Introduction
ABIT i865PE IS7 SPRINGDALE
It's now the turn of another popular manufacturer to try their hand at the Springdale chipset. We already seen a number of big-name manufacturers attempt to outdo one another with their Canterwood boards. The Springdale is the cheaper chipset, so the next battleground will be fought on a mixture of cost, features and performance.
ABIT now stride into the Springdale competition with not one, not two, not even three, but four distinct boards based on this versatile chipset. The i865 opens up the way for full 200FSB support, DDR-400 support and integrated graphics. Cheaper variants make do without 200FSB compatibility. Barring the odd freak board, we've seen the performance Springdale chipset, the i865PE, benchmark within a few percentage points of the Canterwood gang. So decent performance, a high degree of flexibility and a lower price earmark the i865's potential.
We've recently looked at the ABIT Canterwood board, and we found it to be a stable base for a high-performance PC. We'd expect pretty much the same from their Springdale boards. Let's now see if our expectation are realised as we look at the ABIT IS7.
