Overclocking and Conclusion
Overclocking
Overclocking testing was limited to the same front side bus limit exploration that I did with the DFI, due to time limitations. It hit the heady heights of 241MHz, seemingly pointing at some sort of chipset stepping limit with recent nForce2 Ultra 400 SPP bridges. That's three Ultra 400 boards that have hit the same frequency ceiling for me now.Athlon XP3200+ using a 9.5x multiplier, 2.5-4-4-8 latencies on the Corsair memory, 2.9V Vdimm, 1.85V Vcore and 1.6V Vddq were used, a recent copper based Spire air cooler doing the heat removal. Impressive, but subjectively no better than other recent boards, a disappointment given ABIT's tweakers slant. But apparent chipset limits aren't their fault.
Conclusion
A slightly different performance comparison than I'm used to, due to the migration to some new motherboard tests recently, highlighted by the fact that Radeon 9800XT wasn't around for testing while the AN7 was on my testbed. But, looking back to recent reviews, especially the DFI's, we can conclude that AN7 wasn't going to bring anything new to the performance party, rather a new twist on an already established chipset platform. Performance was in sync with what DFI had to offer us recently.So again, it's all down to the features. With µGuru the main focus of the slight update to NF7-S and the downsides with the bundled accessories, the AN7 doesn't offer much in the way of an incentive for you to buy it. The DFI was supremely feature packed and its bundle gives you everything you need and some things you maybe don't. Similar prices for AN7 and the latest LanParty mean the AN7 is a little hard to recommend. µGuru is pretty good, but needs a good polishing before I can really recommend it as a selling point. You get nearly 100% identical functionality on other nForce2 Ultra 400 boards using Clockgen and Motherboard Monitor. You can't adjust voltages from within Windows on any other Socket A motherboard other than the AN7, using µGuru, but that's about its only advantage to other freely available software solutions.
The BIOS was a highlight, ABIT really go after the tweakers market with their BIOS implementations, the voltage ranges on offer are the obvious high point if you are looking to extract maximum possible overclocking performance.
However, the tweakers are the only group that are likely to be tempted by AN7. It simply doesn't offer enough in other areas to tempt you away from similarly priced boards that offer better features. The recent DFI spoiled me, it's simply a better board with better features.
Overclocking went well as expected, ABIT don't miss a beat with that side of things. Overall I'm left slightly deflated by the AN7 experience. It's not a bad board by any means, it just has some annoying niggles that stop it from rating really highly. Recommended for the hardcore tweaker, everyone else should maybe look elsewhere. High end Socket A performance for sure but with a little baggage to carry around. µGuru tweaks, a bundle update and some layout changes would make the board outstanding, maybe something for a future AN7 2.0 and certainly something for ABIT to build on.
Score
Pros
PerformanceµGuru hardware
Good presentation and manuals
Excellent BIOS and tweaking options
Shouldn't be too expensive
Cons
Poor bundleµGuru software
Layout issues
Thanks and extra pictures
Komplett for the digital camera used to take the shots.ABIT for the sample.
Alternate AbitEQ screenshot (~50KB)
Alternate AbitEQ screenshot (~40KB)
Alternate FanEQ screenshot (~30KB)
Screenshot of the µGuru Start Menu entries (~50KB)
