Abit AT7 & IT7 owners, can you offer commentary?

[codehack2]

OK, for those following my RAM Voltage being locked in at 3.2v Saga (Read a few posts up for a refresher).. The replacement board came yesterday.. I did the transplant, and voila... 3.2v... huh? 3.2v? Something is fishy here... Took a detour on the way home tonight past the local geek shop, and picked up a couple of sticks of 512mb Samsung PC2700. Get them home, plug them in and voila... 2.5v. So it appears that the IT7 has issues with my standard PC2100 Memory. For those keeping track, I was using 2 x 512 sticks of Muskin High-Perf PC2100 (Nanya Chips).

Anyone else using standard PC2100 with the IT7... I'd be interested in hearing what your results were.

CH2

 

[Kartman]

CH2,

Really sorry to hear about your situation. I wonder if its the board design or the Intel chipset being 533MHz-capable that requires such peppy memory. I went ahead an ordered PC2700 CAS2 (Corsair, from NewEgg, 512MB) and its been shipped. I should get it sometime mid-week of next week.

Being that this is my first DDR-based motherboard, I cannot experiment (unless someone is willing to donate DDR). Considering your observations and those of one or two reviewers, this board (and the AMD version) seem to have a hard time dealing with anything below PC2700. I would have thought that CAS2 PC2100 would be sufficient to be in the neighborhood of CAS2.5 PC2700 but I guess not.

So, with this in mind Abit would have to take this board back, or at least your reseller, or maybe give you one hell of a deal on some PC2700 memory.

 

[codehack2]

If I weren't such a hardware junky... I'd be tee'd off, instead the Junky in me saw this as an opportunity to upgrade to PC2700

BTW, my 2700 Samsung made it up to 180mhz. Makes for some pretty impressive bandwidth numbers. Those of you looking for some nice 512mb PC2100 Dimms, check the FS/FT forums. lol

 

[ForUmuse]

CH2, let us know what you decide is the most stable configuration for your PC is. Believe it or not, I forgot it was Memorial Day weekend! Although I knew I was working this weekend, I failed to acknowledge that most delivery services (USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.) will prbably not be doing squat on Sunday/Monday.

So, I'll report back as soon as I can on how things go. BTW, I did order the Corsair CAS2 PC2700. Let's see how it performs on this board with the 1.6a I also ordered.

 

[kkrull]

I've got some IT7 Memory problems of my own that I am working on. In the mean time...

1. anyone know when/if the BIOS will support ECC?
2. anyone know whether future revisions of the motherboard will have a SPDIF in connector next to the SPDIF out? Why or why not?
3. anyone know if the internal header SPDIF in is functional? The docs would imply yes.

 

[Kartman]

The interesting thing about the SPDIF input is that the review copies Tom's Hardware and some others included it! Something tells me this 'may' be more political than anything else--as the cost of a SPDIF connector cannot be all that dang expensive. Actually, I flirted with the idea of soldering it in myself! My only concern is that the Abit-manipulated BIOS may have truncated the input's functional abilities.

 

[GAZZA]

Gresat and informtive post by you guys pioneering the use of this board

Ok now onto the reason I replied to this post , here @ VR-Zoneis a review of High Performance DDR ram modules , turns out the Samsung is a great buy for the performance .

I'm tempted to get this board myself , kinda high price but I guess that's what you pay for being on the cutting edge!

 

[codehack2]

Hey Kartman... I had the same idea on soldering on a TOS in connector. I'm about 99% positive it would indeed work. Limiting this type of funtionality would have to be controlled at a driver or chip level.. As far as I can tell, the only control that the bios has over the audio codec is enable/disable. Considering that codec is the same as the one on the AT7 (TOS in/out), and the traces are in place, a solder job should do the trick. Let me know if you are going to attempt this I'd be interested in giving it a try.

CH2

 

[Kartman]

Well, I went and read the user's manual (don't hate me). I noted that you can override the rear audio panel(s), as they call it, and can use a header on the motherboard in conjunction with a front panel (MAX???) that includes SPDIF input. I am curious, though, to know what the PCM limitations on this input would be.

 

[MangoX]

Just bought a AT7 and a Maxtor 80gig 7200rpm ATA133. Board is good and fast. But I have one problem right now that I need help with...
I can't seem to create a partition on it. Partition Magic refruses to create one as it gives me a I/O error when I do try. Tried connecting
the drive on either RAID controller or the regular HDD connectors. anyone how why?

 

[codehack2]

AznBoi36,
Sounds like you have a drive problem or a problem with Partion magic.. What OS are you using? If your using 2000/XP, have you tried disk manager yet? Also, what does your current partition structure look like?

CH2

 

[Kartman]

Asking the obvious ...

1.) In the BIOS, are all the controllers turned on?
2.) Is this the only drive connected at the time of failure?
3.) What is the jumper set to on the hard drive (only drive, master or slave)?
4.) Is the drive's physical connection on the IDE cable matched to the jumper setting of the drive?
5.) Have you gotten the same results using a different IDE cable?
6.) Have you tried another drive?
7.) Have you tried another partitioning software, like Dos' FDSIK?
8.) Are you on crack (could explain a lot)?

