| abit
bd7ii-raid |
Approx Price: $175 CDN ($100
US) |
| MFG
Link: |
Abit BD7II-RAID |
| Processor |
Intel
Pentium4 |
| Northbridge |
Intel
i845E |
| Southbridge |
Intel
ICH4 |
| Supported
FSB |
100/133
MHz |
| Form
Factor |
ATX |
| DIMM
Slots |
Three
PC1600/2100 |
| Max
Memory |
2
GB |
| Integrated Video |
No |
| Shared
Video Memory |
N/A |
| IDE |
2
Ultra/100, 2 Ultra/133 |
| AGP |
4x AGP,
1.5V Lock |
| PCI |
5 32bit
PCI's |
| ISA |
None |
| CNR/AMR/ACR |
None |
| LAN |
10/100
Realtek 8100B |
| Audio |
Realtek
ALC650 5.1 |
| USB |
6 USB
2.0 |
| Power
Supply |
Pentium
4 |
| Misc |
2 Serial,
1 Parallel, WoL | |
We've
always been fans of Abit's motherboard because they usually perform well
and overclock like champs. Abit's previous motherboard, the BD7, was extremely popular
because of it's good stock performance, and overclockability and it looks like
Abit's new BD7II-RAID might be improving on those trends even further.
First off, Abit included IDE RAID into the equation as
well as three DIMM slots. Rounding out the other features the BD7II-RAID
has on board 10/100 LAN, 5.1 audio (software codec), 4x AGP slot and five PCI's.
The board is based on a fairly compact ATX PCB, so it isn't very wide. To give
you a better picture, it's about the same size as most old school i440BX
motherboards which means it shouldn't have any problems fitting in any
cases.
Abit's has the BIOS covered with their SoftMenu III.
FSB's can be adjusted from 100 MHz to 250 MHz in 1 MHz increments as you
probably already expect. The PCI Bus frequency can be set with dividers or
locked at certain speeds altogether.
CPU Vcore
can be adjusted to 15% above the stock values, and DIMM voltages can be
up'ed to 2.7V. Of all the tweaks, we're a bit surprised that Abit only allows a
maximum of 2.7V in the DIMM voltage. Overclocking brought us to a maximum
of 159 MHz FSB.
Abit has
to save some board space by mounting the CMOS battery vertical. With the
battery mounted in this position it is only held in by three solder points
so it's easy for one to snap the battery right off!
Bottom
line, the Abit BD7II-RAID
is a very good motherboard with its fair share of features and overclocking
tools. Some higher VDimm settings would have been nice in the grand scheme of
things, but most users probably won't care, and this could be adjusted
with future BIOS revisions.
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