ABIT IC7-Max3 Motherboard
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"If it's been said once it has been said a million times; the ABIT IC7-Max3 is one great motherboard. The Max series of motherboards have always been the flagship products for ABIT. The IC7-Max3 is no exception and carries on the tradition in fine form. Features include 6 channel serial ATA RAID, 8 USB 2.0 ports, IEEE 1394. 6 channel sound, ABIT's OTES cooling, LAN, S/PDIF in and out and a host of other features including a BIOS to make overclocker's drool."
Lust after it here.
All they have to do is make it an AMD product and it would be perfect.
Lust after it here.
All they have to do is make it an AMD product and it would be perfect.
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Comments
Good article Doug, but you may be interested in these glaring issues with the IC7-MAX3:
//Edit: I'm surprised you didn't find more at fault with the IC7-MAX3.
First off, the SLK-900 will NOT fit on this motherboard due to the size of the Northbridge Cooler and the OTES Shield. The newer SP-94 will fit, but anything approximately the same size as the SLK-900 will NOT fit (even the SLK-947).
Second, there are voltage problems with this motherboard, which result in massive undervolting of the CPU & memory. Although the IC7-MAX3 states it can handle 3.2v of VDIMM, nobody that I know of over @ ABIT Forums (including myself) have been able to get anything higher than 2.9V out of the VDIMM.
As for the CPU voltage, it usually undervolts anywhere between 0.05 and 0.1V over normal (in my experience) with wild fluctuations.
Third, there are BIOS issues with this board. If you aren't following ABIT's guide on how to flash the BIOS and to clear it before and after you flash, you risk loosing features in the BIOS until you properly flash it according to ABIT's guide.
I'm not exactly sure why you were having problems with using anything on the SATA1/2 ports of the ICH5R, as I'm able to use both ports with 2 SATA drives and completely populate both IDE channels (2 HDD's, 2 CD-ROM's) and not have any issues. It takes a little getting used to in order to properly setup your boot devices and the order in which they are read.
Other than those issues, the IC7-MAX3 is a wonderful board
i might could agree with that if the P4 did as much work per clock cycle as the competition. but hey, thats marketing at its best.
//EDIT:
PS: Good article.
On rare occasions. Alot depends on the sample provider. Most of the time, you get it for a few weeks and then they send out packing to send it back.
Review items are not sold without permission of the supplier. They are not receiving revenue from it therefore the acceptable case is where the revenue goes towards the site; bandwidth, etc.
Typically permission is gained from the supplier.
Review items can be used in promotion such as what I'm doing for the Short-Media LAN. I'm supplying a lot of product but, of course, it is my coin that is paying the freight on getting the goods to the LAN.
Review items that are given are kept for future reviews or comparisons. It is never expected that a review item is "for keeps". I always expect the call from the supplier a month later, a year later, saying "BTW...could we have that back?"