Specification
Processor Every AMD Socket A processor, from the Duron 600 to Athlon XP 2200+
Chipset
VIA KT400 Socket A North Bridge and VT8235 South Bridge
AGP 3.0 compliancy with 1x,2x,4x,8x support
IDE Controllers
Supports UDMA 33, 66, 100, 133 transfer modes
RAID 0/1/0+1 via Highpoint HPT 374 Controller
Dual Serial ATA Channels supporting speeds up to 150 MB/sec
Memory
Four 184 pin DIMM sockets for Un-buffered & Non ECC DDR DRAM
Maximum of 2 modules for DDR 333/400 support (2GB Maximum)
Maximum of 4 modules for DDR 200/266 support (3.5GB Maximum)
BIOS
SoftMenu technology for totally jumplerless setup
Award PnP BIOS with APM and DMI support
ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Interface)
Onboard Audio
Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio
Digital audio out supporting 24-bit SPDIF
Onboard LAN
VIA VT6102 MAC Controller and VT 6103 physical layer
10/100 Mb speeds with ACPI and Wake On Lan support
I/O Connectors
AGP, 5 PCI slots
Floppy port
4x IDE connectors
2x Serial ATA 150 connectors
2x USB Headers, 1x IEEE 1349a header
1x CD-in, 1x Aux-in
Back Panel
PS/2 Keyboard and mouse
4x USB, 2x Firewire (IEEE 1394)
S/P DIF output
Front speaker, line in, Mic in, Center/Sub, Surround Speaker jacks
2x USB, 1x RJ-45 LAN
There is also an option to add the ABIT Media XP front bay panel, of which you can find a review of here Media XP. The sheer number of connectors and features of this board is incredible. The only card you would need to add to this motherboard to make it a complete system is a graphics card, nothing else is required.
Unlike previous MAX boards this board has a full 5 PCI slots, so you can really pack it out with extras if you wanted to. Onboard USB 2.0 and Firewire is a welcome addition, although there are not many USB 2.0 products out there at the moment. With USB 2 ports starting to appear on motherboards like this, we should start to see it more on consumer products. Firewire is already widely used on camcorders, external storage devices and more recently on MP3 jukebox like players.
I'm personally glad that ABIT decided to bring back the PS/2 ports. There are a lot of people out there with very good PS/2 keyboards and mice that don't feel the need to go out and purchase USB ones. Further more a lot of people don't realise that in terms of update speed, PS/2 is more responsive for mice. The maximum sampling rate of USB is only 100-120Hz, where with proper software you can set the PS/2 sampling rate to 200 Hz - which in my opinion gives you a slightly smoother mouse response in first person shooter games.
The lack of the old 9-pin Serial and 25-pin Parallel ports isn't too much of a loss. Beware though as some people forget they may have a few devices still using these legacy ports - mainly external analogue modems and small add on's, like remote control unit's commonly found packaged with DVD cards etc.
The number of hard drive options is endless, with 2 normal UDMA 133 channels, 2 RAID-able channels and a further 2 Serial ATA channels you are completely spoilt for choice on your storage options. This is the first time that Serial ATA has popped up on motherboards (or just about anywhere for that matter). At present there are hardly any hard drives available that support Serial ATA natively, but ABIT didn't want to leave you in the dark until support takes off, so they included the Serillel™ ATA converter....
