Conclusion
During all these tests, the test system did not crash once - even under the overclocked 200mhz bus configurations, a testament to the high quality of this motherboard. Installation of windows XP went without a hitch, after running the supplied driver cd all devices were detected correctly and worked perfectly. One thing to note is that I always do bios upgrades before testing. I know for a fact that there is a boot issue on the older bios's that stop you from using 180 MHz or above bus speeds, so update your bios from ABIT if you have similar problems.This board is without a doubt the best KT400 board i've used. The number of features is overwhelming, and the fact it all works the way it should is impressive. If you are in the market for a new socket A motherboard then i highly recommend the AT7-MAX2, although you may want to look at its younger brother the KD7 if you don't need some of the onboard features. If you already have a KT266/KT333 based motherboard then you should only upgrade from a features/overclockability point of view, as the performance is almost identical to these older chipset's.
Pro's
- Excellent Stability
- Great overclocking BIOS features
- Good performance
- Capable of very high bus speeds
- A port for just about everything
- Good quality onboard hardware
- 5 PCI slots
- PS/2 ports are back
- Great looks, style and presentation
- Very high voltage options for overclockers.
- Good price, considering the sheer number of ports and onboard devices you get.
Con's
- None!
Overall rating 10/10 - I really liked this board, and couldn't find fault.
