Abit BG7E
Stephen Cooper, November 28th, 2002
..:: Package ::..
When you open up the package don’t expect to find much of anything spectacular. The package is nearly identical to that of the BE7-RAID we recently reviewed. For the BG7E, we have one ATA-66/100/133 ribbon cable, 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, and of course, the motherboard user manual and driver disc. Not much to get too excited about in this package. I would have liked to see Abit include a second IDE cable to accommodate users with multiple hard drives or optical disc drives.
One thing I have come to love about Abit is that they take the time to really go over the different BIOS options, no matter how high-end or low-end the motherboard is. 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 does a nice job covering the different aspects of the 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 BG7E comes along with a decent package, although I’d love to see Abit throw in an additional IDE cable within the package. It’d be nice to see a feature or two added to this board such as RAID, although this motherboard isn’t truly geared in that direction due to those two words that seem like nails on a chalkboard to any performance freak, integrated graphics.
..:: Feature Set ::..
The Abit BG7E motherboard comes along with ABIT SoftMenu™ Overclocking, 10/100M Ethernet On Board, 6-Channel Audio and Optical S/PDIF Out interface, Intel Extreme Graphics, Hyper-Threading Technology Support, and Enhanced 533MHz FSB, 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 BG7E features.
Previous Page Next Page
|
)
)
)