Abit SD7-533

Board Revision: ?

BIOS Version: 6x (3. January 2002)

The current SiS645 motherbaord from Abit is called SD7-533. The number "533" signifies the maximum FSB speed of the next Pentium 4 generation that is expected soon. Though this chipset is not officially designed for this faster system speed, Abit has met all the prerequisites for achieving this: the SD7 runs smoothly at 533 MHz FSB.

The North Bridge chip has been placed at an angle of 45°, which is characteristic for this motherboard. Soft Menu III is also typical Abit, as are the hardware and software included in the package. Soft Menu is the name for Abit's CPU configuration menu within Award BIOS. Here, you can make settings for all of the relevant CPU parameters, such as FSB speed, CPU multiplier and the CPU core voltage. Unfortunately, Intel has kept the multiplier locked for years, and this cannot be changed. Also, FSB speeds of over 145 MHz do not run stably anymore. However, the most important aspect here should be the huge spectrum of available CPU core voltages: you can choose from voltages ranging between 1.1 and 2.2 V (in 0.025 V increments).

In addition to the items mentioned above, others included in the package are: a detailed manual, a 80-wire IDE cable, a floppy cable and an adapter for the USB 2.0 controller that Abit placed directly onto the motherboard. Besides that, there are 5 PCI slots, 3 DIMM sockets and an AGP Pro 4x slot. Finally, a PCI sound chip from C-Media makes this board ready for multimedia use.

The benchmark results of this motherboard are in the midfield. More important is the fact that you get excellent overclocking options and USB 2.0.