by Grigoriy Gubankov
04/02/2003 | 11:32 PM
Taiwanese ABIT Company was once renowned for its mainboards among overclockers and all users who were not satisfied with the standard feature set of their PCs. It was then that ABIT announced advanced (according to the standards of that time) technology for adjusting system parameters without jumpers. It was called SoftMenu. As time passed by, more manufacturers were becoming involved into making mainboards for a demanding user. The “revolutionary” SoftMenu technology became a standard and ABIT products couldn’t stand out due to this no longer unique feature against the competitors’ background. Moreover, the company committed a grave blunder: KT7/A series mainboards were quite fast and functional, but they didn’t support Athlon XP processors because not all necessary contacts were laid out. So, the trust of users to ABIT as to a manufacturer of stable and reliable products went down a bit. ABIT found itself in danger of becoming just another maker of “ordinary” mainboards, good-quality and functional, but not any different from the others.
But the company didn’t give up and struggled to regain the name of a manufacturer of something exceptional. Another step on this path was the announcement of the MAX mainboard series concept. These mainboards were loaded with a lot of integrated controllers, but had none of “old” ports like PS/2, COM or LPT. The most “innovative” thing was the absence of PS/2 ports for the keyboard and mouse, which was quite a problem as USB keyboards were not widely spread. It meant that the user often had to buy a new keyboard and mouse along with the mainboard. There were few people who wanted to do so. ABIT realized the tendency and returned PS/2 ports into its mainboards in the MAX2 series. They still didn’t have COM and LPT ports, but this deficiency was not that urgent. As far as we know, ABIT was quite satisfied with MAX2 series sales. Moreover, the announcement of such mainboards once again brought ABIT into the spotlight.
The company didn’t abandon “usual” products with COM and LPT ports, however. Although they didn’t draw much attention to themselves, they were still in demand and brought in some profit. Besides that, ABIT started producing value mainboards on Elitegroup’s facilities, but that is another story already.
So, as we have said, ABIT mainboards have a rich features set, but this is no wonder nowadays. Various ports (for example, FireWire) are implemented even in entry-level products. It’s clear that there must be some “zest” in ABIT mainboards for the user to be willing to count out extra money for it. This trump can only be high overclocking potential. Thus, all new mainboards (except value ones) from ABIT do show good overclockability. Even MAX2 mainboards were good at overclocking, notwithstanding the huge number of integrated controllers. For example, AT7-MAX2 mainboard for Athlon XP processors easily came over 200MHz FSB frequency.
The mainboard we review today belongs to the “mainstream” category. It means it has less integrated stuff onboard (in fact, there is only one integrated controller providing Serial ATA support) and is equipped with “out-dated” PS/2, COM and LPT ports. At the same time, we can’t say the mainboard lacks functionality. It’s based on NVIDIA nForce2 chipset with the “advanced” version of the South Bridge (MCP2-T), which features a number of very and not very useful functions. ABIT claims this mainboard has really high overclocking potential. Overall, it’s an interesting product. By the way, its name is NF7-S.
ABIT NF7-S | |
Supported CPUs | Socket A AMD Athlon XP/Duron |
Chipset | NVIDIA nForce2 (MCP2-T) |
FSB frequencies | 100-237MHz |
DDR DIMM slots | 3 |
AGP slot | AGP 8x |
Expansion Slots (PCI/ACR/CNR) | 5/0/0 |
USB 2.0 ports | 6 |
IEEE 1394 ports | 2 |
Integrated IDE RAID controllers | Silicon Image Sil3112A SerialATA RAID controller (two SerialATA-150 channels) |
Integrated Sound | 6-channel APU built into the South Bridge; |
Integrated LAN | Fast Ethernet integrated into the South Bridge |
Additional Features | Serillel ATA, Media XP support |
BIOS | Phoenix AwardBIOS v6.00PG |
Form-Factor | ATX, 305x245mm |
At first, ABIT named its nForce2-based mainboard NV7-8X, but then changed its mind and replaced the name with NF7. The NF7 family from ABIT consists of three models: NF7, NF7-M and the hero of our today’s review - NF7-S. The differences between the models are the following: NF7 is equipped with a lower-functionality South Bridge (MCP2) and has no Serial ATA controller. NF7-M has the same MCP2 South Bridge, but its North Bridge has an integrated graphics processor. NF7-S differs from NF7 by its MCP2-T South Bridge (which provides FireWire support) and SerialATA controller.
