Supplied by Abit

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.

The ABIT IC7-Max3 is a Cadillac of motherboards and comes at a Cadillac price.
Comparatively is the IC7-Max3 “the best”? That depends on what it
is compared to. The Max series are shades apart from each other and a previous
model may offer the enthusiast all that they desire at a better price point.
Those that are finally making the leap into the 2+ GHz processors and the land
of dual channel memory will be floored at the options and performance.

Features

What’s inside the box

Should a $200 item deserve more impressive packaging? A shiny exterior means
increased cost and that cost is passed onto the consumer. The marketing department
knew they had a flagship product and consumers will be buying this for the motherboard
rather than the box.

ABIT has taken to two manuals with the extensive manual shown on the left and
the quick installation manual on the right.

The standard install CD is sparse for extras. In fact there are none. Expect
no free games or bonus programs with the IC7-Max3.

The SATA floppy driver disk.

ABIT supplies a jumper sticker to place inside the PC case.

The backplane guard which is unique to ABIT’s OTES system.

2 SATA power cables are supplied. (1 shown in following image)

4 SATA data cables are included.

1 EIDE and 1 floppy round cable are also included.

A IEEE 1394/USB port is PCI slot based. Note the 1394 features
two styles of connection.

Secure IDE

ABIT includes a 40-bit encryption security system for the hard drive called
Secure IDE. This device encrypts data on a hard drive which remains inaccessible
until a special “key” is introduced into the data loop.

A molex connector splits power off to the Secure IDE unit.

The Secure IDE unit sits between the hard drive and IDE cable. A secondary
connector runs from the unit to an available PCI slot.

The cable essentially is a IEEE 1394 connection with a “key” that
plugs into the cable to decrypt the hard drive.

Secure IDE isn’t for everyone. RAID enthusiasts will not be able to use the
Secure IDE device since it is only for one IDE hard drive connection. SATA drive
owners will also be left out. This is of course if the desire is for the Secure
IDE drive to be the primary OS/Program drive. Secure IDE would be useful as
a data protection storage drive. The drive simply needs to be formatted with
the Secure IDE device and key in place. Data is accessible for reading and writing
when the key remains in place but is encrypted when the key is removed. This
prevents anyone from easily accessing the data in the event the PC or hard drive
is stolen. A final word would be about ABIT’s choice of key location. It would
make the most sense to provide a 3.5″ or 5.5″ bay plate for front
access to plug in the key. Instead there needs to be a cord running from PCI
slot to an accessible location.

Touring the board

The IC7-Max3 is a well laid out board.

The socket area is completely free from heatsink obstructions.

The OTES (Outside Thermal Exhaust System) cooling system is another innovation
from ABIT. It is a tunnel cover that encases the power mofsets and capacitors.
Each mofset has a heatsink and the exhaust fan pulls air from inside the motherboard
area to flow past and thus provide greater cooling efficiency and, theoretically,
better stability and overclocking potential. A series of LEDs glow green when
the system is operational

Four DIMM slots are color coded for the use of dual channel memory. Perfection
for this board would have been to place the main power connector above the floppy
header. It is well noted that this is the best placement for the floppy header
and power connector.

The CMOS battery and AUX fan header are up in the corner. The four pin power
connector and CPU fan header are tucked next to the end of the OTES tunnel just
above the inner DIMM slots.

The northbridge chip is actively cooled by one of the largest heatsinks we’ve
seen. ABIT has used a tension clip to allow for the heatsink to be removed without
having to remove the entire motherboard from the case. The northbridge fan header
is also a 3-pin molex. While this may seem like a good idea if an after market
chipset cooler is desired by lack of mounting holes prevents this.

Two IDE headers share the same channels as SATA 1 & 2 headers. These are
mounted in line with the board and we have grown to prefer this style as it
aids in cable management. There was instability in the test system using a SATA
drive on the same channel as a device on the IDE header. This was easily solved
by moving the SATA drive to one of the SATA 3, 4, 5 or 6 headers.

The CMOS clear jumper sits above SATA header 1 & 2.

There are already 4 USB ports on the backplane and ABIT provide an additional
2 USB ports via a PCI slot device. This leaves yet another USB 2-port connection
free for front USB ports (optional). 2 1394 headers are connected to the supplied
PCI slot connection.

4 more SATA headers sit along the bottom edge of the board.

The Silicon Image SATALink
3114 chip is a a single-chip PCI to 4-port Serial ATA (SATA) host controller.
It supports up to four devices. Software RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring)
and RAID 1+0 (mirrored stripe) functions are supported on SATA header 3 to 6.

5 PCI slots are available and the AGP 8x slot is free from obstructions. There
is no video card lifting lever.

The backplane has 2 USB ports, 1 LAN, 1 1394 connection, 6-channel sound, S/PDIF
in/out, PS/2 mouse and keyboard and, last but not least, the OTES exhaust port.

BIOS

ABIT’s SOFTMENU BIOS is a favorite amongst overclockers.