I would remove all drives except this new drive, jumper it as a Master drive in a multi-drive setup, physically connect it to the end-connector, and boot the system using a Win98 boot disk. Upon booting from the Win98 boot disk, run fdisk and see what you can see and report back. This could be a problem with Partition Magic, the hard drive, or the motherboard.

 

[MangoX]

Seems like a problem with partition magic. FDisk didn't work either.

Anyways, I got the drive working. What I did was configure set the drive a Primary Master and booted with WinXP setup CD and install it from there. And right now its as One Partition (C) with NTFS File System. And it's working fine right now

I'm not a comp newb, I actually work as a Computer Technician in a local pc store with 6+ Years of experience. I just find the problem puzzling... :/

CH2: Windows XP and Partition Magic 7... I had thought that it was a problem with partition magic not having been able to read disks as big as 80gb... but I dunno...

KartMan:
1) Yes
2) No
3) Master
4) Yes
5) Yes
6) Yes
7) Yes, FDisk
8) No... HAHAAHAH, but I only Drink

 

[Kartman]

I must be missing something here. If you got the drive working by configuring it as a Primary Master and booting from an XP CD, how was this drive configured before and with what other drives in the system (and how were they configured)?

 

[MazerRackham]

Bump for more comments on the IT7 and and whether or not owners of it still thinks it rocks or not?!!!

Anyone use their 1394 ports yet? How is the onboard audio? Thanks!

 

[CoDerEd]

yeah, i would like to know hows the sound card performance, because i'm gonna give up my hercules and bd7r and get it7. i'm happy to read that the board has LED readout and power/reset switch too because it's very very usefull when you setup your system. my bd7 has it too but i was dissapointed that bd7II didn't have it, that's why i am wondering so much about this board.

pEace

 

[ForUmuse]

Give me another 24-36 hours and I should have something for you. Most of my components came in yesterday from NewEgg, but I neglected to get some Artic Silver this morning. Motherboard in mounted in her Antec case. Will mount the Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive, P4 1.6a, 512MB Corsair PC2700, Gainward GF4 Ti4200 Golden Sample (128MB DDR) and Lite-On 40X burner tomorrow.

I will [honestly] make an attempt to get XP professional installed and see what happens. Also forgot the dang DVD-ROM, hehe, but then life keeps me busy when I'm not at work.

 

[ForUmuse]

Anyone notice that the JP01 header for thermal sensor is missing? Its listed in the manual, but its location on the board I have shows an empty placeholder. I knew the optical input header would be missing, but isn't this counter-intuitive to hide thermal information? Maybe its getting the information by some other means?

 

[MazerRackham]

^bump^

 

[kkrull]

...missing thermal sensor...

Well there aren't even trace lines for it.

 

[ForUmuse]

Originally posted by: MazerRackham
^bump^

Sorry, MazerRackham, I got her all wired up today, but ran out of time before I had to go to work. In the morning I'll be spending a good 3-4 hours playing with it at stock configuration, which is ...

Intel Pentium 4 1.6A not [yet] overclocked
Abit IT7
512MB Corsair XMS2700 CAS2
Gainward GeForce4 Titanium 4200 Ultra650 Golden Sample w/128MB DDR
Western Digital 80Gb 7200 RPM with 8MB Cache
LG 16X DVD-ROM
Lite-On 40X CDRW

Will be [initially, and unless I'm really unimpressed] using the RealTek LAN/Sound

 

[MazerRackham]

Thanks for replying ForUmuse, I hope you can push that baby a little bit and let us all know how it works out.

I think I'll be making the plunge pretty soon and dump this P3 866 system!

 

[Nilonym]

Just a follow-up from my earlier posts...

After a few weeks of burn in, my rig is still stable @2.4GHz with 150fsb. This is a 1.6a in an Abit IT7 mobo, running "true" Samsung PC2700 @400MHz (150fsb with 3:4 multiplier). PCI/AGP bus is locked @33, btw.

Temps with retail hs/fan are 39 idle to 54 load, and that's with the retail TIP. I am going to replace it with some AS3 soon and see if I can push it lower, and if so I will start upping the fsb again and see how far I can push it.

I should also note that my vcore and ram voltage is the default 1.5 and 2.5. I did not have to tweak it at all to get this oc. I certainly attribute this to the quality of both the 1.6a and the Samsung ram, but at the very least the mobo is not a factor for instability. I reamain quite impressed with it.

Looking forward to hearing other experiences with this board.

Nilonym

 

[Kartman]

Nilonym,

Would you mind if we do some off-forum comparisons? I just altered my member profile to allow for private messaging, and my /sig should now include an email addy (just replace '...' with the appropriate symbols).

 

[ForUmuse]

Okay, here's my first impression/experience with this board ...

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=800603