ABIT NF7-S v2.0

Company: ABIT
Product: NF7-S v2.0
Street Price: ~$125 USD
Date Reviewed: April 18, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey C. aka Chong345
Overall Rating: (9.8/10)

BIOS Configuration:

The ABIT N7-S uses the Soft Menu III interface. It is makes setting the CPU parameters very simple since there is no need for jumpers. In the Soft Menu III Setup are options to set the FSB, multipliers, AGP frequency, FSB:DRAM ratio, and voltages. The CPU operating speed can be set manually or auto configured. The FSB can be set anywhere from 100 to 250 MHz. Most of the settings can be changed in 1 MHz increments but as the FSB starts getting higher, the increments vary. The multiplier options go very high, all the way up to 22x. There are many different settings for the FSB:DRAM ratio. Changing this ratio allows the user to run the memory asynchronous from the FSB. We find that the best performance is found when running the FSB and DRAM in a synchronous configuration.

The voltage options for the CPU core voltage go up to 2.3V. The DRAM voltages go up to 2.9V.The chipset voltage can be adjusted to as high as 1.7V. Having voltage options resembling these is what makes ABIT very different from many other motherboards companies. These voltages go very high and allow for incredible overclocking. We would have liked to seen higher DRAM voltages, possibly up to 3.2V but 2.9V is not terrible.

The other main menu we want to talk about is the Advanced Chipset Features. In this section, the user can change the options for the memory timings. There are also options for setting the AGP data transfer rate. This board does support 8x AGP which is found on many of the new video cards like the Radeon 9700.

The rest of the BIOS is basic. All the standard features to configure the rest of the system such as IRQ values and boot sequence are present in the BIOS.

This is a great BIOS. There are plenty of options that appeal to the overclockers. The main options that appeal to us are the FSB, multiplier, and voltages. ABIT give the end-user much more power to overclock when compared to other boards. A few boards we have seen have much lower voltage options and FSB settings that only go as high as 200, which simply is not enough for the hardcore enthusiast.