Specification
So if PS/2, serial and parallel interfaces are all gone (the connecting logic still exists, just nowhere to plug your devices in), what is there to replace them and what do you do with old devices that need those interfaces?There are only 2 external peripheral connection interfaces on the AT7, USB and FireWire. FireWire is basically limited to a subset of peripherals such as external storage, digital video cameras and the odd toy such as the Apple iPod (Apple created the interface) and some cute little media players from Sony. Creative ship a FireWire port on their Audigy cards (called SB1394) which is the first FireWire port many will have seen and on the whole it's external storage and DV that use it.
Everthing else uses USB. Your keyboard and mouse on this board will use USB, so will your printer, digital camera, modem and PDA. The keyboard and mouse are crucial here. Key user interface devices that many users have become accustomed to but invariably, unless the PC is very new, will use the PS/2 interface to connect to your PC. The mouse has slowly switched over to USB recently, especially with Microsoft's offerings, but the keyboard seems to have stayed resolutely PS/2 from this reviewer's standpoint and unless you buy a USB keyboard, you'll need a convertor.
So to see just exactly what you have to play with, lets take a look at the formal specification of this MAX series board from ABIT.
Processor
• Every Socket A processor from the Duron 600 to the Athlon XP2200+ and beyond
Chipset
• VIA KT333 Socket A DDR Motherboard chipset (VT8367 + VT8233A)
UltraD DMA 133/RAID
• Highpoint 374 IDE controller
• Supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE specification
• Supports RAID0/1/0+1 RAID modes
Memory
• Four 184-pin DIMM slots supporting 6 or 8 banks (unregistered or registered) with up to 3 or 3.5GB using PC2100 memory modules and 2 or 3GB using PC2700. System BIOS
• Award PnP BIOS supporting SoftMenu III, APM, DMI and ACPI
Audio
• Realtek ALC650 supporting 6 channel output including AC3 via digital S/PDIF 24-bit optical output
Ethernet
• Realtek 8100B single chip Ethernet controller supporting 10/100Mbit half/full duplex
USB
• 4 x USB 1.1 ports onboard, 2 x USB 2.0 onboard
• Headers for 2 more USB 1.1 ports (supplied) and 2 more USB 2.0 ports (not supplied)
• USB 2.0 ports provided by VIA VT6202 single chip USB 2.0 host controller
FireWire
• 2 x FireWire ports on board (IEEE 1394)
• Header for 1 extra FireWire port (not supplied)
Expansion
• AGP slot supporting 3.3V and 1.5V devices
• 3 x PCI (32-bit, 33MHz) slots
• 2 x IDE connectors from the VT8233A southbridge for 4 devices
• 4 x IDE connectors from the Highpoint HPT374 for 8 devices
• Floppy disk drive connector
As you can see, the board is chock full of value added features but at the expense of overall expansion. With only 3 PCI slots for add-in cards, you have to make good use of the onboard features for this board to make sense. Therefore the onboard components have to be of the highest quality for you to find them viable. We'll talk more about them later.
As far as USB and FireWire go, with the extra USB ports that are provided, all hooked up, you have 6 USB 1.1, 2 USB 2.0 and 2 FireWire ports to play with.
It would have been better if the extra ports provided were USB 2.0 ports to even out the balance, especially since USB 2.0 is totally backwards compatible with the 1.1 spec meaning a mouse or keyboard or any 1.1 device will work fine in the USB 2.0 ports. More ports means easier acceptance of the new standard so the imbalance of ports is puzzling.
Support for 12 IDE devices is a first for a mainstream consumer board out of the box. With a total of 8 devices that can be used in RAID configuration, your IDE expansion choices are quite extensive on this board. While I can't see it happening for various reasons, it's something I guess that you CAN do it. Massive overkill from this reviewers perspective, never mind the extra effort needed to support 12 IDE devices and the resource nightmare I think that would be.
We've seen the new VIA KT333 chipset recently with the EPoX 83KA so it will be interesting to see how the board competes against the EPoX performance wise.
Have ABIT got the balance right with this board in terms of USB and FireWire port allocation and expansion? We'll discuss that later! Onto the layout and installation.