Besides U-ATA and FDD cables, a user’s manual and a back panel bracket (the connectors layout is non-standard in NF7-S), the mainboard package also includes:
Here are the connectors available on the mainboard:
We see ordinary PS/2 connectors for the mouse and keyboard, two COM and one LPT port, one Ethernet port, two USB ports, 5.1 audio connectors, and an optical S/PDIF output.
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.
The first thing to catch my eye in NF7-S is an additional 12V power connector, which is a rare guest in mainboards for AMD processors. It’s evidently put here to increase system stability at high frequencies. By the way, the power connectors are placed quite smartly, although this largely depends on the chassis. But if you install NF7-S into an ordinary tower case, there should be no problems with power cables: they would go along one side of the mainboard, not hindering the airflow in the case. The FDD connector is also very conveniently located from this point of view.
It seems to me that the DIMM slots are very nicely located. There is enough space between the first two DIMM slots, so that you can easily install memory modules with heatsinks and there will still remain some room for proper air circulation (the third DIMM slot is quite far on all nForce2 boards). Moreover, the installed graphics card doesn’t lock DIMM slots’ clips. This allows installing and removing memory modules without uninstalling the graphics card from the AGP slot. To be more exact, it is actually a little hard to completely open the clips, however, it doesn’t prevent you from installing or moving away the memory modules. Besides, the problem arises only if the graphics card is really big (like NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti, for instance). If you use ATI RADEON 9700 Pro based solution, there is no problem at all.
Among the advantages of the mainboard we should also mention that there is enough space around the CPU socket to install large cooling systems.
Well, we have already mentioned the major highs of the product design, now, let’s pass over to disadvantages. First thing we didn’t like was the too small space left between the AGP slot (to be exact, the line continuing it) and the second IDE connector. As a result, the capacitors of a long graphics card (we used a GeForce4 Ti4400 reference-card) may hinder the connection of the IDE cable. If the capacitors were just a little bigger, it would be impossible at all to work with this connector. And once again, this problem arises only when you install a long graphics card.
We also didn’t like the location of the FPIO2 connector. The Media XP device is supposed to be in a 5”-bay at the front part of the chassis, so what’s the point of placing its connector at the back of the mainboard? As a result, the Media XP cable goes through the whole case, and it may cause some problems even though it is not very broad.
It also struck us as very strange how the connectors for the FireWire bracket were laid out. To be more exact, the problem lies not with the actual connectors but with the cables, which are too long: you have to wrap them into a loop, because they are twice as long as you need. As a result, this loop may accidentally get into the graphics card’s cooler. And if you put the FireWire bracket a few slots away, the cables hinder the installation of PCI cards.
We don’t quite understand also why there are no mounting holes around the CPU socket. This may make it impossible to install some cooling systems, like massive Swiftech-like coolers or some water cooling solutions.
CPU power supply scheme is three-phase and impulse. It’s based on the popular HIP6301 chip. Three-phase CPU power supply solution is a standard thing in mainboards for overclocking (although ABIT has also released a mainboard with a four-phase scheme). The memory in NF7-S is powered by an independent linear regulator.
Unfortunately, the temperature data is not received from the thermal diode integrated into the processor, but is measured by the mainboard’s thermal diode that is pressed to the bottom of the CPU. This somewhat lowers the accuracy of the thermal data and increases the lag of the thermal diode.
The reviewed mainboard is supposed to have good overclocking options. That’s why this section is the longest in our today’s review. The BIOS comes first. We are most interested in “SoftMenu III” and “Advanced Chipset Features Setup” pages, as they hide the most important parameters.
