Anybody try the new Abit IS7 springdale Board?

[sterling]

HI All

I was wondering if any of you guys have tried the new Abit IS7 motherboard yet?
This board has the new Intel 865pe Springdale chip. I need to build a computer for my
office very soon. No overclocking or games. If you were building a office computer and had
a choice of using the Abit IS7 or the Nforce based Asus Deluxe board which would u try? Also, since
reliability and stability is important would u wait till Intel brings out their own 865pe board in a couple of weeks?

thanks in advance

 

[orion7144]

I just orered one from Newegg so hopefully I will know by this weekend..

 

[sterling]

Excellent

Let me know how it goes!!

 

[hg321]

Well I have had mine since last weekend with the componets listed below...I haven't had one crash or one single problem and I have been playing Splinter Cell for hours....tho I am waiting for a bios update before I start messing with the memory timings

 

[orion7144]

Have you tried to go higher than 2.8gig? Is that a 2.4C or 2.4B?

Originally posted by: hg321
Well I have had mine since last weekend with the componets listed below...I haven't had one crash or one single problem and I have been playing Splinter Cell for hours....tho I am waiting for a bios update before I start messing with the memory timings

 

[flyer351]

I've had the IS7 for a few weeks with no problems other than XP installation with a Radeon 7500. Replaced the Radeon 7500 and had no issues. But the memory timing issues won't be fixed until a new BIOS comes out.

 

[hg321]

It's a 2.4B.....it's not a real great overclocker...2.9 is about it's limit.

 

[sterling]

HI All

I actually found the first review of the Abit IS7 out. In fact, this is probably one of the few honest
reviews ive read. The author actually admitted the Abit IS7 broke down during the testing. He also said one of the USB connections didnt work either. Its also going around that the bearings in the Abit fan go bad quick. Im gonna hold out. Looks like the Intel just came out today. For u asus fans, their motherboard is out now, too. If you would like to read the review its located here:
www.thecrucible.ca/reviews/IS7/overclocking.htm

 

[edwardhchan]

I just picked up my IS7 today from Mwave, with a 2.8C Processor. I'm stuck running in DDR333 until tomorrow, when my DDR400 RAM arrives. So far, so good... stable, got Win XP Pro SP1 installed fine, benchmarks well, though I'll wait until I get my RAM before I post numbers. The interesting thing about my board is that someone snuck the 3com gigabit ethernet chip onto my board instead of the Realtek 10/100 I was supposed to get. Not that I'm complaining or anything

Ed

 

[orion7144]

Alot of the Abit boards are coming with the #Com Gigabyte lan. Will see if mine has it tomorrow. It's not the CSA lan and runs via PCI but it still better than 10/100.

Originally posted by: edwardhchan
I just picked up my IS7 today from Mwave, with a 2.8C Processor. I'm stuck running in DDR333 until tomorrow, when my DDR400 RAM arrives. So far, so good... stable, got Win XP Pro SP1 installed fine, benchmarks well, though I'll wait until I get my RAM before I post numbers. The interesting thing about my board is that someone snuck the 3com gigabit ethernet chip onto my board instead of the Realtek 10/100 I was supposed to get. Not that I'm complaining or anything

Ed

 

[sterling]

HI Again

Whats the sound like on this board?

 

[vetteguy]

I've had this board for a week, but haven't been able to use it because I've been waiting for the May 21st processor price "drop"

I'm picking up a 2.8c today though.

Here's a question..what would you rather get: Kingston HyperX 3500 (rated 2-3-3-7 1T) or HyperX 3200 (rated 2-2-2-6 1T)? I'm not really planning on overclocking much (if any), so it seems that the 3200 is the better deal?

 

[aldente]

I ordered two of these, one works great, the other one couldn't get past recognizing a PS2 keyboard upon boot up. I don't like the way the IDE cables connect to the motherboard horizontially (they have to be twisted). I'm RMAing the bad IS7, but for the price of $118, it's still a good deal to me. BOTH of mine had Gigabit LAN instead of 10/100 *bonus*. The boot up sequence is very fast, faster than the crappy Asus P4SDX I had. I'm not an overclocker, so I can't speak to that. I'm happy overall with it. I could get the ASUS P4P800 right now to replace my bad IS7, but since I had such a lousy experience with the P4SDX I don't trust them right now. For me the i865 choice was either P4P800 or IS7.

 

[orion7144]

I just got mine and it does have the 3Com gigabyte lan chip on it. I should have my 2.4C later today.

 

[edwardhchan]

Alrighty... I'm up and running at full capacity now with my IS7 ... My 2.8C runs as expected, blindingly fast! The hyper threading decreases my video encoding times by 30%, which is the primary reason I bought this hardware. Some quirks I ran into that may help those who have yet to set this one up:

1. In order to use ALL the IDE ports (IDE 0&1 and SATA 0&1) you need to Map the SATA to IDE3 and IDE4, and if you want to boot from SATA, you have to turn on the RAID controller, even if you're not running a RAID. My config right now is 3 optical drives on the parallel IDEs, and 2 hard drives on each SATA channel. By using the SATA channels (with a converter box on each drive) I was able to toss my PCI IDE card into the "sell on ebay" bin.

2. This board is less than happy with my Kingston HyperX KHX3200/256 memory in dual-channel mode. I had to bump the voltage up to 2.6V, and manually set the timing to 2-6-3-2 (in order of the BIOS), even though the memory is specified to work at 2-6-2-2.

With the stock HSF+thermal pad, I was getting reported full load temps of over 64C, which I thought was high. I replaced it with a CoolerMaster IHC-L71 copper heat-pipe cooler with quiet fan, and AS3, and that dropped my full load temp to around 58C, which is high as well, but knowing this HSF, I suspect the sensor is set high to begin with.

Sisoft memory scores are sub-par, (~4300) but I don't really trust those scores. It stacks up well with the PCMark compared to ExtremeTech's Intel board benchmarks, and scores well on all other benchmarks I ran. There's definitely room in the BIOS for improvement, especially with memory compatibility, but all-in-all, this is a heck of a lot faster than my old 2.4/845G combo. And as far as stability, once I got the memory timing right, this thing is rock-solid. Of course, I'm not O/C'ing, so I guess you can say it's working as advertised.

Ed



Ed

 

[orion7144]

Finally got it installed... I only have one stick on memory in it at the time. WinXP does not setup the 3Com network chip you have to install the drivers. No big deal but added time. The temps I think are definatley reading higher than normal. At full load using the Winbond Hardware doctor reports 56C running 2 (one each CPU) instances of folding.I havenot tried to OC yet but will do so later tonight. My only real complaint is the time it takes to post. My gigabyte board was much faster.

 

[orion7144]

OC'ing is not going well. I only have 1 stick of PC2700 generic ram and no mater what I do I get the BSOD. I am not sure exactly how the NB strap works but I have tried most settings.

 

[edwardhchan]

The NB strap tells the north bridge what memory multipliers to make available. Here are the settings, and the memory speed BEFORE overclocking:

FSB400: 3:4 (PC2100)
FSB533: 1:1 (PC2100), 4:5 (PC2700)
FSB800: 3:2 (PC2100), 5:4 (PC2700... sorta), 1:1 (PC3200)

So, theoretically, if you were overclocking your 800 MHz bus 2.4C, you would want to leave your strap set to FSB800, and perhaps lower the multiplier to 3:2, with your general PC2700 RAM. This will give you a little more headroom when o/c'ing. Also, be aware that when you enter in the bus speed, the baseline speed for your processor is 200, not 800. So going to 225, for example, will move your actual bus speed to 900, and your processor to 2.7 GHz

Ed