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Abit TH7 Motherboard


Date
: 06/24/01 – 05:14:45 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Abit
Price: $165

Introduction

The Pentium 4, Intel’s new high-end processor, has been around for some time now, so O decided to take a closer look at some of the P4 motherboards that are currently available. The first one we are putting on our testbench is made by Abit and is called the TH7. As always an Abit board is not ‘just’ a motherboard but has something extra over the other boards available and it is to different with the TH7! Like they did with the KT7 (KT133 – socketA) and even the long forgotten BH6 (BX – slot1) to name a few, Abit introduces a new, highly tweakable motherboard with features never seen on other boards before, supporting the new Intel processor.

Most other P4 motherboard manufacturers have been sticking to the Intel reference design which isn’t a bad thing but you won’t get all the neat and exciting features you do get when you buy a totally new design just like the TH7 has. Personally I like the name ‘TH7′ because it has a mighty touch I reckon … for some odd reason it makes me think of ‘THunder’ or ‘THor’, god of lightening … oh well I am getting a bit sidetracked here so lets continue the review …

Sales have been on the low side for the P4 processor and the P4 motherboards, mainly because of the sky-rocketing prices of the RAMBUS memory that is needed on all the current P4 motherboards (things are changing soon with VIA releasing a DDR chipset for the Pentium 4 and Intel releasing one by the end of the year). Lately prices have been dropping so it might be the right time to purchase yourself a nice P4 powered by some RDRAM memory sticks. So lets take a closer look at the TH7 from Abit shall we?

Page 2 : Specifications

The Specifications

When Abit designed the TH7, they tried to do the same thing as they did when they designed the KT7A: bringing the audience something ‘new’ and ‘inspirering’ to other manufacturers. First of all I suggest you peak at the TH7 specifications list …

CPU
1. Supports Intel Pentium 4 Socket 423 based processor
2. Supports 400MHz System Data Bus

Chipset
1. Intel 850 (ICH2) chipset
2. Supports 400MHz (Front Side Bus)
3. Supports AGP 4X 1.5V device only
4. Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)
5. Supports Ultra ATA/100,Ultra ATA/66,Ultra ATA/33 mode

Ultra DMA 100
1. High Point HTP370 IDE Controller
2. Ultra DMA 100MB/Sec data transfer rate
3. RAID 0(stripping mode for boosting performance)
4. RAID 1 (mirroring mode for data security)
5. RAID 0 +1(stripping and mirroring)

Memory
1. Supports up to Four 184-pin Direct Rambus RIMM modules
2. Supports up to 2GB MAX.
3. Supports PC600 or PC800 RDRAM

Audio
1. AC’97 Digital Audio controller integrated
2. AC’97 2-Channel Audio CODEC on board

System BIOS
1. SOFT MENUTM II Technology
2. Award Plug and Play BIOS supports APM and ACPI
3. Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS

Multi I/O Functions
1. 4 Channels Bus Master IDE Ports support Ultra DMA 33/66/100
2. PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse Connectors
3. 1 Floppy Port (up to 2.88MB)
4. 1 Parallel Port (EPP/ECP)
5. 2 Serial Ports
6. 3 USB Ports
7. Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, MIC-in)

LAN (Manufacturer Option)
1. On board Intel 82559 PCI local bus Fast Ethernet controller
2. 10/100Mb Operation
3. Supports ACPI & Wake on LAN
4. User friendly driver included

Miscellaneous
1. l ATX form factor
2. 1 AGP slot, 5 PCI slots and 1CNR slot
3. Hardware Monitoring – Including Fan speed, Voltages, CPU and System temperature and one thermal header for other devices temperature monitoring
4. Keyboard and Mouse Power On

Please Note:
1. Switching Power Supply must meet ATX 2.03 specification with ATX12v and AUX Power connectors.
2. Case designed for Pentium 4 platform is required.

Like you already knew, the TH7 is build as a high-end Pentium4 platform supporting all the socket 423 based processors Intel releases. At the present time, this means you can use all the P4′s starting at 1.3GHz all the way up to 1.7GHz. Soon Intel is releasing the 1.6GHz counterpart and a 1.8GHz model is expected in Q301 as well.

Although there is a wide variety of processors to choose from, I must be a bit sceptical because as you might of might not know, Intel will switch to a new Pentium4 design by the end of the year. The cpu is codenamed ‘Northwoord’ and will use another pin design than the current P4. This means that the 1.8GHz P4 might be the last one you will be able to use on the Abit TH7 … thus limiting the use of this board to a few months from now (if you want to switch processors that is).

In order to control everything, we need a fast and stable chipset as there is no use of a fast processor and a speeding memory bus if the chipset is slowing everything down and acting as the main bottleneck. Just like any other currently available, the TH7 is using the Intel 850 (ICH2) chipset, which looks like a P3 core if you ask me.

The good part on this chipset, and also on the Pentium4 architecture, is the fact that it uses a 400MHz front side bus, resulting is a (theoretical) fast response time. I’ll discuss this matter more intensely when I get to the memory part so hang on ;). Apart from a high speed FSB, the Intel 850 chipset also has native support for AGP 4x video cards and of course UDMA100 devices in the form of two IDE channels.

