ABIT - ABIT AN7 nForce2 Ultra 400 Motherboard Review

The Tech Report reviews the ABIT AN7 (nForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP-T):

IT MAY NOT HAVE THE FLASH of its 64-bit brethren, but there’s still performance potential left in the Athlon XP. This point was certainly proven by our recent look at overclocking the Athlon XP-M 2500+, in which we managed 2400MHz without much difficulty. Of course, taking advantage of that potential requires the right equipment, and that starts with the motherboard. In our Athlon XP-M article, we achieved our greatest success using Abit’s AN7 board. During the course of that test, we decided that the AN7 was interesting enough to deserve a look of its own. Wondering what caught our eye?

..With SATA, Firewire, and dual channel DDR400 support, the AN7 will make a great basis for an Athlon XP system. The excellent overclocking features and bundled software will appeal to the enthusiast, and the extremely high available voltages will appeal to those with watercooling setups. For those who would like to stick with traditional cooling, the FanEQ controls will make noise levels much more bearable. Speaking of fans, I’ll go ahead and beat the dead horse a little more and say I wish Abit had used passive cooling on the north bridge. Active cooling just isn’t necessary and adds noise and another mechanical part to break. It’s (to me, anyway) an annoying design choice on a board that gets just about everything else right.

We’re currently seeing the last hurrah of the Athlon XP line, but that doesn’t mean that support for the chip is waning. Indeed, the motherboards that support the XP are better than ever, and the AN7 is an excellent example of the trend.

Abit’s AN7 motherboard
The Athlon XP gets a guru @ The Tech Report