ABIT IT7-MAX2

Conclusion

To put it rather bluntly, the IT7-MAX2 offers everything the original MAX did, but now adds the ubiquitous PS/2 ports back in to the mix. To ABIT's credit, no high-speed connectivity options have been sacrificed to reinstall the PS/2 ports. What we can gather from this is that the original MAX, with no legacy support, perhaps went a little too far in modernising the motherboard as we know it. It seems as if the motherboard-buying public really do care about those PS/2 ports; I know I was loathed to buy a new USB keyboard for my IT7-MAX.

Perhaps the newest technology that has been making waves is Serial ATA, or S-ATA. S-ATA seeks to drag our hard drives, kicking and screaming, into a new era. Thinner cables, hot-swap ability, and faster transfer speeds are just some of the options on offer. With ports 8mm wide, and cables which are even thinner, routing multiple hard drive cables is no big issue any more. The inclusion of an S-ATA-to-IDE adapter, under the name of Serillel, is a responsible measure by ABIT. We should see true S-ATA drives emerging late this year.

Other than that, the IT7-MAX2 offers everything that the MAX did. 10 USB2.0 ports, 3 1394a (Firewire) ports, premium on-board sound, 4-channel IDE hardware RAID, and rock-solid stability once overclocked substantially.

The i845E chipset, when run at its specified and supported DDR266 memory mode, is something of understatement in performance terms. The IT7-MAX2, and by very definition the i845 chipset, only truly shine when we force them into running in DD356 memory mode via a little trick in BIOS. The increased bandwidth on offer, coupled with a super-fast host processor, propel the MAX2 to the top of our DDR benchmarks. Maybe their has been a slight tweak in the BIOS, but it manages to minutely eclipse the original MAX in most of our benchmarks. Over a few days' of testing, it proved to be fast, stable, and feature-packed.

If you already own the original MAX, or some other variant of the i845E chipset, I would personally not choose the MAX2. If, however, you are upgrading from an older chipset, or are setting foot on the Pentium 4 path for the first time, there's little to currently eclipse the IT7-MAX2.

Highs

Extremely stable in days of testing
Very quick when run in DDR356 memory mode
Takes the i845E chipset just about as far as it will go.
Looks the business
Probably the most highly specified of any current Pentium 4 motherboard
Comprehensive bundle
The much-needed PS/2 ports are back at no expense to high-speed connectivity options
Excellent BIOS, once again.