The SOFTMENU area of the BIOS package puts overclocker’s favorite tweak settings
at their fingertips. This includes CPU operating speed. CPU FSB can be set from
100 to 412 MHz. AGP ratio and DRAM ratio is selectable.

The N/B Strap CPU As assigns memory speed manually or by CPU
control.

CPU core voltage can be set up to a toasty 1.9 volts.

DDR voltage can be hiked up to 3.2 volts.

AGP voltage is more conservative.

Advanced Chipset Features allow for memory and system timing options. Take
notice of the GAME ACCELERATOR option near the bottom of the screen. The options
are Turbo, Street Racer, F1 or Auto. These preset options squeeze a bit of extra
performance out of the IC7-Max3 but how much and stability will depend on RAM
and CPU used. Think of it as fast, faster, and fastest.

The DELAY PRIOR TO THERMAL time is selectable. This feature is only available
to 0.13 micron P4 processors with a 512KB L2 cache. These processors have a
thermal monitor which, when in automatic mode, will force the processor to cool
down. The time before this feature is activated can be set.

The next sections of the BIOS are standard to most systems.

The PC HEALTH STATUS section has options to monitor a choice of fans. The CPU
FanEQ Speed Control can be set to “always 100%” or activated by temperature.

Benchmarks.

The test systems.

• Intel P4 3 GHz 512KB
  800 MHz processor (HT enabled)
• ABIT
  IC7-Max3 motherboard
• ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB Video
  Card Catalyst 3.9 drivers (Application preference ticked for Anti-Aliasing
  and Anisotropic Filtering in both Direct 3D and OpenGL, VSYNC disabled BIOS
  AGP aperture set to 256)
• 2 x 256 MB Corsair PC3200 DDR RAM in DIMM 1 and 3
• Sony 52x CD
• 80 GB Seagate SATA Hard Drive
• Samsung 950p 19″ Monitors
• USB Keyboard and Optical Mouse
• Retail HSF packaged with processor
• AMK SX1000
  modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 updated.

• AMD 3200+ 400 FSB
  Processor
• Gigabyte
  7NNXP motherboard
• ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB Video
  Card Catalyst 3.9 drivers (Application preference ticked for Anti-Aliasing
  and Anisotropic Filtering in both Direct 3D and OpenGL, VSYNC disabled BIOS
  AGP aperture set to 256)
• 2 x 256 MB Corsair PC3200 DDR RAM in DIMM 1 and 3
• Sony 52x CD
• 60 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive
• Samsung 950p 19″ Monitors
• USB Keyboard and Optical Mouse
• Globalwin CAK4-76T HSF
• AMK SX1000
  modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 updated.

Programs used

• 
  Sisoft Sandra 2004
• MadOnion
  3DMark 2001 SE
• MadOnion
  3DMark 2003
• Quake
  III Arena
• Commanche
  4
• GL
  Excess
• SpecviewPerf 7.1
• Serious Sam SE
• Unreal Tournament 2003 flyby benchmark
• Aquamark3
• KirbiBench
• Jurassic Park Operation Genesis
• Call of Duty demo
• X2
  Demo
• Wolfenstein Enemy Territory
• Fraps
• Adobe After Effects 5.5
• Softimage 2.0.1

All tests were run at default video card settings with VSYNC disabled. Anti-Aliasing
and Anisotropic Filtering was left ticked for application preference. AGP aperture
was set in BIOS to match the memory amount of the video card. DirectX 8.1 was
used only for 3DMARK 2001 SE tests. DirectX 90b was installed for all other
tests. Windows visual effects was set for ADJUST FOR BEST PERFORMANCE. Windows
was restarted before each test. An process idle command was executed before
each test.

Individual performance will vary with any particular or specific timings or
tweaks enabled by you. A 768 MB page file was moved to D: partition. Temporary
Internet files moved to J: partition at end of drive. OS installed to C: and
programs installed to E:. All programs were benchmarked with initial monitor
settings at 1024×768@75Hz.

3DMark 2001 SE

3D Mark 2001 SE and it’s replacement, 3D Mark 2003, answer the simple question
of how fast the hardware is; all of the hardware that powers the game.

3DMark 2003

3D Mark 2003 was originally designed to measure performance specifically in
shader-heavy titles.

Aquamark3

Aquamark3 is a newer benchmark from Massive Development. For the most part
it is a DirectX 8.1 benchmark though it is run with DirectX 90b installed. Four
measurement sets were used. The first has high and low detail with Anti Aliasing
and Anisotropic filtering turned off. The second has high and low detail with
Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering set at max.

Commanche 4

GL Excess

GL Excess is an OPENGL benchmark that is optimized for DX8.1 as can be seen
by the differences between DirectX software.

Quake III high quality

Quake III continues to hang around. This benchmark is one that
most can’t just let go of and it retains grandfather rights in the community.
Many of today’s games are based upon the Quake engine. But look at those scores
at 1600×1200! Over 160 FPS! It wasn’t too long ago that we thought topping 100
FSP was fast. Now we sit at over 200 FPS with the screen set to a high resolution
and detail.