Here we have CPU and voltages settings. You can see in the snapshot that we are allowed to adjust the CPU multiplier, FSB frequency, and the FSB/memory frequencies ratio. NVIDIA nForce2 allows setting this parameter in a wide range, although the highest performance is reached in the synchronous mode, when the FSB frequency equals the memory frequency. The upper limit of the FSB frequency is 237MHz in this mainboard, which is rather ordinary according to today’s standards. It’s another thing that not all mainboards can work at the maximum allowable FSB clock-rate. We may take Gigabyte 667 Ultra mainboards for Pentium 4. They allow setting 355MHz FSB, but have a rather average overclocking potential. We will learn a bit later whether ABIT NF7-S stands to its word and works at the specified FSB. Now we go to the “SoftMenu III” page.
The CPU multiplier can be changed from 5 to 22. Looks impressive, although hardly useful. The next parameter, “CPU Interface”, is of rather questionable use. When it is “Disabled” the board will use ”the most stable CPU/FSB settings will be used” (as it said in the user manual).
The AGP frequency can be adjusted independently of the FSB and memory clock-rates. Rather a useful thing: you don’t have to worry about the graphics card during overclocking.
The next section of the “SoftMenu III” page lists the voltages. The CPU voltage can be set from 1.1V to 1.85V with 0.025V stepping. We can’t say it is gigantic as some mainboards can increase the CPU voltage to 2.2V, but 1.85V is quite enough in most cases. ABIT may have thought that higher voltage would have been dangerous. We share this point of view, although extreme overclockers may remain unsatisfied.
There is one peculiarity we found in NF7-S concerning the CPU voltage. According to hardware monitoring data, the voltage CPU actually receives is about 0.05V lower than set in the mainboard BIOS. We can’t say why it is so, especially as the mainboard is equipped with a quality voltage regulator. If there is some problem in the BIOS, it may be corrected in the future. So far, the maximum voltage you can actually send to the CPU in NF7-S is 1.8V. By the way, lower voltages may also come in handy: to reduce CPU heat dissipation and to build “noiseless” systems.
The next parameter, memory voltage, can vary from 2.4V to 2.7V with 0.1V stepping. The second limit looks rather low. Some companies that produce overclocking memory modules (for example, Corsair) recommend setting memory voltage to 2.8V for highest performance. And once again, there is some inconsistency between the value in the BIOS and the actual voltage, which is about 0.02V higher.
The next option is “Chipset Voltage”. There are three available values: 1.5V, 1.6V and 1.7V. By increasing the chipset voltage, you can achieve higher working stability at high FSB frequencies. Interestingly, the chipset voltage in ABIT NF7-S is raised beforehand. It’s 1.6V against the regular 1.5V. So, the active cooler mounted onto the North Bridge seems quite appropriate in this case.
The AGP voltage can vary from 1.5V (nominal) to 1.8V with 0.1V stepping (for AGP 4x graphics cards). It’s not a very helpful option as doesn’t make sense to overclock the graphics card by setting higher AGP frequency and voltage. Anyway, this option doesn’t harm the performance or stability, either, so why not have it?
The last parameter in the “SoftMenu III” page is called “CPU Over Temp. Protect”. A similar item is available in the “PC Health Status” menu. Moreover, the temperature values shown in these two pages of the BIOS may differ and we can’t tell which has a higher priority. And the both items, according to their descriptions, serve to set the highest CPU temperature value. When the CPU temp is over it, the system shuts down to protect the processor from overheating.
Now we go over to the “Advanced Chipset Features” page. There are a lot of various options here. The first half of them refers to the memory subsystem. We can adjust CAS Latency, RAS-to-CAS Delay, Row-precharge Delay and Row-active Delay in wide ranges. At the same time, there is no such parameter as DRAM Command Rate. Seems like it’s the chipset, not the mainboard, that doesn’t allow adjusting it.
