Introduction
Another day, another motherboard. It seems as if a day doesn't go by without another motherboard announcement. Today we're looking at the ABIT AT7-MAX2 motherboard - a Socket A motherboard using the new VIA KT400 chipset. Today though isn't an ordinary motherboard day, as the AT7-MAX2 definitely has broken the mould as far as socket A boards go.ABIT's philosophy with the MAX line is to do away with the old legacy ports and in its place put more modern, useful ports. It was quite a shock to the hardware community when ABIT first released the MAX series. ABIT had always gone for minimalist overclockers board designs - no onboard sound, graphics, LAN or anything of that nature; after all, onboard usually meant poor quality. However, the onboard features they added were far from poor quality and were very good replacements for real cards.
The MAX2 follows on where the original MAX left off - just like before, you wont find any serial or parallel ports, but what you will find is probably one of the greatest selection of interfaces ever to be built directly onto the motherboard. You name it, it's got it - USB 2, Firewire, 6 Channel Audio, Optical Audio Out, LAN, Serial ATA, RAID. Unlike ABIT's previous MAX line, the PS/2 ports are back!
The MAX2 has been geared for the enthusiast in mind. The overclocking options are the best i've seen in any socket A board. When ABIT designed this board, they did so with style in mind - it's certainly a looker :)
Lets have a look at exactly what this board has to offer...
