Quick and feature-rich, but understand what you're getting.
Written: Jun 06 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Feature-rich (IEEE1394, USB2.0, Dolby 5.1, SATA, dual DDR). Highly configurable. Fast.
Cons: Stability varies widely. Very sensitive to power supply. Pricey
The Bottom Line: If properly configured and given the proper supporting cast (power, memory, etc.), this board is blazingly fast and ultra-configurable.
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| sinnr's Full Review: Abit NF7-S Motherboard |
Boards based upon the Nvidia NForce 2 chipset are currently (spring 2003) considered to be best overall solution for operation of Athlon XP processors, especially those based upon the latest "Barton" core with front-side bus (FSB) speeds of 400 MHz stock. Among these boards, a few have gained somewhat legendary status (Asus A7N8X, Epox EP-8RDA+ and Abit NF7-S seem to be the "big three"), with some owners of these boards being fanatical about the merits of their selected board versus the others. With this in mind, I'll speak strictly to my own experiences with this board, and will not address my own perceived pluses/minuses versus similar products.
The Abit NF7-S is a high-end performance/enthusiast motherboard which has a very rich feature set out of the box. The standard feature set includes:
- AMD Athlon XP Support up to 3300+ and beyond (supports Barton core processors with current BIOS).
- FSB up to 400 MHz
- Dual DDR memory
- Serial ATA
- Firewire/IEEE-1394
- Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound (via Nvidia "Soundstorm" technology), including S/PDIF connector
- USB 2.0
- Hardware processor thermal protection (shuts down your system immediately if processor exceeds a certain value).
- One 8x AGP and 5 PCI slots
Note that there is also an NF7-G board from Abit, which includes on-board graphics (GeForce 4). Similar offerings are also available from other manufacturers.
If you don't know what many of these "features" are, this board probably isn't a good deal for you. Honestly, it's not a board for amateurs; you really should have some experience with building/troubleshooting systems before taking this one on (see below under "the not-so-good").
The good:
As oulined above, the board is loaded with features, and provides the owner opportunity to add to the board with features important to them. For example, I use SCSI in my system, so I chose to disable the IDE and serial ATA devices, and use two SCSI controllers in my system. I also added a Tv-tuner/video capture card, and still have plenty of room for expansion.
Installation of the board was very straightforward. The board has a nice layout, and the processor socket, slots, and appropriate connectors are generally easy to access, even if the board is populated. There are small "bands" on either side of the socket A which are helpful for protecting the board from damage when installing the heatsink (using a screwdriver).
The on-board sound is excellent, and compares favorably to the SB Audigy in another of my systems. The included S/PDIF connector on the backpanel is a welcome addition, since many of the competing boards do not include that in their stock configuration. Unlike my previous experience with on-board sound, the processor is not adversely affected. Watching DVDs or playing games on my system is a real treat now.
Abit is well known for producing motherboards that are highly configurable via their "SoftMenu". As such, the BIOS is similarly feature rich to the rest of the board, with options to adjust processor, memory, and AGP speeds. You also have good options for voltage modifications if you choose to overclock your system.
The not-so-good:
From my experience, this board appears to be very sensitive to other components. I've burned quite a bit of time with this board trying to find the right set of components to keep the system stable.
For example, on my board if the +12V supply rail drops below about 11.7V, the board behavior becomes highly erratic, even if overclocking is not done. Also, my board was not at all pleased with using generally high quality Micron/Crucial memory, yet loves running on Kingston and Centon memory of the same speed. It loves my GeForce 4 Ti4600 card, yet occasionally chooses not to boot with a Radeon 7000.
The board also runs hot and consumes quite a bit of power, although the included fan on the Nvidia Northbridge is a welcome addition. Plan for good cooling if you use this board and it should help address some of the stability issues as well. You probably shouldn't even look at less than a 400W supply with this board, and use the auxilliary 12V connector to help with stability.
The ugly:
One item to be particularly careful with on this board is the revision level at time of purchase. I have a revision 1.2 board, which is known to support 400 FSB (and DDR400) in most cases, although only revision 2.0 (and greater) officially support it according to Abit. Boards previous to revision 1.2 are generally not as stable and have reduced features, so be careful especially if buying from the used market. Also, since some of the accessories (I/O shield, firewire connections) are proprietary, you want to ensure you have them for this board, or do your homeworkt o ensure you can get ahold of them.
Overall, this board is very good, so long as you know what you're doing when problems arise (and they will, based upon my experience), and have the time and resources to address them. Also, don't look to this board as an effective motherboard upgrade -- you'll probably want to look at other upgrades as well (power, memory, etc.) to take advantage of this board and have a stable system.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 79
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Epinions.com ID:
sinnr
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Reviews written: 5
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