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ABIT AN7 (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400)
By CPU-zilla
Category : Mainboard
Published by Jimmy Tang on Wednesday, 21st April, 2004
Rating : 4.5 out of 5 stars  


What We Liked

Similar to a lot of other nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards, the ABIT AN7 comes with almost all of the standard features that you can find from other brands or models. One of the thing that struck us most was its simplicity and opened layout while having most built-in features that you've come to expect from motherboards of such a caliber.

The board comes with five PCI slots and an AGP 8x slot. What we liked about ABIT's arrangement was the extra slot space given between the AGP slot and the first PCI slot. While some may have wanted an extra PCI slot there, ABIT has opted to leave that space empty for modders who want a bigger clearance for a larger graphics card cooler. Users of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra cards would also benefit with this arrangement since the extra space is now specifically tailored for cards that require two slots.

There's ample space between the AGP slot and the first PCI slot. In between is where the FireWire controller is located.

In between this empty space, ABIT has added a Texas Instruments two-port FireWire controller. You can find a red 9-pin header for one of the 1394 ports which can be extended via a cable either to the front panel or to one of the back PCI slots. It was however unfortunate that ABIT did not include a bracket for this header. Not to worry, as the other port has been conveniently routed to the back I/O panel.

The Texas Instruments IEEE 1394a two-port controller.

The ABIT AN7 features two SATA ports and they were based on the popular SiI3112A controller. Supporting either RAID 0 or 1, the ports are conveninently located at the side of the board. Thus, in addition to the easy cable management of the Serial ATA technology, ABIT has tucked it away to the side to allow for even better airflow dynamics of the entire system.

The Silicon Image SiI3112A two-port SATA RAID controller.

The NVIDIA nForce2 MCP-T comes built-in with an Ethernet MAC and it is being exploited by ABIT via an external Realtek RTL8201BL PHY. This gave the board an instant support for Fast Ethernet networking capabilities. Similar to other boards, you can find the LAN jack along with link and activity LEDs at the I/O panel, above two USB 2.0 ports.

The rear ATX I/O panel with full connections available for its 5.1-channel audio, including optical S/PDIF input and output ports too.

For overclockers, they would probably find the two-digit POST code display located at the top left corner of the board very convenient for troubleshooting hardware problems. Besides displaying normal Award BIOS POST codes, it also has the ability to display ABIT's own AC2003 POST codes. AC2003 codes are those developed by ABIT and forms part of the µGuru's features. There are a total of 30 codes from AC2003 alone, and they mainly focus on the various component voltages.

The two-digit POST display.


ABIT's µGuru chip which handles important functions like monitoring the fan speed, voltages and all the various overclocking features of the board.

The various overclocking tweaks allowable by the board are as follows :-

  • FSB Settings: 100 - 300MHz (in 1MHz steps)
  • AGP Frequency: 66 – 99MHz (in 1MHz steps)
  • FSB:RAM ratio: 3:3, 3:4, 3:5, 3:6, 4:3, 4:4, 4:5, 4:6, 5:3, 5:4, 5:5, 5:6, 6:3, 6:4, 6:5, 6:6
  • CPU Voltage Settings: 1.375V to 2.313V (in 0.031V steps)
  • Northbridge Voltage Settings: 1.60 to 1.75V (in 0.05V steps)
  • DDR Voltage Settings: 2.5V to 2.7V (in 0.1V steps), 2.8V, 2.9V - 3.10V (in 0.05V steps), 3.2V
  • AGP Voltage Settings: 1.50V to 1.65V (in 0.05V steps)
  • Multiplier Selection: Yes

    As you can see in the exhaustive list of tweaks available, ABIT has spared no effort in bringing us as much usable tweaks as possible. However, one nitpick is the RAM:FSB ratio where values like 3:3, 4:4, 5:5 and 6:6 may seem different, but in actual fact, they would produce the same FSB:RAM ratios. Thus, the options may look plentiful, but they have the same net effect.

    The ABIT AN7's northbridge cooler.
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