ABIT IS7 865PE Motherboard

Company: ABIT
Product: IS7
Street Price: ~$120 USD
Date Reviewed: May 22, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao
Overall Rating: (90%)

Conclusions and Final Thoughts:

Price and Features:

The ABIT IS7 is not a very expensive board, when compared the 875P motherboards on the market. The IS7 is not the most feature rich motherboard but is well rounded and is equipped with features that consumers want. The board is aimed at the mainstream market with its price and affordability. ABIT also has a few different versions of the IS7. Here is a table from ABIT's site showing the difference between each version.

Performance:

The 865PE chipset is a good performer. In our testing it scored higher in most tests, when compared to the 845PE board. Some tests were close but keep in mind these benchmarks are synthetic and do not all show real world performance. Better performance will be found when using more of the systems bandwidth, which benchmarks do not really stress since there is no audio, or other peripherals being tested. As more things come into play, the 800 MHz FSB will really help.

Stability:

We did have one stability issue with the motherboard. During some of the stock benchmarks the system would reboot. After increasing the memory voltage a little higher to 2.7V, the instabilities went away. This is interesting because the memory did not have these issues with the IC7-G or the 9CJS. It might have just been an issue with our particular board and when more reviews come out, we will know for sure.

Support:

ABIT's support for their products is excellent. They offer all of the drivers, manuals, and BIOS's on their website. They also have one of the only direct RMA services. End users can go to this page and fill out an online E-RMA form which will be sent directly to ABIT. In addition, users can go to the ABIT Forums for more help on troubleshooting. Visit ABIT's support page for more information on support. It is clear that the company has a first-class support system.

Overclocking:

Most ABIT motherboarda we have tested in that past were good overclockers. The same goes for the IS7. The Soft Menu 3 makes overclocking very easy. The board allowed our 2.4C to be overclocked to 3.2 GHz which is over 1 GHz FSB. The voltage options are very good even though we think the DRAM could have gone a little higher. Other than that, overclockers will not be disappointed with this board in terms of overclocking.

Overall: 90%

The 865PE chipset is a nice addition to the mainstream market. The chipset has some nice features like eight USB support, 800 MHz FSB support, CSA bus, and Hyperthreading support. It is priced much cheaper than it's bigger brother, the 875P and only lacks ECC memory support and Performance Acceleration Technology. These new boards will phase out the older 845 motherboards as well as the 850. We are really glad that the new chipset was easy to work with and that we had no compatibility issues or something worse. Kudos to Intel and ABIT for their quality products.