Abit BE7-RAID
Stephen Cooper, November 14th, 2002
..:: Package ::..
When you open up the package, don’t expect to find much of anything spectacular. The BE7 / BE7-RAID comes along with your everyday package, not too much to be thrilled about. Of course as I stated before, Abit has never really been well known for the amount of goodies included as they tend to focus more on their slogan of "Speed, Stability, Power” than they do packages. For the BE7-RAID, we have two ATA-66/100/133 ribbon cables, one floppy ribbon cable, one USB 2.0 expansion bracket with two USB ports, one rear I/O panel bracket to accommodate for the rear I/O connector placements, one floppy driver diskette for the Highpoint RAID controller, and of course, the motherboard user manual and driver disc. Not much to get too excited about in this package.
One thing I have come to love about Abit manuals is that they take the time to really go over the different BIOS options, what they do, etc. Many other manufacturers will only skim the surface or not even cover the BIOS settings at all. Abit is a performance oriented manufacturer so it makes sense for them to spend a great deal of time explaining the available tweaking options to the end user. The manual also comes in several languages for universal use. Abit also does a nice job covering the different aspects of the Highpoint RAID Controller, driver and software installations, and several of the other aspects that most other motherboard manufacturers will overlook.
The driver / software CD houses the drivers and software for the Abit 845 Series motherboards, so if you’re looking to find a driver, this would be the place to do it. When you first insert the disc into your CD-ROM, the main window will pop up right to the driver install window. Here, you simply click which drivers to install and you’re good to go. Within the main window, you’ll also be able to install any of the software you wish to. The included software suite is fairly nice with the inclusion of a hardware monitoring program, Adobe Acrobat, and Norton Anti-Virus. Overall the Abit BE7-RAID comes along with a decent package, although I’d love to see Abit throw in some additional features for the BE7-RAID, but that’s what the MAX series of motherboards are for, right?
..:: Feature Set ::..
The Abit BE7 / BE7-RAID motherboard comes along with a Realtek RTL8100B 10/100M PCI Fast Ethernet Controller, Realtek ALC650 AC97’ audio codec, an Onboard High Point HPT372 IDE RAID controller which supports ATA133 Hard Drives with RAID 0/1/0+1, along with support for up to six USB 2.0 capable ports. Before we take our customary trip around the motherboard PC, let’s take a look at the chips responsible for these BE7 / BE7-RAID features.
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