... the problem being the lack of comparative benchmarks, as I don't have another suitable mobo to compare it with

Because of this, it doesn't meet the standards for a "proper" review, but Glitterkill is OK with me using it for a "Daily Disturbance" piece, so here it is in all its ... um, "glory".



Introduction

ABIT motherboards - the NF7 series in particular - enjoy a good reputation among self builders and overclockers, but have also been described as "fast and flaky". Which view is the right one? Is the NF7 series all good, or is it good but with caveats?

The NF7 series is by no means a new product, but age does have advantages: revision 2.0 of the board allows higher RAM and Vcore settings than earlier releases, and has 4 HSF mounting holes around the CPU socket. Prices are low also, meaning that the NF7 is a serious contender for those looking for an entry level board, and for those wanting a highly featured and overclockable board.

Before we move on, it's worth noting that this is the "base" NF7 board, the difference between it and the more common NF7-S is the lack of a SATA RAID controller. Like the NF7-S, the NF7 also lacks the integrated Geforce4 MX graphics of the NF7-M (which is not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned).




Specifications

Chipset: NVIDIA nForce2 SPP chipset with MCP

CPU support: AMD Athlon XP, Barton^TM processors with 200/266/333 FSB

Size: full size ATX form factor

Video card support: AGP 8X/4X (0.8V/1.5V), peak bandwidth 2.1GB/s.

Memory support:
* Three 184-pin DIMM sockets;
* Supports 3 DIMM DDR 200/266/333 (Max. 3GB);
* Supports 2 DIMM DDR 400 (Max. 2GB);
* Dual DDR 400 support: two 64-bit independent memory controllers (6.4 GB/sec bandwidth).

Overclocking support: CPU frequency, Vcore, multiplier; chipset, DDR and AGP voltage adjustment.

Audio: onboard 6-channel / 5.1 audio with 24-bit S/PDIF out

LAN: Onboard 10/100Mb interface

Internal Connectors:
* 1 x AGP8X/4X slot, 5 x PCI slots;
* 1 x floppy port;
* 2 x UDMA 33/66/100/133 connectors;
* 2 x USB 2.0 headers;
* 1 x CD-IN, 1 x IrDA .

Back Panel:
* PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse;
* 2 x serial, 1 x parallel;
* 1 x S/PDIF output;
* Audio connectors (front speakers, rear speakers, centre/sub, line in, mic)
* 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 LAN.

Hardware monitoring:
* CPU, PSU & chassis fan speeds, voltages, CPU & system (northbridge) temperature.






The Box / Unpacking

The box features the usual ABIT design: red, white & black angles and a generic F1 car.
Think about your last experience of buying a motherboard though ... chances are you read up on your options first, got some suggestions, checked several sites for the best deal, then, if you didn't actually buy it online, you went into a store & had to ask for it as it wasn't on display, and someone went off to fetch it from a stock room or locked cupboard. I can't see anyone going in with an intention to buy one product but then thinking "Ooh! That's a pretty box ! I'll buy that one instead".

For me, what the packaging looks like is irrelevant: it could come in an orange & cyan chequerboard pattern with the text in Courier font, as long as it protects the contents in transit. As the NF7 arrived in working order, we can assume it did that, so let's open up the box.





Opening the box up shows what's included with the motherboard: a user's manual, driver CDROM, an ATX case backplate, ribbon floppy & IDE cables, USB cables, a PCI slot cover, and a self adhesive clear CMOS jumper and case switch/LED header layout diagram (which is far too big to be used in any case with a window).

Removing the board from the antistatic bag is encouraging: it feels thick, a good weight, and makes none of the worrying creaking noises I've heard from other boards in the same inadequately supported state.







First Impressions

A quick look around the board reveals that the board seems to have been designed by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. By that I mean there seem two distinct schools of thinking at work: for every neat touch, good bit of design or nice feature, there seems to be a corresponding example of sloppiness and/or boneheaded design.