Serious Sam

UT2003 Flyby

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory: Railgun timedemo

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory uses an improved version of the heavily
modified Quake III engine from Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The Railgun time
demo results were recorded.

X2 Rolling Demo

X2 – The Threat is a teaser with a benchmark option for Egosoft’s
upcoming release. It does not use pixel shaders.

Call of Duty Demo

Call of Duty is a new game thus using the latest in optimizations.
FRAPS was used to record the average number of frames per second over a minimum
of 100,000 played frames. Call of Duty also finds its roots in the Quake III
engine.

Specviewperf 7.1

SpecviewPerf measures the 3D rendering performance of systems
running under OPENGL. The improved 9800 with its massive amounts of memory only
make the 9700 look silly.

The following two tests are targeted mainly towards CPU performance and will
show if any “flaws” are in board design affecting the ability of the
CPU to crunch through the data. While in render mode the two test programs virtually
bypass ram and GPU.

KribiBench

The Kribi engine is 100% software rendering (a pure CPU benchmark) and makes
heavy use of SSE instructions and SMP. More is better.

Adobe After Effects 5.5

Adobe After Effects is a tool to produce motion
graphics and visual effects for film, video, multimedia and the web. It is primarily
a 2D application using imported graphics or digital footage or self generated
effects. A project was created that was a combination of many video footage
files, resizing and rasterizing effects, text animations and multiple layer
effects. This “average” combination was felt to best demonstrate advantages
and/or disadvantages that a real world user may experience rather than isolating
and benchmarking a particular effect.

There is no official benchmark for After Effects
but tasks can be timed to show specific results. Rendering, or the task of building
and compiling frames, is mainly CPU intensive and After Effects generally bypasses
the video card and relies solely on the processor for speed. The time taken
to render 900 frames basically shows how fast the processor is working on the
given task.

Softimage XSI can simply bring
any computer to its knees. It’s an incredibly powerful 3D animation program
that has the ability to become so complex that single processor systems have
been known to “think” for days when rendering an animation. Softimage works
on somewhat similar principle to After Effects. A faster and more powerful video
card will translate to a smoother interface where complex scenes can be manipulated
in real time. Note that Softimage does not have an interface to real-time preview
a finished frame as unlike After Effects. Users can manipulate objects in a
choice of views from wire frame mode to simulated real-time shading mode. In
order to look at a finished frame a user must render the frame to disk which
bypasses the GPU. A faster processor will result in the faster render. The amount
of RAM is not as great an issue as the user is working frame by frame and the
graphics card is doing the bulk of the work while working within the GUI.

This is a most basic overview and there are specialty
hardware components that can enhance the speed and interactivity of complex
3D scenes and programs. The designers working on the test system use Softimage
on a less complex level to provide enhancements and elements to commercials,
promos and station ID elements. Though their work is quite complex to some it
a far cry from that of special effects in major film productions.

Benchmark Conclusions

Imagine that. This is more than the results of benchmarks on the IC7-Max3.
It is an impromptu Intel versus AMD test with INTEL “winning” 54 of
the 70 tests. OMG! Hyperthreading was enabled giving the P4 an unfair advantage.
The IC7-Max3 is a top performer and it is important to remember that some tests
were won by a single point and thus may be called a draw.

Overclocking

One retail P4 3 Ghz processor. One retail heatsink that came boxed with the
processor. One overclocking newb using no voltage bumps.

Any questions?

Conclusion

If money is not a concern and INTEL is the game then the ABIT IC7-Max3 will
not disappoint. This a more expensive product by a few dollars but flagship
products always are. To be realistic the IC7 isn’t obscenely priced. It just
isn’t at the sub $100 level. ABIT have almost reached perfection with this motherboard.
24-bit 96 kHz 5.1 ENVY audio would have done nicely. If ABIT had of swapped
the floppy header below the ATX power connector it would have made it VERY hard
to find anything wrong with the IC7-Max3.

We did stumble across one wrinkle. A hard drive on SATA headers 1 or 2 wanted
to “squabble” with devices on either IDE header in the test system.
The boot process would stop with a non system disk error and have to be rebooted
in order to get to the desktop. This was solved by moving the Seagate SATA drive
to one of the remaining 4 SATA headers (SATA 3-6) and once this was done the
IC7-Max3 was solid through days of rebooting, benchmarks and all around system
abuse.

Who has a need for all that the IC7-Max3 offers? Not many but we enthusiasts
want to go fast and go fast we will with all the bells and whistles that we
can take along.

Ratings breakdown.

There are several ratings categories that are used and all may not be applicable
to every product. Our scoring system may not also be “in-tune” with
what you see on other sites. We made it harder to win awards as every product
cannot win the race even if it places well. Just because a product on our site
hasn’t an award does not mean that it is a poor product. Products should fulfill
your needs, have acceptable longevity, and as a pleasant side effect…exceed
your expectations. What you need it for and how it fits those needs changes
with each individual.

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