Abit IC7-G gets slammed on Tom's i875P round up.

[Wurrmm]

Tom's Hardware i875P round up. Looks like Abit is having some serious memory problems.

 

[Wurrmm]

Here is something else that is said:

Abit, the first port of call for overclockers, did not come out so well in our comparison. The board offers scarcely any potential for overclocking - it does not offer more than 200 MHz for quick timings. As far as performance is concerned, the manufacturer falls behind considerably; here a corresponding BIOS has to put things right.

Man....I hope Anand's review is out soon. This was the mobo I was planning on getting. Looks like I might have to go Gigabyte, or even go back to AMD if these memory problems are not resolved. I hope Abit releases a new bios quick or better yet, a new revision.

Hey Evan, did you encounter any of the same issues discussed in the Tom's i875P roundup??

 

[snidy1]

I don't trust Toms hardware. I'll wait for Anand's review.

 

[Wurrmm]

That is what I am thinking also. I really really hope the Abit is not as bad as what Tom is saying.

 

[Urinal Mint]

How much Abit advertising is on Tom's site right now? That may have something to do with it.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I would also take it with a grain of salt. To be honest, from the sounds of the review, it is almost like they used the 1.0 bios for the memory timings....

 

[Diable]

So, Anand will find that the IC7 is great because Abit has a ad at the bottem of this page?

 

[acemcmac]

with this review, i am officially done reading tom's hardware. their assessment of the IC7 was the biggest load of bull!@#$ i've ever read.

Nothing is wrong with my 7000rpm northbridge fan- in fact, it compliments my swiftech mcx4000/tmd beautifly

If they had to bend a capacator to get the aux power connector back out, they must have put it in backwards lmao- i had to do no such thing

My corsair 512-3200C2PL DEFAULTED to cas 2.0-2-2-2-6 automatically after its second boot (although i must admit that i am currently in single channel mode)

Although I did have booting issues with some bios changes on bios v10, i have yet to have a problem with v11.

I flatly must disagree with this review and would encourage anyone seriously looking at this board to read the IC7 thread here and listen to how much we love it :beer:

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: acemcmac
with this review, i am officially done reading tom's hardware. their assessment of the IC7 was the biggest load of bull!@#$ i've ever read. Nothing is wrong with my 7000rpm northbridge fan- in fact, it compliments my swiftech mcx4000/tmd beautifly If they had to bend a capacator to get the aux power connector back out, they must have put it in backwards lmao- i had to do no such thing My corsair 512-3200C2PL DEFAULTED to cas 2.0-2-2-2-6 automatically after its second boot (although i must admit that i am currently in single channel mode) Although I did have booting issues with some bios changes on bios v10, i have yet to have a problem with v11. I flatly must disagree with this review and would encourage anyone seriously looking at this board to read the IC7 thread here and listen to how much we love it :beer:

Amen

 

[Intelligence3]

Originally posted by: acemcmac
with this review, i am officially done reading tom's hardware. their assessment of the IC7 was the biggest load of bull!@#$ i've ever read.

Tom who?

FWIW, the guys at asusboards.com (or whatever the heck it's called, now) liked the IC7-G a whole bunch, too.

 

[Viper96720]

The first bios had memory setting problems but its fixed. You can check out benches by looking at the review of the canterwood boards posted on Anandtech.

 

[classy]

Tom may be an arrogant jerk, but his reviews are top notched. And no site produces more quality review content. I dislike his demeaner, but his site is easily one of the top 2 or 3 IMO.

 

[jdogg707]

I don't have a problem with his reviews, but the one he did of the IC7 doesn't do it justice. At least when I read one of Evan's articles I get a since that he has tried to work around the problem, or has used every possible means of fixing it before calling it for crap...

He says that it has no overclocking potential, well I'm at 3.44GHZ with my 2.53GHZ processor and I would say that's a pretty descent overclock if I say so myself, especially on air! What he should have mentioned was the 165-199MHZ FSB hole that the P4C800 has before jumping to conclusions. I usually don't mind his articles, but this time, I must say that I was dissapointed.

 

[squidman]

I use tom for reference. His scores are alwayls...off. I dont rely on Anand either, or any of the reviewers. I still gonna buy the $#!+, if i need to. THere are as many vartious opininons as there are people, and some reviewers are fonna accentuise the flaw they didnt like. Also, no 2 computers are the same (oddly enough) if you got samew mobo, cpu, memory as tom, it dont mean your scores are gonna be like his!
Use them reviews for reference only!

Cheers! :beer:

 

[squidman]

Also, dont forget: those boards that toms gets are DIFFERENT from those we buy. His ASUS scored 5300 with Corsair memory in PCMark2002. How come other reviewers didnt rise above 5000 with the same memory? Flaw of statistics - bias.

 

[acemcmac]

I do have one irk that I thought I was done with with the last bios update that just nailed me in the middle of my term paper here X_x

THE BIOS HARD FREEZES FOR NO APPARANT REASON AT ALL?!?!
v11???

Is that a normal reaction to expect from changing temperature alarm settings and disabling legacy ports?

