ABIT IC7 MAX3 (875P)

Reviews: Hardware

Motherboards | Power Supplies | Memory | Systems | Video Cards

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Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
ABIT
Jun. 22, 2004

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Overclocking

Running a 3.4 GHz Northwood processor I never expect much of an overclock; if the Northwood had much more room for speed increases, there wouldn't be a Prescott yet. But Abit boards have a reputation for excellent overclocking ability and the IC7-Max3 certainly lived up to it.

Having been limited to 3.6 GHz with both the DFI LanParty Pro875B and the Albatron PX865PE Lite, I wasn't too optimistic this time around. Well I was I in for a surprise; with the AGP/PCI bus locked at 66/33, memory and CPU at default voltages and with 1:1 RAM/CPU ratio I was able to hit 218 MHz FSB for a grand total of 3.7 GHz. A 218 MHz FSB by itself isn't too impressive, but to add 100 MHz to my previous best speed certainly is.

I don't know if this increase in overclocking performance is due to the OTES system and the active northbridge cooling, but I sure would like to think so. Regardless, I wouldn't be unplugging either fan anytime soon.

Conclusion

The Abit IC7-Max3 is an awesome board. With such amazing overclocking ability, it makes a great gaming board for the geek who needs the fastest system out there. However, with support for four drives in a RAID 1 configuration and firewire connectivity, it would serve equally as well for anyone interested in video editing. Add a SATA backplane and you could even use it as an entry-level server platform.

As you can gather, I am very impressed with this board. It can be picked up online for about $175 which is pretty competitive for an 875 chipset board with this level of features. So if you are in the market for a new motherboard, I strongly suggest you consider the Abit IC7-Max3.

Pros

Fast!
Great overclocking capability
The most onboard features of any board I've tested
Plenty of active cooling
SecureIDE device for the gadget lover

Cons

Light on the bundled software
Strange color scheme

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Page 10 of 10

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Board Layout and Features
Page 3: Extras
Page 4: BIOS
Page 5: Test Setup / Benchmarking
Page 6: Benchmarks: PCMark04 / Aquamark 03
Page 7: Benchmarks: Aida32 / Sandra 04
Page 8: Benchmarks: SpecViewPerf 7.1 / ScienceMark 2.0
Page 9: Benchmarks: Winbench 99 / UT2k3
Page 10: Overclocking & Conclusion

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