Everyone
holds a few memories close to their heart; their first kiss,
the first time they drove a car solo, and the first time
they got a sweet overclock on a motherboard. OK, that
last one might be a bit of a stretch, but there are a few of
us who have clung onto boards, perhaps longer than we should
have, because the features and stability made it such a
winner. Abit's BH6 was just such a board. It was
a reputation builder for Abit, and was widely regarded as
one of the best 440BX boards of its day. The BH6
helped herald in the age of jumperless boards, making system
setup easier by the addition of the now well-known SoftMenu
section in the BIOS. Within the SoftMenu on the BH6
was the infamous 66/100 MHz FSB toggle, which allowed for
overclockers to move beyond the normal specifications for
their CPUs. Thus, the BH6 became almost synonymous
with overclocking.
It has
been five years since the release of the BH6, and much has
changed in the computing world since then. Until now,
Abit had not released any other boardsthat carried
the "BH" tag. That all changes with the recent release
of the BH7, which uses the Intel 845PE chipset at its core.
While this may not be the newest or most technologically
advanced chipset out there, it has been out long enough to
have become a completely mature chipset. Abit has
tweaked this just a bit to provide stability and power with
the BH7, as we shall soon see.
Memory Three 184-pin DIMM sockets
(unbuffered Non-ECC)
Supports 3 DDR200/266 DIMMs (2GB Maximum)
or 2 DDR333 DIMMs (2GB Maximum)
Expansion Slots Five 32-bit PCI Bus Master
Slots
One 1.5V AGP Slot (AGP 4x)
External
Connections
Two PS/2 ports (keyboard & mouse)
One Serial port
One Parallel port
Five Audio jacks (line-in, mic-in, front speaker,
center/subwoofer, and surround speaker)
One S/PDIF In connector
One S/PDIF Out connector
Four USB 2.0 ports
One RJ-45 LAN connector
Internal I/O
Connections One Floppy Disk connector
supporting up to 2.88MB
Two IDE Connectors (UltraDMA 100/66/33 Support)
supports only 1 channel when SATA enabled
One Serial ATA 150 Connector
One USB 2.0 header
One CD-IN header and one AUX-IN connector
One IrDA header
Audio Features On board RealTek ALC6506-Channel AC '97
CODEC
Digital interface supports 24-bit S/PDIF optical
In/Out
Network
Features
RealTek RTL8101L 10/100M PCI Ethernet Controller
Serial ATA 150
Marvell® 88i8030 SATA bridge supporting
up to Single Channel S-ATA device
NOTE - Abit's website lists the following: On board Silicon Image Serial ATA PCI Controller
BIOS Award BIOS
SoftMenu III technology to set CPU parameters
Supports ACPI, DMI 2.0, PNP
CPU Temperature and Voltage Monitoring
Form Factor ATX form factor
Size: 30.5cm x 22cm
Below are the
items that were included with the sample we received for
review:
Abit BH7 Motherboard
One 80-pin IDE ribbon cables
One 3.5" floppy drive cable
One Serial ATA cable
I/O shield
User's Manual
Software & Drivers CD
The bundle, as you can see
in the picture above, is somewhat limited.
There are only the basics that one would need to get a basic
system up and running. Abit has included one floppy
cable, one 80-pin IDE cable for a hard drive, or, for those
so inclined, a serial ATA cable. Other than that, all
we found were the User's Manual, a driver CD, and the I/O
shield that matched the board's external configuration.
While many other manufacturers provide brackets for extra
USB ports or audio jacks,there is no need with the
BH7 as there are four USB 2.0 ports and five audio jacks,
not including the S/PDIF IN and OUT connections, in the
external connections array. The emphasis here is
squarely on the board, and not on the add-ons
