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 Overclocking:

Since we have already tested the very similar IC7-G, we felt that we needed to be able to push this board a little bit further than what our retail 2.4C can do. So our 3.2 engineering sample was used instead because of the ability to change the multipliers. Taking the multiplier down to 12, making it technically a 2.4C, we raised the FSB straight to 266MHz. This would put our CPU at 3.2GHz, which it should be able to handle considering it is a 3.2. The system was 100% stable but that is no surprise.

Not being patient, the FSB was then raised to 300MHz FSB. Booting into windows gave us issues and we tried increasing the CPU voltage but nothing seemed to help. Then finally we got a break as to what the problem was. One of the Windows errors said that a device had failed causing the system to shut down. It was the 9700 Pro. The IC7-G we first tested also had a problem at high bus speeds and the ATi cards leading us to believe that the MAX3, like the IC7-G, has a faulty AGP/PCI lock over 300MHz FSB. Video cards were changed out with an NVIDIA card because they generally can tolerate high AGP speeds and the system ran without a problem. The highest FSB we were able to hit was 306 and it was our CPU that was topped out. The MAX3 wanted to go further but without some form of superior cooling, we had to stop.

Overall the overclocking experience was pleasant, but we are disappointed that the AGP/PCI issue has still not been corrected. Of course, not many people will be running over 300MHz FSB other than the extreme overclockers using 2.4C's with watercooling, TECs, or evaporative phase change. So we feel that for the average consumer, the IC7 MAX3 will do a great job of overclocking.