Review: ABIT BD7-II RAID

CPU

Supports Intel Pentium® 4 Socket478 processor
400/533MHz System Data Bus

Chipset

Intel 845E (ICH4) chipset
Supports AGP 4X 1.5V device only
Supports Hi-Speed Universal Serial Bus (USB v2.0)
Supports Dual Ultra ATA 100/66/33 channels supporting 4 devices

Ultra DMA 133/RAID

High Point HPT372 IDE Controller
Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
RAID0 (Stripping mode for boosting performance)
RAID1 (Mirroring mode for data security)
RAID 0+1 (Striping and Mirroring)

Memory

Supports Three 184-pin DDR DIMM module
Supports up to 2GB MAX
Supports PC1600 and PC2100
Supports ECC RAM

Audio

ALC650 single chip 6-channel CODEC on-board

System BIOS

SoftMenu III Technology
Award Plug and Play BIOS supports APM and ACPI
Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS

Multi I/O Functions

2 Channels Bus Master IDE Ports support Ultra DMA 33/66/100
2 Channels Bus Master IDE Ports support Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 for RAID 0/1/0+1
PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse Connectors
1 Floppy Port (up to 2.88MB)
1 Parallel Port (EPP/ECP)
2 Serials Ports
2 USB 2.0 Connectors
Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, MIC-in, and Game Port )

LAN

On board RTL8100B single chip Ethernet controller with power management
10/100Mb Operation
Supports ACPI & Wake on LAN
Supports Full Duplex Flow Control (IEEE 802.3x) and compliant to PCI Revision 2.2

Miscellaneous

ATX form factor
1 AGP4X slot,5 PCI slots
Hardware Monitoring ? Including Fan speed, Voltages, CPU and System temperature and one thermal header for other devices temperature monitoring
Keyboard and Mouse Power On

A lot is going on here. I'll explain the more notable inclusions as I discuss the layout and features on the following two pages. The one aspect to note here is that the i845E chipset does not support PC2700 memory directly, something which the competition does. However, you can force increased memory speeds by tinkering with the BIOS. I'll show you how later.