Among interesting and non-standard parameters we see “AGP (and also FSB) Spread Spectrum” and “CPU Thermal Throttling”. To cut it short, the first option allows reducing the level of electromagnetic noise from the mainboard, but also reduces system stability during overclocking. This option is quite useful: some people say that turning on the “Spread Spectrum” parameter results in better image quality output onto the TV-set through the graphics card’s TV-out. By the way, most mainboards have just simple “Spread Spectrum” parameter, without the division into FSB and AGP, and two positions (Disabled and Enabled), while NF7-S has an in-between value – a compromise between system stability and noise level.
As for “CPU Thermal Throttling”, we can’t say anything definite about this option (note: the overheat protection system in Pentium 4 has a similar name). We will tell you about it as soon as we know what it actually serves for.
The “PC Health” page contains all the info from the hardware monitoring system of the mainboard: the voltages and rotation speeds of three fans. There is the “CPU Shutdown Temperature” – the parameter that duplicates the parameter from the “SoftMenu III” page. The “CPU Warning Temperature” sets a certain max temperature, and when the system gets over it an emergency signal about CPU overheating is sent. The “Shutdown when CPUFAN Fail” option says whether the system shuts down when the CPU fan goes down. You should be careful with this option if you use some low-speed fans. The hardware monitoring just may not “see” such a fan and the system wouldn’t power up.
Let’s now turn from the descriptions to our everyday overclocking practice. We checked the ability of the mainboard to increase the FSB frequency without increasing the memory frequency and the ability of the mainboard (and memory) to speed up when the FSB and memory are in the sync mode. The second thing is more interesting from the practical point of view as NVIDIA nForce2 works best when it is synchronously clocked with the memory. Anyway, the first part will help us to check whether ABIT keeps its word about the maximum FSB frequency.
So, we raised the chipset voltage to the maximum 1.7V and set the promised 237MHz FSB. We were surprised to find that the mainboard did quite well at such FSB frequency. At least, we couldn’t make the system hang up either by running all the demos in Unreal Tournament 2003, or running 3DMark 2001 SE three times in a row, or with the help of Sandra Burn Wizard. So, ABIT’s promise about the max FSB frequency appeared hundred percent true!
Now, to the sync mode. The chipset voltage was set to 1.7V, the memory voltage – to 2.7V, memory timings were 2-3-3-7 (CAS Latency, RAS-to-CAS Delay, Row-precharge Delay, Row-active delay). We used Corsair XMS3200C2 memory modules. As this review is not about memory we didn’t play with different memory timings to find their effect on overclocking and performance.
The highest FSB frequency the system worked stable at was 212MHz. At the next value, 217MHz, the system was unstable: tumbled out of Unreal Tournament 2003 into the Desktop. We guess 212MHz is quite well both for the mainboard and memory. At the same time, we suppose the result might have been higher if we could raise the memory voltage a bit more. But we can’t yet prove it.
Before turning to the actual benchmarks results, we would like to point out the following: mainboards based on the same chipset don’t greatly differ in performance. So when choosing a specific mainboard, the most important things are rich features set, overclocking-friendly options, stability and reliability, and technical support rather than the board’s actual performance in benchmarks.
We ran the tests on the following testbed:
The memory was set to the sync mode with the FSB, timings being 2-2-2-5. The benchmarking results are listed below:
Business Winstone 2002 | 31.7 |
Content Creation Winstone 2003 | 37.5 |
3DMark2001 SE | 12613 |
PCMark2002 CPU Score | 6336 |
PCMark2002 Memory Score | 4707 |
Botmatch-antalus (UT2003Demo) Score, 1024x768 | 56.44 |
SiSoft Sandra RAM Int Buffered Bandwidth | 2509MB/s |
SiSoft Sandra RAM Float Buffered Bandwidth | 2346MB/s |
You see our testbed shows no striking slumps in performance. You can compare the results with those we obtained in our review of AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 2800+ and 2500+ on Barton Core.
Highs:
Lows:
We guess the advantages weigh heavier, although, as usual, it’s up to you to decide. Overall, we recommend buying this mainboard for overclockers as well as for ordinary users who want to have a functional product. This mainboard won’t suit for extreme overclockers who like to stretch things to the limit. It won’t suit also for those who want to build up a RAID array of the drives available in the market so far.
ABIT NF7-S costs about $130.