Several weeks ago we reported about ABIT’s plans on the mainboard market for this year (see this news-story). We were quite correct and now our information is proved again, nevertheless, the time is the strongest thing that can change almost everything: ABIT revised its plans and added several new models of products there. The changes touched upon the Pentium 4 platform that apparently became the leader in retail and OEM sales.

Let me introduce you to the whole line of solutions for the Pentium 4 and Celeron processors from ABIT. I start from the most innovative one:

• IT7II Version 2.0. This is another MAX mainboard based on Intel 845PE and supporting PC2700 memory. Also this solution will feature SerialATA interface. As for the key features of the novelty, I would like to mention the support of AGP 4x and Serial ATA interface (not taking new memory types into account). Also the board will support USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, ATA/133 RAID, 10/100Mbit LAN. It will also have integrated 6-channel sound and will support Media XP, the brand name panel installed into the 5-inch bay of your PC case. The due date is scheduled for early Q4.

The company will also introduce a family of mainboards based on the up and coming Intel’s chipsets with PC2700 support:

• BE7-RAID. This is a classical mainboard on Intel 845PE. It will boast no Serial ATA support. Instead it will support USB 2.0, ATA/133 RAID and 6-channel sound. The product is planned for the early Q4.
• BGE7. Of course, since ABIT decided to target totally different market sectors, they definitely need to have a number of integrated mainboards in their line of products. This is a typical solution based on Intel 845GE. Do not expect it to be very feature-rich, there will be no Serial ATA or IDE RAID controllers, but, of course, it provides numerous of the most-needed features like USB 2.0, 6-channel sound and so on. The devices is set to come in the early Q4.

A bit later, in November, I assume, the company will also unveil a pair of high-end mainboards intended for use in workstations or maybe even entry-level servers:

• SI7. It seems that ABIT does not want to launch a product based on the i850E core-logic due to some reason (several guys even tried to fill an online petition to ask ABIT to design this high-end product), but instead, the company will reveal its mainboard based on SiS’ R658+963 chipset with PC1066 RDRAM and AGP 8x support.
• GB7. In the end of the year ABIT is going to launch Socket478 mainboard supporting dual-channel PC2100 DDR SDRAM. The newcomer will be based on the upcoming Granite Bay chipset from Intel. It will feature AGP 8x and Serial ATA.

According to our current information, ABIT has not changed its initial plans regarding AMD’s ClawHammer and Athlon XP platforms: they will launch numerous mainboards for both, based on NVIDIA and VIA chipsets. Please read our original story for more information.