For example:

Good: the Northbridge is close to the CPU socket, and has a cooler fitted.
Bad: the Northbridge cooler looks a little cheap, and it would have helped if the sticker had been put on straight & central.

Good: the IDE ports are on the centre right of the board, which is a good position for connection to hard drives in most cases.
Bad: it's not an ideal place for connecting up CD/DVD drives ... and the floppy drive connector is way out in left field.

Good: protective strips on the motherboard to protect it from HSF installation mishaps are a great idea....
Bad: ... but they look like stuck on afterthoughts.

Good: the NF7 uses the auxiliary 12v power connector from the PSU for greater stability.
Bad: it (and the main ATX connector) are located too close to the middle of the board to hide the wiring away.









Connecting Up & First Use

Installation of the motherboard was no real problem, thanks to the excellent (with slightly poor use of English) manual, which includes a large section on plugging in the various peripherals and cables.

The detailed section on installing the CPU and heatsink were particularly welcome as I always find this a nerve-wracking task: getting it wrong means there's a very real possibility of frying the CPU and/or damaging the motherboard to a terminal extent.

The location of the memory slots and the floppy drive cable did cause some problems, as expected. I used an Antec Super LANBOY to house the board, and found that using the lowest 5.25" drive bay was not an option. Admittedly, it?s a case where space in that area is extremely limited, but I suspect it could be a problem in much larger cases too.

Installation may have been easy, but getting the completed rig to boot up was another matter.

The first problem was a BIOS message stating that the CPU was "unworkable or not present". Gulp. A quick trip to the BIOS to use the "load failsafe defaults" option fixed that.

The next problem was a recurrent BSOD informing me that Windows had detected a change in the hardware (well, _duh_) and was shutting down to prevent any damage. Thanks, Bill ...
Finding my XP disk and performing a repair install fixed that, so after over two hours of thinking I was ready to test the new board out, I actually was.

I should stress that none of this wasn't the fault of the NF7. The board had been tested to ensure it worked prior to getting to me, so this isn't something I'd blame ABIT for. Almost certainly, the tester had some exotic and incompatible BIOS setup going on. In fact, I probably should praise ABIT for building a board that didn't immediately fry something expensive.

Driver installation was easy enough, XP detected & loaded the relevant bits from the NF7 install disk without complaint. Modem installation was slightly problematic, but that's been true of every modem I've installed over the last year.

With the rig running, the chipset fan that could have turned out to be a real screamer, given its size, turned out to be inaudible against the PSU, heatsink and case fans. Later checks of the temperatures show it to be pretty efficient too: off an ambient temp of 21C, the Northbridge maintains a healthy 26C under full load (Folding@Home), and an impressive 23C at idle.

Once I was sure everything was working as it should, I went back to BIOS and used the "load optimized defaults" option, and it's been working fine ever since.





The BIOS / Overclocking Options

Entering the BIOS after POST is done easily with the DEL key, the message reminding you of that is on screen long enough to be useful, and the NF7 isn't that fussy about when you press it. This is worth a mention as I've worked on some rigs where the message flashes on very briefly, and requires you to press the required key at that precise nanosecond.

The main BIOS screen is pretty straightforward, and provides navigation to all the standard features and options you'd expect of modern a BIOS.

As the NF7 is likely to be overclocked by a lot of owners, I'll concentrate on those features. A warning though, if you don't know what the result of any change is going to be, you really shouldn't be fiddling with these options. The NF7's user guide makes this point over and over again, and so it should - terminal damage can occur if you get the settings wrong.





First up is the "SoftMenu III Setup" menu, which contains the bus speeds, multiplier and voltage options.

The first option, "CPU Operating Speed", allows you to select either the automatically detected CPU (e.g. "XP2800+") or "User Define". Selecting the latter allows access to two further options: "External Clock" (FSB), which is adjustable in 1MHz options from 100 to 300MHz; and the multiplier, which is adjustable in 0.5 increments from 5 to 14, 15, and 0.5 increments again from 16 to 17, and in increments of 1 from 18 to 22.