If we look at Abit’s latest boards, they all have one thing in common: they all have an onboard RAID controller, and that’s no different with the TH7. As usual, the Abit engineers implemented an onboard High Point HPT370 controller which supports RAID0 (or striping), RAID1 (or mirroring) and a combination of both, RAID0+1 also known as RAID10. This feature adds to more IDE channels to the motherboard resulting in a total support for 8 IDE devices.

Like the specifications show, the Abit TH7 uses RDRAM (better known as RAMBUS memory) instead of the regular PC133 or even DDR memory which has been gaining popularity lately. This is crucial because the Intel 850 chipset operates at 400MHz and there is no way that any other memory type can handle that speed. But is ‘faster’ memory really better? Yes and no … it depends on what you do with your computer. Let me clarify this with an example in which I’ll compare RDRAM to DDR RAM: if you send one action through the memory, the faster memory, which is RDRAM memory, will handle the command a lot faster. But what happens if several commands are send at the same moment? There will be a ‘traffic jam’ occuring in the RDRAM where as the DDR RAM will be able to handle the load with ease because of its wider memory bus. So DDR (PC2100, which is the fastest standard currently available, runs at 266MHz) is slowerwhen it comes to single commands but as soon as there is a big load put on the memory bus, the DDR will be able to keep up with the RDRAM and even surpass it on some occasions. What I am trying to say is that you must not be blinded by the godlike memory throughput of the RDRAM, because DDR has its advantages as well … It will become more clear when the DDR chipsets for the Pentium4 are available (both VIA and Intel will be releasing them soon).

The TH7 comes with 4 memory slots (RIMM sockets) supporting a total of 2GB PC600/PC800 RDRAM. Just like in the old days, RDRAM has to be used in pairs. This means you can NOT use a 128MB stick with a 64MB stick but instead you have to use two 128MB or two 64MB sticks. As most people will only be using two memory banks, Abit includes two dummy RDRAM sticks to fill the two remaining RIMM’s.

Unlike most P4 boards available, the TH7 comes with a lot of onboard stuff! First of all Abit installed the AC’97 onobard soundcard on the board, supplying us with 2 channel audio which will do fine for the Windows sounds but nothing more. The spec list shows onboard LAN is optional, but since our sample had no onboard LAN I was unable to test it although I’m sure it will perform just like any other netwerk solution.

Something I never saw before was the onboard USB ports on the TH7. All the other boards I tested only had 2 onboard USB ports and some included an optional USB cable with two more ports on it. The Abit TH7 comes with 3 onboard USB ports which is a nice addition and doesn’t cost you a PCI slot.

Talking about PCI slots … The TH7 only has 5 of them … Abit decided to install a CNR slot instead of a sixth PCI slot which is sad because I don’t think many users will actually use the CNR slot …

To conclude the spec-talk, I like to mention that Abit includes the Soft Menu II BIOS, which we all know from past Abit boards as a great overclockers minded BIOS. I regret that they did not use the Soft Menu III BIOS instead as that one has more options like 1MHz increments selection for the FSB.

Also note that a special powersupply and case is needed to house a P4 and its motherboard!

Page 3 : Package

What Do You Get?

Getting a well performing motherboard is the most important thing when you go out and buy a board, but secondary targets matter as well :). I am refering to what’s in the box, so let’s have a look at what Abit provides you with:

- Abit TH7 Motherboard (of course ;))
- 2 UDMA100 IDE Cables
- 1 Floppy Cable
- 1 Game Port Extension Bracket
- 1 I/O Shield
- 2 C-RIMM’s
- 1 Thermal Cable
- Manual, Driver Disk & Cd-rom

Nothing out of the ordinary here … as usual we get 2 IDE cables and a floppy cable, the Abit cd with all the software you might need like a Hardware Monitor, drivers, links to websites, screensaver, …
There is also a bracket included with a game port on it so playing games won’t be any problem with the onboard soundcard! It costs you a PCI slot but if you don’t like CNR slots (like me) just put it where the CNR slot is located ;).

Because of the rather ‘different’ port setup (3 USB’s onboard for example) Abit includes a custom made I/O shield to replace the one in your case. You NEED this one because otherwise you can say ‘bye bye’ to USB. Of course the shield is fully color coded so mistaking the serial port with the game port won’t happen (shame on you if you ever mixed them up).

Like I said in the memory part above, all memory slots need to be filled and that is why Abit includes two dummie memory sticks called C-RIMM’s. They are made by Apacer, have a nice (??) green color and are quite essential to get a working rig!

It’s also nice to see that Abit is including a thermal cable with the TH7. They used to include it with their Slot1 boards like the BH6 and the BX6 but after production of these boards was stopped, we’ve almost never seen this thermal cable again, mainly because socket cpu’s have thermal diodes built-in.

And last but not least, the good old Abit manual and driver disks. The manual is very well written, contains everything you need to know and … well … you know!

