ABIT IT7 MAX2 V.2 (845PE)

ABIT IT7 MAX2 Version 2: Basic Features

ABIT continues its series of MAX motherboards with the ABIT IT7 MAX2 Version 2 motherboard (try saying that three times fast).

Onboard LAN is powered by Realtek's RTL8100B chip. It’s no surprise to see that ABIT decided to go with this very conventional Realtek LAN controller, as Realtek heavily dominates the onboard LAN controller market, mostly because they’re able to sell for dirt cheap prices.

Not surprisingly, ABIT chose the Realtek ALC650 controller to power the IT7 MAX2 V.2’s onboard sound. Whether you believe it or not, the general sound quality the IT7 MAX2 V.2’s ALC650 outputs won’t be much different than motherboards that utilize nForce2 sound. This is because final sound quality is greatly determined by the DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) on the motherboard. The ABIT IT7 MAX2 V.2 as well as all nForce2 motherboards use Realtek’s ALC650 DAC, and therefore sound quality won’t be terribly different in most situations. However, if you need to do Dolby Digital Encoding, the nForce2’s APU (Audio Processing Unit) will be necessary.

ABIT is renowned for their feature-rich I/O configuration found on their MAX series of motherboards. Included are two PS/2 ports, six rear USB 2.0 ports, two rear FireWire ports, one LAN port, SPDIF and three 1/8' jacks, which are driven by the onboard sound. Without a doubt, ABIT is unmatched in this area of the motherboard.

The ABIT IT7 MAX2 V.2 perhaps has the best IDE support we’ve seen out of any enthusiast desktop motherboard. As usual, the Primary and Secondary IDE connectors support two channels each for as much as four separate drives (which includes hard drives, optical drives, etc.). However, what’s really nice about this board is that you can connect eight additional IDE drives to your system via two yellow onboard IDE RAID connectors (powered by HighPoint’s HPT374 controller) and two Serial ATA drives via two black Serial ATA RAID connectors (powered by Marvel’s 88i8030 controller). This capability is very important for users looking to set up large RAID arrays or users upgrading to Serial ATA in the future. In addition, users that simply desire additional IDE drives will be pleased of course.

All in all, the ABIT IT7 MAX2 V.2 is one of the most well-rounded Pentium 4 motherboards on the market.