The AMD Athlon XP range of CPUs is fairly mature these days, as are associated chipsets and motherboards. With the advent of the 64 bit Athlon 64, one could be forgiven for thinking the XP is consigned to the history books. Well, that’s not so – and not only because of the high entry price ... Read review
Abit is a quality manufacturer of enthusiast motherboards – this means that one can take quality and support as a give. Sure, they’re not perfect (my first board was DOA) but they’re as good as it gets in the high tech world as far as my experience goes. So having dealt with an overview of features and quality, what’s this board like to use?
Well, I‘ve been an NF7-S user for 10 months or so now and I have ... ...with ATA drives via the Abit ‘Serrilel’ converter device, one of which is supplied in the box.
The real jewel in the NF7-S’ crown is its overclockability. It is simply awesome. Not only does it have the ability to unlock the multiplier of Thoroughbred B core or Barton core Athlons (up to around production week 39 of 2003, from which point Athlons were ‘superlocked’ by AMD) it can reach some impressive FSB speeds if your processor and ... more
The AMD Athlon XP range of CPUs is fairly mature these days, as are associated chipsets and motherboards. With the advent of the 64 bit Athlon 64, one could be forgiven for thinking the XP is consigned to the history books. Well, that’s not so – and not only because of the high entry price of 64 bit computing with its requirement for new motherboards, coolers and memory in addition to the CPU purchase. The excellent nForce2 chipset from Nvidia, better known for their graphics chipsets, has kept the Athlon XP bubbling along the performance curve very nicely, thank you. I’m going to take a look at the NF7-S (in v2.0 guise) – which is one of Abit’s best received implementations of this chipset.
The NF7-S comes packed with a host of features: 2 IDE channels, SATA RAID support, Firewire, USB 2, the excellent Soundstorm audio, AGP 8x and onboard LAN. Not enough? What about hardware monitoring, stock active northbridge cooling, a four hole mounting system for CPU coolers and support for front side bus (FSB) speeds up to 400MHz. More? OK – dual DDR memory controllers, locked PCI bus, overclockable AGP bus…and so on and so on. It’s a pretty loaded package, perhaps only missing dual LAN capability. If you’re in the market for a motherboard, you’ll know what the jargon means!
Abit is a quality manufacturer of enthusiast motherboards – this means that one can take quality and support as a give. Sure, they’re not perfect (my first board was DOA) but they’re as good as it gets in the high tech world as far as my experience goes. So having dealt with an overview of features and quality, what’s this board like to use?
Well, I‘ve been an NF7-S user for 10 months or so now and I have to say this board has been a pleasure to own. It’s laid out sensibly, giving rise to no serious installation concerns in my tower case and has performed reliably since day one and throughout numerous BIOS and chipset driver upgrades. I frequently remove my motherboard to install new coolers etc and it shows no signs of having suffered as a result. The integrated sound is of excellent quality and removes the need to purchase a sound card and install it in one of the PCI slots. The SATA functionality is a great inclusion and can even be used with ATA drives via the Abit ‘Serrilel’ converter device, one of which is supplied in the box.
The real jewel in the NF7-S’ crown is its overclockability. It is simply awesome. Not only does it have the ability to unlock the multiplier of Thoroughbred B core or Barton core Athlons (up to around production week 39 of 2003, from which point Athlons were ‘superlocked’ by AMD) it can reach some impressive FSB speeds if your processor and memory can support it. 220 MHz is common and many users attain FSBs in the range of 230-240MHz. Supporting all this, is an overclocking oriented BIOS, a wide range of voltage adjustments and access to memory timings. Pretty much all you need. In my particular case, I run my machine at 2.4GHz (11 x 218 FSB) day in, day out with no problems at all, using a Barton core XP 2500+. This board is an AMD overclocker’s dream!
Of course, as with almost any product, there are a few flies in the ointment. The NF7-S needs a quality power supply – no more generic 300W units please! – and will complain if it doesn’t get one. Still, if you’re an enthusiast you already have one – don’t you? The northbridge heatsink-fan assembly is not the greatest in my opinion – and the factory application of thermal grease is fairly poor, in my case covering only about a third of the northbridge chip. (The solution of course is to remove the HSF, re-apply a quality thermal compound and re-attach the HSF – or even replace with a quality passive unit such as one from the Zalman range). The uncooled southbridge chip runs pretty hot and I would like to have seen some kind of passive cooling on it (I’ve attached a heatsink using thermal adhesive). I would have liked four SATA channels rather than two in addition to the IDE channels (even without SATA drives, using IDE drives with the Serrilel converter allows the use of nice thin SATA cables!). Probably the biggest concern about the board is peculiar to the nForce 2 chipset rather than the specific Abit board and that’s the inability to use 1T memory timings in conjunction with the 10 & 10.5 multipliers at FSBs of over around 223MHz. Fingers crossed for a fix in the next BIOS release! Finally, the chipset voltage adjustment tops out at 1.7V – 1.8 would have been nice for driving that FSB good and hard!!
So the NF7-S is an excellent choice of motherboard. It comes well-built and well specified with integrated RAID, audio that supports Dolby 5.1 surround and plenty of I/O options. It’s fast, stable and well supported by both the board and chipset manufacturers. It comes with a decent manual, a Serrilel converter, driver disks and brackets for additional rear USB and Firewire ports.
If one or two of the items above were addressed it would be close to perfect. As it is, it’s still the pick of the crop. Buy one, crank up that FSB and enjoy!