Page 4 : Layout

The Layout

The TH7 is not a really big motherboard, but then again … it ain’t small either. At first glance, there are some remarks to be made about the way the Abit engineers designed the TH7. For starters, the 3 (!!) powerconnectors are NOT grouped like AOpen does with the A4XT. This has no influence on the motherboard’s performance or stability, but it makes it harder to ‘work’ in the case and it makes all the cables look messy.

Second remark: the RIMM slots are placed way to close to the AGP Pro slot. Result? If you have a large card like a GeForce GTS or GeForce3 (they aren’t that big …) the levers to remove or install extra memory are blocked. This means that in order to add or remove memory, the videocard will have to be removed no matter what, unless you feel lucky and want to pull the ram out sideways … but with expensive stuff like RDRAM I wouldn’t try it!

The floppy drive connector has been installed on a weird place as well … It was installed horizontally, which is a good thing if your floppy drive sits at the very top of your full tower server case (the cable can sit flat on the mobo and go up without the eed of bending it and losing a few inches …) but if you have a smaller case and your floppy drive is installed at the bottom front, this might be a problem as the cable will restrict the airflow quite a bit! Using rounded cables might be a solution to this one …

My last rant is about the placement of the cd cable connector for the onboard sound. It is placed between PCI slot #2 and #3. This is very annoying if you are like me and installed all the add-on cards to find out that you forgot the cd cable :p. Back to taking the cards out ;p … There is plenty of room left above the AGP slot so maybe they could have installed it there? Possibly there were design limitations and they HAD to install them there, but I still would love to see them installed 5cm higher :).

The space around the heatsink is large enough to be able to install big mofo heatsinks. Also note the large heatsink sitting on the i850 chipset!! A few years ago, people used that kind of cooling power on the actual cpu!

Enough ranting … lets check out the overclocking skills of the TH7!

Page 5 : Overclocking

Overclocking

As it was our first expierence with the Intel P4 processor, I was pretty curious to see what the overclocking potential of the cpu was. Teamed up with the TH7, which is probably the most overclockers minded P4 board available, our P4 1.4GHz was ready to undergo a full load of torture and overclocking test.

We ended up with running the cpu @ 1.6GHz, which is about 200MHz extra. The cpu would boot into Windows at 1.7GHz as well but prime would lock up after a few minutes. For the tests we used the included Intel heatsink which is quite big!!

Installing the heatsink is very different to what we are used with socketA and socket370 cpu’s. Instead of putting a clamp on the heatsink, the clamps are preinstalled on the motherboard. Just place the heatsink with the fan in the destinated spot and put down the to levers to secure the heatsink. Done! I must say that I really like Intel’s new heatsink mouting system as it is completely tool-free and very easy to use. Way to go Intel!

In order to achieve the 1.6GHz, the voltage was upped 0.1v which is not that much. The TH7 had some more juice left for us to try but whatever we did, nothing above 1.6GHz was stable … Maybe with better cooling, 1.7GHz would have been attained, but during our tests no other P4 compatible heatsinks were available. One thing I want to add about the Intel heatsink is that is is VERY quiet!! People who want to use their pc in a sound sensitive environment will really love this alu block :).

Page 6 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

So how did the TH7 perform? In order to be able to compare the board to others, we ran the same tests with the same setup using the AOpen AX4T P4 motherboard, which looks pretty much like Intel’s reference design. The sad part is that we could only run the cpu at default speed on the AOpen because no front side bus selections where available.

The setup:

- Intel P4 1.4GHz @ 1.6GHz
- Abit TH7 & AOpen AX4T
- 2x64MB RDRAM
- Hercules GeForce GTS Ultra
- IBM 30GB hdd
- Accton NIC
- Win2K + SP2

Let’s start with the already famous Sisoft Sandra Suite shall we?

Sisoft Sandra CPU Benchmark

Sisoft Sandra CPU Multimedia Benchmark

Sisoft Sandra Memory Benchmark

Now we’ll move on to MadOnion’s 3D Mark 2001

Lets see what ZDnet has to offer …

ZDnet CPU Mark

ZDnet FPU Mark

And last but not least, how well can a P4 crunch RC5 number?

Distributed.Net Short RC5 Benchmark

The benchmarks are showing that the P4 is a pretty powerful cpu, but there are some problems with the optimalization for the processor. For example the reason why the P4 is performing so slow in RC5 is because the RC5 client is not yet optimized for Intel’s new generation processor … One thing I think you will notice is the high memory scores this system is putting down on paper … The main reason for this is the RDRAM of course, which cruises at 400MHz and even more when we overclock the system.

Page 7 : Conclusion

Conclusion

It looks like Abit pulled it of again peeps. The TH7 is the most tweakable Pentium4 motherboard currently available and besides the very tweakable BIOS it also offers a lot of extra features like the onboard RAID controller, the LED Diagnostic system and of course the overclocking options. Apart from the layout flaws and the lack of 1MHz increments adjustements of the front side bus, Abit designed another top performer which should result in a high performance system when combined with a powerful P4 cpu and a nice amount of RDRAM. The only thing I am worried about is that most programs are not yet able to use the P4 to its full power, which means you are paying for features that are not being used …

Good

- Tweakable
- Onboard RAID
- Diagnostic LED

Bad

- Layout
- Lack of support for the Pentium4