AGP Frequency is adjustable from 66 to 99MHz in increments of 1MHz, and the FSB/memory ratio has a wide range of options: Auto, ?By SPD?, 3/3, 3/4, 3/5, 3/6, 4/3, 4/4, 4/5, 4/6, 5/3, 5/4, 5/5, 5/6, 6/3, 6/4, 6/5, and 6/6.

The final option in the section ("CPU Interface" controls whether the user defined options or the defaults are used. This seems superfluous to me, but it does give you the option of easily reverting to the default state.

Moving on to the "Power Supply Controller" option, changing from "Default" to "User Define" allows access to four further options, the first of which controls the CPU core voltage in steps from 1.1V to 2.3V ... there are a mind boggling 46 steps here.

In comparison, the number of steps for the remaining options seem rather less than generous, but are in fact as much as you'll need:
* Memory voltage: 2.6, 2.7, 2.8 or 2.9V;
* Chipset voltage: 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7V;
* AGP voltage: 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 or 1.8V.


The final option on the page is "CPU Over Temp. Protect", which defines the temperature above which a forced shutdown will occur. The options here are 65, 75, 80 and 90C (note the lack of Fahrenheit equivalents).





Before we move on, it's worth mentioning the "Item Help" panel on the right of each secondary BIOS page: on most (but not all) pages, this provides a useful pointer to what each setting does.




The next page to take a look at is the "Advanced Chipset Features" options.

By default, the "Memory Timings" option is set to "Optimal", other options are "Aggressive", "Turbo", and "By SPD". The final option is "Expert", which allows access to four sub-options: "Row-active delay" (1 to 15 cycles); "RAS-to-CAS delay" (1 to 7), "Row-precharge delay" (1 to 7); and "CAS latency" (2.0, 2.5 or 3.0).

For an explanation of these options, you might want to check out ZENNZZO's System Memory and System Memory part II threads.

Other options on this page are:
* System BIOS Cacheable, Video RAM Cacheable, AGP Fast Write, CPU Disconnect, and Enhance PCI Performance (enable/disable);
* FSB & AGP Spread Spectrum (disabled/0.5/1.0%);
* AGP Transfer rate (Auto, 4x or 8x);
* AGP aperture (32 to 512M); and ...

* "CPU Thermal Throttling". This much-misunderstood option determines how much power the CPU uses in standby mode. In the case of the NF7, the options are "disabled", or 12.5 to 87.5% in 12.5% increments; a setting of 75% means that the CPU is "throttled back" to 75% when in standby mode - meaning it uses 25% less power.

Just to mention the BIOS section in the user guide briefly, it's certainly a good length, but doesn't really provide that much useful information. If you hope to learn how to overclock your NF7 based rig from it, forget it. It's also out of date in places - several times I found that the BIOS had far more options than the user guide describes.






The final page to mention is the "PC Health Status" page. The options here are limited to whether you want a shutdown to be forced if the CPU fan fails, at what CPU temperature you want the BIOS to give you a warning (between 50 and 120C), and at what temperature you want the system to shut down. Yes, you read that correctly: this option seems the same as on the "SoftMenu III Setup" page, but worryingly, the options are not the same (disabled, 60, 65, 70 or 75C here). I'd hope that the lower setting of the two would take precedent, but I'm not willing to repeatedly force a high temperature shutdown to find out.

Note the inclusion of Fahrenheit equivalents for temperature, which are absent on the "SoftMenu III Setup" page: this is yet another example of the NF7's baffling mix of the good and the boneheaded.

The rest of the page is dedicated to the reporting of actual temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages. As I've found with other motherboards recently, there is a big question mark over the accuracy of the voltages. I tested the PSU with a multimeter under the same load, and found that the 3.3, 5 and 12V lines were all within a gnat's whisker of where they should be: significantly higher than shown by the NF7.