Advantages: Dual Channel Memory Controller, Sound-Storm with digital output, Serial ATA support, Great Overclocking Disadvantages: South-bridge can sometimes get a little warm
...that you notice about the Abit NF7-S when you remove the motherboard is the fact that it has more features than you can shake a stick at. Serial ATA support for both single and raid drives, 5.1 Digital sound with AC3 encoding support thanks to the nvidia soundstorm and of course a nice northbridge cooling fan.
When you open the box, you will notice a few items here that you will not really get with other motherboards - These are a Serial ATA cable, ... ...CPU speed in here. Abit call this feature their "softmenu" setup. Now heres the fun bit, some AMD processors are known to be unlocked i.e they have been made without the restrictions on the CPU's so you can run them on settings that are not default. For example, my 2500+ is "supposed" to have a 333 Mhz FSB (166 x 2 - DDR mode ), yet its sat happily running along with a FSB of 425 Mhz which is rather a quite nice upgrade for "free".
Memory-wise, ...
dfjericho 06.09.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of ABIT NF7-S - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 SPP
Advantages: Stability in Overclocking Disadvantages: Annoying Northbridge fan
...although probably a little expensive. Abit constantly support the board too, they literally release a new BIOS every month or so compared to my old gateway motherboard which had 1 driver update in its lifetime. The board has everything you will ever need and more (quick list) - *FSB 400 (support for Barton 3200+ and beyond) *Serial ATA (Supporting RAID - get striping, sooo cool) *IEEE1394 *USB 2.0 (of course) *DDR-400 (Dual Channel) *SP/DIF output ... ...(Dobly Digital) *AGP 8x *5 PCI slots *CPU Hardware thermal protection On the downside, there are only 2 rear USB ports, however there is an additional panel which comes in the box with 2 more, and support for 2 more on the case, but still 4 in the rear would be nice. The box comes with a cheep SATA cable, and the usual IDE and Floppy cables (rounded would be nice seeing as the board is made for overclockers!) There is also a fan on the northbridge, ...
nanoblade 04.06.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of ABIT NF7-S - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 SPP
It is said that the most important thing in a PC is the motherboard, that it is the very foundation upon which the rest of the system is built. And this is indeed true.
So when I built my last computer there was no other real choice but this motherboard. It is revered in overclocking and techno savvy circles as being the best Socket A motherboard out there. There is a wide range of features including Soundstorm audio, which is onboard, but for a ... ...the need for your own. There is firewire and USB 2.0 ports galore. For those who want the fastest data transfer speeds it has support for S-ATA and RAID arrays. That not mean anything to you? No worries, it's all good.
For the average user there is the fact that it is reliable and from one of the biggest and best manufacturers. If you buy this board then you should have no worries at all. I've never had any issues with mine over time anyway.
For ...
Notorious-Biggles 05.06.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of ABIT NF7-S - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 SPP
Advantages: Good Features, Price, And Overall Speed Disadvantages: Delicate, But Aren't All Motherboards.
I have had mine for over a year now and it still remains a top quality motherboard.
Even at the speed that computers are evolving this remains a solid choice for anyone who wants a good value AMD Athlon board.
It comes with a N-force-2 Ultra chipset, Loads of ports including builtin 5.1 surround sound that I use and I can say for built in sound it is amazing.
Is orange colour goes nicely with my orange accrilic case.
The only time i had any trouble ... ...then I realized it was because too much dust was in the northbridge fan, I soon cleaned it out and now its fine! : The moral of the story - NF7-S's Are Brilliant as long as there dust free!
If your thinking about getting one of these babys i can decide for you....Yes! cos' they wont let you down and run tremendously. ...
Space-pirate 09.08.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of ABIT NF7-S - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 SPP
Advantages: Second to none for overclocking Disadvantages: errrrrrm.....
based on nForce2 chipset, the NF7-S supports the latest AMD Athlon XP processors with 200/266/333 FSB, and features dual 400MHz DDR controllers that can deliver up to a 50% increase in bandwidth. The advanced memory architecture means that the latest 3D games and multimedia applications are able to run smoother and faster than ever before, giving you unparalleled system performance. It comes with 3 DDR DIMM slots to support up to 3GB of DDR memory, ... ...MCP2-T, it delivers Dolby Digital 5.1 cinematic-quality sound.
I chose to use a mobile Athon 2500 cpu, which coupled with 512Mb of quality pc3200 DDR Memory, this machine will overclock to speeds of close to 3 GHZ!!!
Choose a good quality video card and your machine will be one of the best on the market for gaming, (online or not) within the price range. ...
leeclark8 20.05.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of ABIT NF7-S - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 SPP
Product Information for "ABIT NF7-S - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 SPP" »
Audio
Audio Output
Sound card
Signal Processor
NVIDIA nForce2 MCP-T
Sound Output Mode
5.1 channel surround
Compliant Standards
AC '97
Telecom / networking
Networking
Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet - integrated
Features
BIOS Features
ACPI support, DMI support
Hardware Monitoring
CPU core temperature, chassis temperature, power supply temperature, CPU fan tachometer, chassis fan tachometer, system voltage, CPU core voltage, power supply fan tachometer
Sleep / Wake Up
Wake on LAN (WOL)
Manufacturer's product description
The NF7-S, based on nForce2 chipset (MCP-T + SPP), supports the latest AMD Athlon XP processors with 200/266/333/400 FSB, (400 FSB support in version 2.0 only) and features new dual 400MHz DDR memory controllers that deliver up to a 50% increase in bandwidth. With the nForce2 MCP-T, the APU (Audio Processing Unit) delivers Dolby Digital 5.1 cinematic-quality sound and 3D positional audio to your home PC. By Soundstorm technology, the NF7-S supports Real-time audio encoding delivering up to 256 simultaneous audio streams. With cutting-edge features and ABIT Engineering, the NF7 series is the ultimate multimedia platform for the world.
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