Advertisement:

ABIT NF7 meets Granite Bay

Join the community - in the OCAU Forums! Date  17th April 2003 Author  Chainbolt Editor  James "Agg" Rolfe Manufacturer  ABIT Computer Corp. Chipset, NF7-S Version Differences CHIPSET Our NF7-S revision 1.0 sample came with the Northbridge SPP stepping A2. Revision 1.2 has a SPP A3. There is no explanation from nVidia or ABIT about the benefits of the new Northbridge stepping. We assume therefore that it is the usual lifecycle product enhancement rather than to fix any specific problems.     The Southbridge MCP2-T version remains obviously unchanged. The Southbridge chips on both NF7-S revisions were marked “A2”.     STATUS LED The original NF7 doesn’t have any status LED on the PCB. Revision 1.2 is sporting 2 such LEDs. They are placed at the lower right PCB corner.     A red LED indicates stand-by power, while a green LED illuminates when the system is powered up. VOLTAGE OPTIONS If there was anything to criticize about the NF7-S initial revision then it was the rather limited voltage range in the BIOS based SoftMenu III overclocking utility. ABIT has substantially improved the voltage options in revision 1.2. Originally the NF7 did not offer more than 1.85 volt for the CPU and 2.7 volt for the memory. This has been increased to 2.3 volt and 2.9 volt respectively. JUMPER Revision 1.2 is sporting two additional jumper blocks in the upper left PCB area. They are not explained in the manual or even shown in the board diagram. A lot of wild speculation erupted about their function until ABIT explained that setting these jumpers disables the light of an optical mouse in standby mode. That at least was what the ABIT PR told us. CIRCUITRY, CAPACITORS, MOSFETS The NF7 comes with a 3-phase power regulation, which is a solid solution and not standard for all mainboards in this price segment. The circuitry and some components have undergone major changes between revisions. On several locations printed circuits and entire transistor groups have been added or deleted. The number of capacitors around the CPU socket has been reduced from 6 to 5 and their location has been slightly changed. We also found that ABIT changed the manufacturer of both, the mosfets and the capacitors between 1.0 and 1.2. It is unclear what these changes are about, but we hope of course for the better.     CHIPS Although IEEE1394 (FireWire) functionality is provided by the NF7-S Southbridge an interface controller is necessary for the physical wiring of IEEE1394 devices. Revision 1.0 was featuring the Realtek RTL8801 controller. Revision 1.2 comes with the Texas Instruments TSB41AB2 controller. We did not realize any difference in performance, but in general the TI chip is regarded as the better choice. Unfortunately ABIT did not change the outdated Realtek 8201 10/100 Mbit LAN controller. We found the Intel Pro 1000/10 implemented on our E7205 reference board clearly better working with our ADSL router modem. The capable Silicon Image based SATA controller (SiI 3112A) remains unchanged.     << Back Next Page: >> Select Page Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 -

All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
Interested in advertising on OCAU? Contact us for info.