Abit VT7 Motherboard
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- Front Side Bus Speed: 800 MHz
- Storage Controller Type(s): DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 2, Serial ATA x 4
- Form Factor: ATX
- Video Interface: AGP 8x
- Chipset: VIA PT880
- Compatibility: PC
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Solid, cheap, "plain vanilla" board, but dumb layout around PCI slots
Pros
Inexpensive, solid, full-size board with all basic features like RAID, dual channel RAM, SATA.
Cons
Poor layout around PCI cards.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
I liked the low price and full set of basic features. Good thing I didn't need all 5 PCI slots.
I hoped that buying this motherboard would be like buying a Toyota - nothing fancy, but with standard functions all solid and working reliably. This motherboard is cheap and has the latest standard features: RAID, dual channel DDR RAM support, USB 2.0, ethernet, serial ATA, and 6-channel sound. This board supports the currently fastest available Pentium 4 processors with an 800MHz bus (socket 478). I'm not into overclocking or gaming, but I did notice that the board's bus speeds can be increased in 1 MHz increments, and that all voltages are adjustable, again in nice small increments. There is also a handy utility to monitor all board voltages and temperatures, which seems useful for overclockers.
With a plain vanilla board like this, I mostly wanted to install it and forget it. However, there were a few notable things that stood out, both good and bad:
The GOOD:
1. There are separate audio output jacks in the rear for speakers and microphones. This gives 5 jacks, each with a dedicated purpose. Most motherboards with 6-channel sound only have 3 jacks, forcing one to select via software which are inputs or outputs, but with 5 jacks you don't suffer that limitation.
2. SATA cables, for both power and data, were included. A nice touch for a budget-price product.
3. USB ports had enough power to run external portable hard drives directly, without additional power. My old motherboard wasn't able to do this.
The BAD:
1. The CD audio cable enters the motherboard at the very back edge, between the first two PCI slots. Not only is this far from the CD drive, it makes both adjacent PCI slots difficult, if not impossible, to use. For example, I have a TV tuner card that I first put into slot #1 (closest to the AGP). This caused RF interference with the AGP card, so I moved the card into slot #2, only to find that it wouldn't insert because it bumped into the CD audio plug. Then I tried slot #3. This time, the card would not seat because of some peculiarly tall and inconveniently placed capacitors at the back edge of the board. Finally, slot #4 worked, which was a relief because there are only 5 slots total. My TV tuner card is relatively small, and I was surprised to have so much trouble with something so basic.
2. The board lacks an internal connector to which to attach an optional front-panel headphone jack.
3. At first, the board was unstable when using the RAM in dual-channel configuration, crashing every hour or so. The crashes did not occur when dual-channel configuration was not used, but this cuts down the RAM bandwidth a lot, so I didn't want to go with that solution. I finally fixed it by slowing down the RAM CAS timing from 2.5 to 3.
Other than the points above, this board has been solid and trouble-free. I had only one other problem of a general nature that could have happened with any board. I didn't have any thermal grease handy, and the old grease on the CPU had dried out. It would have been nice to have included a cheapo packet of thermal grease with the board, but perhaps that's expecting too much.
For someone wanting to upgrade a cheap computer, this board isn't bad. But beware if you need to use all 5 PCI slots. Using dual-channel RAM may also be slightly tricky, but should eventually work.
With a plain vanilla board like this, I mostly wanted to install it and forget it. However, there were a few notable things that stood out, both good and bad:
The GOOD:
1. There are separate audio output jacks in the rear for speakers and microphones. This gives 5 jacks, each with a dedicated purpose. Most motherboards with 6-channel sound only have 3 jacks, forcing one to select via software which are inputs or outputs, but with 5 jacks you don't suffer that limitation.
2. SATA cables, for both power and data, were included. A nice touch for a budget-price product.
3. USB ports had enough power to run external portable hard drives directly, without additional power. My old motherboard wasn't able to do this.
The BAD:
1. The CD audio cable enters the motherboard at the very back edge, between the first two PCI slots. Not only is this far from the CD drive, it makes both adjacent PCI slots difficult, if not impossible, to use. For example, I have a TV tuner card that I first put into slot #1 (closest to the AGP). This caused RF interference with the AGP card, so I moved the card into slot #2, only to find that it wouldn't insert because it bumped into the CD audio plug. Then I tried slot #3. This time, the card would not seat because of some peculiarly tall and inconveniently placed capacitors at the back edge of the board. Finally, slot #4 worked, which was a relief because there are only 5 slots total. My TV tuner card is relatively small, and I was surprised to have so much trouble with something so basic.
2. The board lacks an internal connector to which to attach an optional front-panel headphone jack.
3. At first, the board was unstable when using the RAM in dual-channel configuration, crashing every hour or so. The crashes did not occur when dual-channel configuration was not used, but this cuts down the RAM bandwidth a lot, so I didn't want to go with that solution. I finally fixed it by slowing down the RAM CAS timing from 2.5 to 3.
Other than the points above, this board has been solid and trouble-free. I had only one other problem of a general nature that could have happened with any board. I didn't have any thermal grease handy, and the old grease on the CPU had dried out. It would have been nice to have included a cheapo packet of thermal grease with the board, but perhaps that's expecting too much.
For someone wanting to upgrade a cheap computer, this board isn't bad. But beware if you need to use all 5 PCI slots. Using dual-channel RAM may also be slightly tricky, but should eventually work.
