABIT IC7-MAX3 is not only about advantages. There are a few very upsetting drawbacks. Firstly, the 40mm fan rotating at 3,500rpm doesn’t allow calling OTES a silent solution. Unfortunately, if you value quietness, you will be pretty disappointed with OTES, as the humming noise it creates can hardly be disregarded. Secondly, the air output on the rear panel of ABIT IC7-MAX3 occupies the space, which could be used for additional ports, that is why OTES cooling system is the one to blame for the absence of parallel and serial ports on ABIT IC7-MAX3 mainboard. Thirdly, our tests showed that OTES is simply not necessary.
In order to test the efficiency of ABIT’s OTES solution we decided to measure the temperature of the power transistors used in the voltage regulator circuit. To load the system as heavily as possible we used Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor and ran different applications squeezing all juices out of the CPU. Well, we got very interesting results. OTES system proved very efficient for processor voltage regulator cooling: it didn’t allow the power transistors temperature to exceed 30-35oC even when the CPU workload reached its highest peaks. However, it turned out that the four-channel power supply circuit is already efficient enough to reduce the heat dissipation. After we removed the OTES from the PCB, the transistors warmed up to 45-50oC under the same working conditions. Well, I don’t think you should be concerned about this temperature, it is not too high to cause any stability problems. Of course, the upcoming processors on the Prescott core might be able to push the temperature of the voltage regulator to a much higher level, but I still don’t think that active cooling is so necessary even in this case. In particular, we managed to achieve almost the same cooling efficiency as provided by ABIT OTES by just using OCZ aluminum BGA Ramsinks for the transistors. The temperature in this case also stayed around 35-40oC. This way, I would consider OTES cooling system of ABIT IC7-MAX3 more a marketing trick, rather than a truly necessary and useful feature.
As for the installation procedure, ABIT IC7-MAX3 proved up to our highest expectations. Despite a great lot of various onboard components, the PCB design is very smart and convenient.
The FDD connector is situated in front of the DIMM slots together with the master connector for the ATX power supply. You will not see the 12V ATX connector at the rear edge of the PCB between the chipset and the AGP slot, just like many mainboard manufacturers usually do. ABIT located it close to the master ATX power supply: to the right of the DIMM slots. The connectors for Parallel ATA hard disk drives have been moved to the left side of the PCB, however, the cables are very unlikely to cause any installation difficulties, because the connectors are parallel to the PCB edge.
I am pleased to state that the AGP graphics card doesn’t block the DIMM slot clips, even if it is a full-size solution. Although ABIT IC7-MAX3 owes this advantage to the 5 PCI slots instead of 6.
Even though the North Bridge of i875P chipset can easily do with a passive cooling solution, ABIT equipped it with a very originally designed fan. Its rotation speed is 2,500rpm, however, it is almost noiseless, unlike the fan of OTES system.
To tell the truth the memory voltage regulator circuitry disappointed me a little. For some reason ABIT IC7-MAX3 uses a linear circuit instead of the pulse one. Although I have to admit that our tests with all four DIMM slots occupied by memory modules didn’t reveal any stability issues even under the heaviest workload.
The major drawback of ABIT IC7-MAX3 PCB design, however, is the encumbered space around the CPU socket. The OTES airway gets pressed to the CPU retention mechanism on the right. As a result, you will hardly be able to use processor coolers with larger trapezoid heatsinks.
ABIT mainboards have always been known for their overclocking friendly features. So, ABIT IC7-MAX3 is also not an exception. The BIOS Setup of the newcomer features all the functions necessary for efficient CPU overclocking and fine-tuning of the system.
After the launch of i875 and i865 chipsets, many mainboard manufacturers started using AMI BIOS. ABIT, however, didn’t give up its old traditions, therefore, ABIT IC7-MAX3 features a significantly modified Award BIOS code. First of all, you notice Softmenu Setup section, where you can reset the CPU and memory working modes and this way do some overclocking.
There are the following features available here:
Processor bus frequency | Available FSB:MEM dividers |
400MHz | 3:4 |
533MHz | 1:1 |
667MHz | 1:1 |
800MHz | 3:2 |
This way, most overclocking fans will definitely be very happy with the new ABIT IC7-MAX3. This mainboard seems to be the offering the today’s richest opportunities for FSB and memory frequencies adjustment, and moreover, allows raising the Vdimm very far up. In other words, ABIT adjusted its new mainboard not only for regular overclocking, but also for extreme overclocking needs. I was also very please to discover that this mainboard allows to clear all settings and bring them back to default values in case of over-overclocking, while may other mainboard manufacturers very often forget about this important option. If you press and hold the INS key during system boot-up, you will be able to access BIOS Setup and reset the faulty parameter values.
