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THE BD7II-RAID's BIOS:
The Abit BD7II-RAID is
equipped with a very complete version of the Phoenix /
Award v.6.0 BIOS, that populates the vast majority of
motherboards currently shipping. All of
the on-board components can be enabled or disabled
from within the BIOS, and all of the various settings,
we've come to expect, for tweaking memory performance
are available.
With the BD7II-RAID, like
most of their other new products, Abit has included
the universally lauded SoftMenu III. From within
the SoftMenu III, users can
adjust the FSB (Front Side Bus) frequency between 100MHz and 250MHz,
in 1MHz increments. This board also has an assortment of
dividers that allow for better stability at higher bus
speeds, because users can run all of their peripherals
"in spec", while pushing their FSB to their CPU's
limit. Something we also liked to see was that
the PCI clock can be
"locked" at 33MHz, 37MHz or 44MHz, regardless of what FSB
is being used. This ability should make the BD7II-RAID
a favorite amongst the overclocking crowd.
The Vcore and DDR voltages are also user adjustable,
but not to the extent we would like. The Vcore can be set
to +5%, +10% or +15%, which equates to a maximum of
1.725v with the current batch of P4s. The
DDR memory voltage can be set to anything between
2.5v and 2.7v, in .1v increments. Another
setting that some will find interesting is the ability
to alter the DRAM Ratio H/W Strap. This setting
would normally be used with P4s that have a 100MHz
FSB, to run the memory asynchronously at 133MHz. If
the DRAM Ratio H/W Strap setting is changed when using
a P4 with a 133MHz FSB though, users can then run
their memory at 177MHz, or +33% over the processors
default FSB frequency. With some tweaking, and
high quality memory, this should make for some nice
memory bandwidth numbers...
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Layout and Build Quality |
| Abit
is at it again... |
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| THE BD7II-RAID's LAYOUT:
Physically
speaking, the Abit BD7II-RAID isn't very flashy. The
PCB isn't brightly colored, or have any fancy cooling
hardware that'll catch your eyes, but make no mistake,
this board is chock-full of goodies...
The Northbridge is passively
cooled, with a relatively large all aluminum heatsink, that
is held in place with an easily removable spring clip.
The i845E Northbridge doesn't generate a lot of heat, so
passive cooling should be adequate even in overclocked
situations. The Multi-I/O back panel is a little
different than most other boards. As you can see,
the USB ports are shifted to the right, with the 10/100
Ethernet port located just above them. If your case
doesn't conform to this layout, don't sweat it, Abit
includes a cover that should fit most standard ATX
enclosures. There are 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot on
the BD7II-RAID. We prefer 6 PCI slots, but with all
of the on-board peripherals populating this board, 5 PCI
slots should be plenty.
The Realtek RTL8100B Ethernet
controller, the ALC650 AC'97 audio codec, as well as the
High-Point HPT-372 RAID controller (underneath the
sticker!) are all visible in the shots above. The
IDE-RAID connectors and floppy connector are all located
to the right of the HPT-372 controller, mounted
perpendicular to the edge of the board. The standard
IDE connectors are located just behind the three DIMM
slots, on the upper right side, mounted parallel to the edge.
The ATX power connector is located in a good position, at
the upper right corner of the board, but the four-pin
12V connector could have been located a bit better.
Its mounted just behind the 15-Pin game port, so without
some creative wiring the cable will drape directly over
your CPU cooler. The CMOS battery is mounted
vertically, which makes for easy removal.
Unfortunately, mounting the battery this way, also makes
it easy to break the battery socket off the board, so be
careful with inserting or removing any cables or
peripherals.
Also visible are the three DIMM slots, which thankfully
are far enough away from the AGP slot to make installation
and removal of DIMMs easy, even with a long video card
installed. We tested the board with a single stick
of Corsair PC2700 DDR RAM, and did not have any problems,
but keep in mind that single-sided modules have to be used
in DIMM slots 2 and 3 if you plan on populating all 3
slots.
There is ample room around the
socket to fit just about any oversized cooler. In
fact, there is a surprising lack of clutter around the
socket, with only six caps and a few coils in close
proximity. Lastly, scattered throughout the board
are three 3-Pin fan headers which can are all monitored by
the on-board WinBond chip...
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Time For The MSI
845E Max2 BLR
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