Without any doubt, Abit is a powerful name on motherboards market. Innovation is a state of spirit at Abit, that's one of the reasons why their motherboards became so popular. As a guy who likes to discuss on and about the motherboard's market, I feel that no important things happened in the last year. Chipsets after chipsets, all of them offer mainly the same features, but higher numbers: UDMA 66 --> UDMA100 --> UDMA133. Unfortunately UDMA is an old standard which can not accommodate important speed increments. Compatibility is a key factor in today's computers but the desire for new technologies is important, despite the economical reasons which stay behind any upgrade. On the market only a few companies can impose standards and these are very careful; for example Intel, one of the most important rulers of the PC world is extremely careful with outside technologies. Intel tries to impose their standards, but that's another story.
Today we will take a look to a special motherboard from Abit, a motherboard which claims to bring a new philosophy on desktops. AT7 is a member of the Abit MAX series, motherboards which propose a new design to the market.

First look

We took a look to the AT7 Full version revision A3. Some features are available only on Full version AT7, I will tell you which are the selected features later. The motherboard is shipped in a special box as you can see in the picture. Personally I like the new packaging, but I think that it increases costs. As long as these are not supported by me or by you it's fine :). Included with the motherboard you can find three black UDMA133 ribbon cables, one floppy cable, one USB 1.1 bracket, one I/O shield, one CD with drivers and utilities, several cable holders and the user's manual. The manual supplied by Abit is high quality and is targeted to both novice and medium level users. Let's talk about the motherboard's layout, because this is the most interesting fact in this section. AT7 has three PCI slots, one AGP and four DIMM slots; disappointing for many users looking for a high end motherboard. But why are there only three PCI slots? The answer is quite simple: there are so many devices on board that it would have been difficult for Abit to come up with more PCI slots.

You can find onboard a LAN port, true six channels audio, IEEE394, USB 2.0 + USB 1.1 and a four channels RAID controller. The first thing which will be noticed by someone who looks at the mobo is the rear I/O headers design. There are no legacy ports onboard, but a lot of USB ports, two IEEE394 ports, several audio headers and a LAN port. Abit included the I/O shield in the package, which is a very good thing because the design is not common.

Rear view on Abit AT7

There is enough space around the CPU socket to use a large CPU heatsink. The ATX header is placed in a good position, between the DIMM slots and the CPU socket. All the space between the AGP slot and the first PCI slot is used by the onboard peripheral chips. AT7 has a lot of IDE connectors and it may look strange at a first look. Actually the board uses the HighPoint HPT374 four channels controller which is used by Rocket RAID404 adapter, reviewed in the past by PC Hardware. There are four FAN headers onboard, all placed in good positions. The board has four USB 1.1 connectors and two USB 2.0 connectors available on I/O shield, two USB 1.1 and two USB 2.0 connectors being available using brackets. All the onboard headers (audio, wake-ups) are placed in accessible positions.

Abit AT7 motherboard picture

Take a look to the motherboard's picture. It's quite a strange board if you judge by its appearance. There are no jumpers onboard, but that's understandable for Abit. Although AT7 has only three PCI slots, the board suffers from DIMM insertion problems; with the AGP card in place it's quite hard to install or remove memory modules. It's possible to use full length PCI cards with AT7, but it will be a difficult task to use all the channels on the RAID controller in the same time.