Board Analysis

ABIT has a somewhat mixed bag in terms of layout. On one hand, ABIT has placed the 20-pin ATX connector and its 4-pin auxiliary associate below the CPU socket. While the overall effect on airflow is debatable, working in the general area can get cramped with a processor and video card installed, making this design choice an inconvenience more than anything. In addition, if the AGP slot is populated with a long graphics card, such as a GeForce4 Ti 4600, the DIMM slots will be obstructed from opening; again somewhat of an inconvenience.

Lots of space between AGP and PCI slots

Conversely, ABIT has taken great care to ensure plenty of room around the Socket 462 interface; a move sure to be appreciated by enthusiasts with large heat sinks, like an SLK-800. There are also four holes flanking the Socket for coolers that require a more robust mounting surface.

With many manufacturers going back to two-phase power solutions, it’s good to see ABIT sticking with a three-phase implementation controlled by Intersil’s HIP6301CB. Hopefully, that will pay dividends in stability and processor life.

One of the primary features of the nForce2 chipset is its DualDDR memory architecture, effectively combining two, 64-bit DDR memory channels. ABIT’s NF7-S, like all other nForce2 boards we’ve seen, utilizes three 184-pin memory slots with a capacity for 3GB of DDR RAM – two of the slots comprise one channel and another slot makes up the second. Both channels need to be populated in order to realize the maximum bandwidth potential for the chipset, but as we illustrated in our ASUS A7N8X Deluxe review, there isn’t a major performance discrepancy unless you employ integrated graphics.

NF7-S 2.0 back plate

5 PCI slots

Onboard Serial ATA

You can immediately tell that the NF7-S is an enthusiast board by looking at its back panel, which features a pair of USB 2.0 ports, an RJ-45 jack that interfaces to the onboard 10/100 Ethernet MAC, five 1/8” analog mini-plugs for audio connectivity, and an S/PDIF optical audio output. ABIT has also chosen to integrate Silicon Image’s 3112 Serial ATA RAID controller with support for two channels of SATA.

While the NF7-S sports one AGP 8x slot and five PCI slots, it is interesting to note that there is a blank space between the first PCI and AGP slot. More than likely, this was done to accommodate large AGP cards, such as NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, (and ABIT’s own OTES line of graphics cards) which consumes two expansion slots.