Besides Softmenu Setup, I would also like to draw your attention to BIOS Setup Advanced Features Setup page. Here you can adjust memory timings and enable ABIT’s brand name Game Accelerator technology. The page contains settings for DRAM CAS# Latency (you can set it to 2, 2.5 or 3), DRAM Precharge Delay (available values: 5, 6, 7 or 8), DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay and DRAM RAS# Precharge, (available values are 2, 3 or 4). In general, this is a pretty common set of features. As for Game Accelerator technology, it is worth dwelling on separately.
ABIT introduced its Game Accelerator technology quite a while ago. As you may remember, its major goal was to increase the performance of i865PE based mainboards up to the level of i875P based ones. However, ABIT IC7-MAX3 is already based on the faster i875P chipset. So, what the Game Accelerator technology so in this case then? It turns out to have a really big influence on the performance or our today’s hero, too. The thing is that when you go to the BIOS Setup and set the Game Accelerator mode to Auto, Turbo, Street Racer or F1, it automatically changes such important memory subsystem settings Refresh Cycle Time, Read Delay (tRD), Read Delay Adjust (tRDA) and Command Per Clock (CPC). Refresh Cycle Time is responsible for the data refresh rate in the dynamic memory cells, Read Delay (tRD) and Read Delay Adjust (tRDA) manage the memory requests frequency during data reading, and Command Per Clock (CPC) determines the address commands transfer rate.
Advanced users can set these parameters manually, however, ABIT offers a much easier way: choose the most suitable work mode from the 4 already existing presets taking into account the type of memory modules you are using. Thus, the Turbo preset will suit for almost any memory modules; Street Racer preset requires memory modules of pretty high quality, and F1 will work only in case you have the best DDR SDRAM. In order to evaluate how greatly different Game Accelerator settings affect the system performance, we undertook a few simple tests, by changing only this parameter in the BIOS Setup.
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.
Game Accelerator | ||||
Auto | Turbo | Street Racer | F1 | |
SiSoft Sandra 2003, RAM Int Buffered Bandwidth | 4977 | 5007 | 5044 | 5024 |
SiSoft Sandra 2003, RAM Float Buffered Bandwidth | 4973 | 5008 | 5047 | 5029 |
PCMark2002, Memory score | 9413 | 9620 | 10333 | 10186 |
Quake3 (four), High Quality, 1024x768x32 | 444.6 | 456.7 | 464.6 | 461.2 |
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.
During the performance tests we compared the speed of ABIT IC7-MAX3 with that of ASUS P4P800 on i865PE and ASUS P4C800 on i875P, which proved to be the today’s fastest platforms for Pentium 4 processors (see corresponding reviews in the Mainboards section). This comparison will help us to evaluate the true efficiency of ABIT IC7-MAX3 solution and to see whether this product will be able to catch up with the today’s fastest solutions from ASUS.
Our test system was configured as follows:
All tests were run in MS Windows XP SP1. The BIOS’s of all mainboards were set for maximum performance.
The table below sums up the performance of our testing participants in different applications:
| ABIT IC7-MAX3 | ASUS P4P800 | ASUS P4C800 |
Business Winstone 2002 | 35.7 | 34.2 | 35.1 |
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 | 51.9 | 51.6 | 51.7 |
3DMark2001 SE, Default | 17665 | 17665 | 17671 |
3DMark03, Default | 6066 | 6060 | 6065 |
3DMark03, CPU Score | 757 | 757 | 757 |
PCMark2002, Memory score | 10333 | 10272 | 10308 |
Unreal Tournament 2003, dm-antalus, 1024x768x32 | 66.26 | 66.18 | 66.23 |
Quake3, four, 1024x768x32 | 464.6 | 464.9 | 464.5 |
Serious Sam 2, The Grand Cathedral, 1024x768x32 | 138.9 | 137.4 | 137.9 |
SiSoft Sandra 2002, RAM Buffered Bandwidth | 5047 | 5050 | 5051 |
As we see, ABIT IC7-MAX3 proves as fast as ASUS P4C800 on i875P, and sometimes it even outperforms the rival from ASUS!. The same is true for ASUS P4P800. This way, I can conclude that ABIT IC7-MAX3 boasts very high performance, especially since the products we compared it with have always been among the fastest.
The new ABIT product, ABIT IC7-MAX3, has every right to be called a really remarkable product. It demonstrated very higher performance, excellent stability and wonderful overclocking potential. If we also take into account all the unique features this mainboard supports, such as SerialATA RAID for 4 HDDs, or Secure IDE, then ABIT IC7-MAX3 will truly deserve being called “one of the best”.
However, we shouldn’t disregard the drawbacks as well. It is up to you to decided, whether they are important or not. As for me, I would be happy to have ABIT IC7-MAX3 in my Socket478 testbed for further reviews and test sessions. So, let’s sum up all cons and pros:
Highs:
Lows: