Monday, September 22, 2003

This week I am introducing Abit BH7 to you. This motherboard, without any doubt, is not the most spectacular. Here, no glamourous designs, but a more sober approach without really tricky functions that only experts can use with ease. But this motherboard offers you enough to enjoy it.

Abit BH7 is part of the FSB 400MHz/500MHz family that supports Hyper-Threading from Intel foundry. In spite of its sobriety, it offers everything users need. We are talking about SerialATA 150 and ATA 100/66/33, 10/100 network port, DDR 333/266/200 up to 2 GB support memory, 4x AGP support, 6 USB ports 2.0 and for sure the Dolby Digital sound system with optical connectors.

Overclocking users will be delighted. To gain all of the processor power, adjustments for the Vcore voltage, Dimm and AGP like adjustments for the FSB frequency and the internal multiplier are available directly in BIOS giving a great flexibility to the user.

Finally, Abit BH7 offers devices like the Hardware Monitoring that includes: Fan Speed, Voltages, System and CPU temperatures. This motherboard also supports Wake Up by LAN, Modem Ring, RTC Alarm and the Keyboard/Mouse Power On features.

As we are used to seeing, Abit makes no more exceptions concerning the low level configuration. No jumpers at all to adjust anything. The game is played directly in BIOS. Hummmm sounds good as usual doesn’t it ?

To make a long story short, it is quite easier and faster to drive the board directly in BIOS. From the Advanced Chipset Setup menu, we can adjust the processor FSB from 100 MHZ to 250 MHz in 1-Hz steps.

BIOS gives us the possibility to choose AGP/PCI frequencies, CPU Vcore Voltage(1.5 to 1.975 Volts) , DDR Voltage(2.5 to 2.7 Volts) and AGP Voltage(1.5 to 1.7). Memory can be detected automatically by the system. This feature is called “by SPD” or Serial Presence Detect. Or it can be adjusted manually by the user. In that case, one can adjust the CAS Latency, RAS to CAS delay, RAS pre-charge delay and pre-charge active delay. Be careful with those parameters. Although they won’t go wild with your memory stick, a bad choice from you can cause instability in your system or even hang it!

Note that the Hyper-Threading feature is available only when a P4 processor, supporting Hyper-Threading, is installed.

Without saying ‘Dumb installation proof’, it is really simple! As no jumpers are on the motherboard, we just have to jump into the BIOS to configure that beast. Default values could be used like as they are without any changes. Please, OC’s, forget the last sentence; this doesn’t apply to you. Most of you see in Abit the opportunity to give rise to your art.

Offering several parameters allowing Vcore adjustments, FSB, and others, this board allows a great control ease to its users. But woe to the one who exceeds the limits! If unfortunately, one exceeds them, just turning the computer off and on again will make it possible to recover the “by default” values. It’s as simple as that!

The installation CD contains:

- Sounds card drivers
- Network drivers
- SATA drivers
- VGA card drivers
- USB 2.0 drivers
- Intel drivers
- DirectX 8.1
- Adobe Acrobat Reader
- User Manual
- "Hardware Doctor" Software
- "Award Flash" Utility to reprogram BIOS
- Low Level formating utility

The material accompanying BH7 includes:

- 1 80-conductor Ribbon Cable for Ultra DMA 100/133
- 1 40-conductor Ribbon Cable for ATA 33/66
- 1 Serial ATA 150 cable
- 1 Ribbon Cable for 3.5-inch floppy drive
- 1 back panel for additional USB 2.0 (2)
- 1 I/O shield

Next: Technical details

Abit BH7