ABIT IC7-G 875P (Canterwood) Motherboard

Company: ABIT
Product: IC7-G
Street Price: ~$215 USD
Date Reviewed: May 14, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao
Overall Rating: (10/10)

Onboard Features:

Starting off with the I/O configuration, there are two PS/2 ports, a serial port, parallel port, S/PDIF In port, S/PDIF Out port, audio jacks, four USB 2.0 ports, RJ-45 LAN connector, and an IEEE1394 port. An interesting thing to note here is that there are the S/PDIF in and out ports. This is not something seen on many motherboards and is certainly an excellent feature. The other observation that we made is that the 6 channel audio is all provided on the back I/O configuration. Most of the motherboards we have been reviewing up to this point, have provide the center subwoofer, rear left, and rear right connections on an extra media card. ABIT has decide to just put all of it on the motherboard.

Intel's 8254EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller provides the LAN capabilities on this motherboard. The chip bypasses the PCI bus and connects to the CSA (Communication Streaming Architecture) bus in the 875P chipset. This overcomes the bandwidth limitation found when running on the PCI bus. Gigabit Ethernet is slowly becoming a standard and will replace 100 Mbit. The addition of Intel CSA Gigabit LAN makes this board a good candidate for server/workstation applications.

ABIT has decided to go with the Texas Instrument TSB43AB23 chip to provide the onboard FireWire. The chip allows for the connection of three IEEE 1394 devices. Though only one FireWire port can be found on the mainboard's back I/O configuration, there are two more ports provided on an extra peripheral card.

The ICH5(R) provides native Serial ATA support, which we have discussed in past articles, and is much better because it is not limited to the PCI bus. SATA 1 and 2 run off of the Southbridge. There are two more Serial ATA ports though. These two are controlled by the chip underneath the IC7-G sticker, which is a Silicon Image chip. These SATA connections are bound to the PCI bus limiting them to 133 MB/sec transfer rates. Along with the Serial ATA support, the ICH5(R) also provides the board with its Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The Southbridge allows for connections of up to eight USB devices as well.