Abit IT7 MAX2 Rev2 i845PE Motherboard Review
 Abit stunned the world
in March of 2002 when it announced the "To the MAX" line of motherboards.
Manufacturers have been talking about getting rid of the legacy ports on
motherboards for a long time but it was Abit which took the initiative and
actually did, well just that. Their original AT7 MAX (KT333) and IT7 MAX
(i845E) were quite revolutionary boards. Gone were the Serial, Parallel and PS/2
ports, instead replaced by small army of high speed USB 2.0
and IEEE 1394 jacks.
It seems
that Abit may have been moving a bit too fast for most consumers though
as many in the hardware community complained about the removal of the
legacy PS/2 ports. Abit has always been a company to listen to the end user and
they did indeed rehash the MAX-series to create the AT7 MAX2 (KT400) and
IT7 MAX2 (i845E) with PS/2 ports (but still without serial and
parallel).
After Intel released the i845PE chipset Abit redid
their flagship Intel motherboard once again, calling it the Abit IT7 MAX2
Rev2. I'm going to be a spoiler here, the IT7 MAX2 Rev2 is easily the best i845 based motherboard I have used!
=)
| abit it7
max2 rev2 motherboard |
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Ships with the following:
- 2x IDE ATA66/100 Cable
- Serial ATA Cable
- FDD Cable
- Driver CD
- Serial ATA/RAID Driver Disk
- User Manual
- IDE to Serial ATA Adapter
- Rear I/O Back Panel
- Bag of Twist Ties and
Cable
Clamps.
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| Brackets: |
|
USB 2.0 Bracket |
Here's the
big list of onboard features include; two serial ATA headers, Ultra/133 IDE
RAID, 5.1 audio (including center, sub and optical out), 10/100 LAN, no less
then ten USB 2.0 ports (6
onboard, 4 USB 2.0 headers) and finally three IEEE 1394 ports (two onboard, one header). If that's
not good enough for you Abit was still able to include four 32 bit PCI
slots as well as one 4x AGP port (1.5V lock).
Based on
the i845PE chipset, the IT7 MAX2 Rev2 supports any Pentium4
processors based on the 400/533 MHz FSB, but Abit recently showed that this
motherboard can run at up to 880 MHz FSB (220 MHz Bus Speed) with the right hardware! This means the IT7 MAX2 Rev2 should be able to run the
800 MHz based Pentium 4's that are soon to be released. The three DIMM slots support
up to a maximum of 2GB of PC1600/2100/2700 DDR RAM.
Ain't
she beautiful? It also makes me wonder why my
personal version of this board came in a tan brown in colour. It looks like I bought
one of the "early" IT7 MAX2 Rev2's before they switched to a black PCB
because the local retailers here all stock the black IT7 MAX2 Rev2 now. It's pretty evident
that Abit thought of the end user when you consider the layout of the motherboard. The
ATX power connector is in an awesome location just above the DIMM slots. With
the main IDE and floppy drive connectors to the right of the DIMM's cables will
not interfere with case airflow.
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