I've had to reset the cmos twice now so that this board can post... im way underclocked for the chipset's capacity... this is inexcusable... but hell, Tom said nothing about this kind of flaw and Anand is silent... so i still feel vindicated

Never before have I felt this much an island while chasing down the less beaten hardware path... does nobody else have random bios freezes?

Either way, this is still the best performing board ive ever owned- I'm sure Abit will clear these issues up- no regrets. At least I have had so many reviews out to warn me of these issues

 

[jdogg707]

If anything is hooked up to the USB/Firewire bracket, try removing it and then restarting.

 

[snidy1]

Here's a better review
Link

 

[Krueger81]

Tom is full of $hit. IMHO. His reviews are allways bashing one product when it turns out that product is one of the best ever made

Phil

 

[Wurrmm]

Tom can take his review and shove it. I just lost what little respect I had for his site. Hey, snidy1, thanks for the link!!!

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: classy
Tom may be an arrogant jerk, but his reviews are top notched. And no site produces more quality review content. I dislike his demeaner, but his site is easily one of the top 2 or 3 IMO.

I beg to differ. Tom's reviews often have horrible english mixed with results that nobody else can duplicate. I realize that some of the reviews are translated straight from German via an online translator, but that's why an editor exists, something Tom's has almost no idea of.

 

[First]

I don't really know what THG is talking about in regards to the memory timing problems they're having. I assume they are not using the latest IC7-G BIOS, which is the only explanation for the issues they're seeing.

We will release an individual ABIT IC7-G review soon. Our 875P 13-way roundup will include memory module testing among other new testing for your convenience, and will be posted after we release our version of Computex coverage next week (in addition to a couple 865 reviews).

A little preview of what we were able to get with the ABIT IC7-G; with a shipping 2.4C (800MHz FSB) processor we were able to hit 270MHz FSB without issue, with the Epox 4PAC3+ hitting 277MHz FSB. This is using the 2.4C's default 12X multiplier. Assuming you're relatively knowledgeable, you should be able to tweak most 875P motherboards to hit above 260MHz FSB with a 2.4C processor.

EDIT: Don't take into account the FSB overclocking scores we got in our ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI 875P reviews, that 2.4C processor is an ES (Engineering Sample). We've recently got a hold of a retail 2.4C processor, and used it for FSB testing on the ABIT and Epox boards.

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: Urinal Mint
How much Abit advertising is on Tom's site right now? That may have something to do with it.

LOL!

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb
I don't really know what THG is talking about in regards to the memory timing problems they're having. I assume they are not using the latest IC7-G BIOS, which is the only explanation for the issues they're seeing.

We will release an individual ABIT IC7-G review soon. Our 875P 13-way roundup will include memory module testing among other new testing for your convenience, and will be posted after we release our version of Computex coverage next week (in addition to a couple 865 reviews).

A little preview of what we were able to get with the ABIT IC7-G; with a shipping 2.4C (800MHz FSB) processor we were able to hit 270MHz FSB without issue, with the Epox 4PAC3+ hitting 277MHz FSB. This is using the 2.4C's default 12X multiplier. Assuming you're relatively knowledgeable, you should be able to tweak most 875P motherboards to hit above 260MHz FSB with a 2.4C processor.

EDIT: Don't take into account the FSB overclocking scores we got in our ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI 875P reviews, that 2.4C processor is an ES (Engineering Sample). We've recently got a hold of a retail 2.4C processor, and used it for FSB testing on the ABIT and Epox boards.

Your going to use the retail core right? How come the IC-7 is seperate from the round-up?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Tabb

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb
I don't really know what THG is talking about in regards to the memory timing problems they're having. I assume they are not using the latest IC7-G BIOS, which is the only explanation for the issues they're seeing.

We will release an individual ABIT IC7-G review soon. Our 875P 13-way roundup will include memory module testing among other new testing for your convenience, and will be posted after we release our version of Computex coverage next week (in addition to a couple 865 reviews).

A little preview of what we were able to get with the ABIT IC7-G; with a shipping 2.4C (800MHz FSB) processor we were able to hit 270MHz FSB without issue, with the Epox 4PAC3+ hitting 277MHz FSB. This is using the 2.4C's default 12X multiplier. Assuming you're relatively knowledgeable, you should be able to tweak most 875P motherboards to hit above 260MHz FSB with a 2.4C processor.

EDIT: Don't take into account the FSB overclocking scores we got in our ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI 875P reviews, that 2.4C processor is an ES (Engineering Sample). We've recently got a hold of a retail 2.4C processor, and used it for FSB testing on the ABIT and Epox boards.

Your going to use the retail core right? How come the IC-7 is seperate from the round-up?

It's not. We will release an ABIT IC7-G review, and then a few days/week later we'll release an 875P roundup with the IC7-G included. Basically, instead of forcing our readers to go through five long 875P reviews to read about just five 875P boards, they can go through one 875P roundup to read about 13 875P motherboards. In addition, we will add memory module testing to the roundup.

And yes, we are now using a retail 2.4C processor (that everyone will be able to get soon) for all our FSB overclocking tests from now on.