Another thing to note is the case fan (CHAFAN) speed of zero. The fan concerned is a 120mm Antec, and turns at a 100% reliable 1,180 rpm. Interestingly, this speed is recorded accurately in Windows with third party reporting tools.








Benchmarks, etc

Ideally, a motherboard review would have comparisons with at least one other very similar motherboard, the idea being that by using the exact same components in both and running benchmarks on both, that you can get empirical information about how good (or not) the board is.

Unfortunately, I don't have a suitable motherboard for comparison, and the few people I know that would trust me enough to dismantle their rig for this kind of testing either don't have a board recent enough for useful comparisons, or they're using a P4 based system.

All I can say on this score is that the NF7 seems to allow the rest of the components to perform to their limits, for example, it's ripping through Folding@Home WUs several times faster than my old rig, and loading PimpRig pages is limited only by my dialup connection, not by how long processing PHP pages takes.





Onboard Sound

The final area to review is the onboard 5.1 sound. I've never seen onboard sound as something to be avoided at all costs (unlike onboard video), and the NF7 doesn't disappoint too much in this area. There is a hint of a high pitched whistle and a 50hz buzz when turning the speakers up to high volumes, but the only time it gets intrusive is when my CD / DVDROMs get up to high speed. It's not ideal, but getting 5.1 sound on such a modestly priced motherboard is a bonus if you ask me.

Testing the NF7 with a Creative P580 5.1 speaker setup revealed no real difference between the performance of a cheap sound card and the onboard sound, other than the absence of hiss & buzz on the former.







Conclusion

To answer the question I posed myself at the beginning, the "fast and flaky" sobriquet is not entirely unjustified. Overall though, the problems are minor enough to be overlooked in comparison with the benefits.

Good Points:
* Huge number of overclocking options;
* Excellent value;
* Effective Northbridge cooler;
* Onboard 5.1 sound;
* Onboard LAN;
* Dual DDR 400 support.

Indifferent Points:
* Slightly dodgy English throughout the user guide and BIOS;
* Somewhat unhelpful layout of the board.

Bad Points:
* The number of minor issues;
* Baffling mixture of design philosophies.


Rating:
8 out of 10 pimp hats

The NF7 certainly meets expectations, is well worth its price tag, and I have no problem in recommending it. It does have a number of minor issues, but with the wealth of overclocking options it (and the NF7-S) really is the motherboard of choice for a performance minded user on a budget.

Wow, your harsh. I think your the first person that complained about the sticker not being centered.


I'm suprised you didn't talk about the flash menu feature.

Quote: Originally Posted by Crazy_J Wow, your harsh. I think your the first person that complained about the sticker not being centered.

I don't know if harsh is the correct word, he is just stating his opinion.... and as he stated it was/is a minor issue. I gotta agree with the Aux 12v plug being in a bad spot, the Shuttle AN35N Ultra puts it in nearly the same spot and the wires are unsightly there. It obviously won't be as much of a factor after I get the PSU sleeved but still.

Right - on Jonny,
Every thing was able to be corrected easily on your board, Mine was a different story...
I know maybe for asetics, the ATX and AUX might not be in an ideal place , but look what they feed..Basically the AUX is feeding the MOSFETs just off the PLL, and the ATX is really close the the socket, Mm Mm Good...clean power...Flakey would also have to include the 23 available BIOS flashes for the ver2.0, and even a pr3ch3ar3s hard menu BIOS...
Nice Job .Enjoy your gear and if ya ever feel the urge to bumpit up it's right there for yas...

I don't know if this flakyness only shows itself with 210+ fsb's or what but for me, my NF7-s is rock solid. It had my 1700+ prime stable up to 2.3 Ghz on 2v with a 200mhz fsb and never coughed, not once. Ocing was the easiest that I have ever experienced. Now this DFI LanParty is a freakin pos that I cannot get a hold of and now I upgraded my cpu as well to a pos as well so everything just sucks. I am really considering going back. If stupid abit would just allow mem up to 3.1v, they would have a perfect board for me.