ABIT IC7 MAX3 (875P): New Overclocking Champion?

Company: ABIT
Product: IC7 MAX3
Street Price: $225 USD
Date Reviewed: September 25, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

ABIT IC7 MAX3 BIOS Configuration:

One of the key factors to making a great enthusiast motherboard is giving users the ability to really tweak their system via the BIOS. This is one of the categories that ABIT excels in with their famous Soft Menu. All of the overclocking options (Vcore, VDIMM, multipliers, FSB, memory adjustments, AGP voltages) can be found in this one, easy to use section of the BIOS. Like the IC7-G the MAX3 has FSB options ranging from 100 to 412 in 1MHz increments. It is safe to safe that there are not going to be that many users running over 300+ but having options up to 412 shows ABIT's dedication to the overclocking community.

AGP/PCI ratios are also available in the Soft Menu. You can pick a specific ratio or just lock the values in at 66/33. DRAM ratios are also present. Here you can change the memory to run asynchronously from the FSB as opposed to 1:1.

As far as voltages go, Vcore is able to be adjusted up to 1.925V and the RAM voltage up to 3.2V. Not every 875P motherboard has voltages that go this high. Most stop at around 1.8V for the Vcore and 2.8V for the VDIMM. These options found on the MAX3 should be enough even for the hardcore overclockers. On a side not, the Vcore does under-volt a little bit (.05V). There are going to be complaints about this from some consumers but does it really matter since there are options beyond 1.9V? We have found from our testing that most of the new "C" processors do not agree well with anything above 1.75V unless excellent cooling is used (TECs, Phase Change).

In the Advanced Chipset Features, all the memory timings can be adjusted. This can greatly boost a systems performance but is not the place for a beginner. Playing we these values can also cause a system to not boot. At the bottom of the Advanced Chipset Features, you can see ABIT's Game Accelerator. These options further increase the system performance but again can cause instability,

The last major menu we would like to talk about is the PC Health Status. Here, users can view all of the system vitals such as voltages, temperatures, and fan speeds. There are also a number of options available in this menu. You can set up a series of alarms for if a fan fails or if the CPU temperature is too high. You can also adjust system shutdown temperatures as well as turn on or off the CPU FanEQ control. The FanEQ will adjust the fan speeds according to temperatures. There is not a point to having the fan run at high if you are not even running intensive programs, so the speed might as well be decreased to lower the noise level.