Review: ABIT BG7

Compared to the EPoX, the BG7 is at a disadvantage from the start with 2 less USB ports and one less PCI slot as standard and no amount of blow up footballs included will hide that. No IDE RAID either on the BG7...

So is it cheaper to make up for that? With the EPoX retailing for £125.72 at dabs.com and the BG7 retailing for £113.97 at the same site, I don't know about you but I'd rather pay the £12 for 2 USB ports, another PCI slot and some IDE RAID goodness from the HPT372.

Overclocking wise, the BG7 was excellent, maybe its saving grace. With air cooling (Swiftech MCX478 + Panaflo L1A @ 7V) it managed to get my 2.26B processor to ~2930 @ 172MHz front side bus with a measly 1.65V and it was perfectly stable at that speed too.

So as far as overclocking goes, thumbs up for the BG7 since it did excellently, on a par with my IT7 which is regarded by many as the best DDR board for overclockers at the moment and is yet another ABIT board. They definitely seem to be helping the enthusiast at the moment.

So overall, is it better than the EPoX? Nope. At £12 cheaper with significantly fewer features and the EPoX catering for the performance enthusiast just as much as the ABIT I can't recommend the ABIT unless money is tight and you can't stretch for the 4G4A+.

It's not a staggering loss but the EPoX just has the edge.

A nice effort from ABIT and it's an excellent overclockers board and for £113 you can't complain about the price either.

Pro's

Price
Overclocking performance
Stock performance was excellent too
Excellent BIOS

Con's

Not enough USB ports
Pointless onboard graphics (althought this is a complaint of all i845G boards)

7.5/10