Labs

Abit targets the BD7-RAID straight at the power user. All the company's usual trademarks are here - from the integrated power and reset buttons to the diagnostic LEDs, and from the six PCI slots to the HighPoint HPT372 RAID controller.

The RAID controller is particularly noteworthy. It supports mirroring, striping and a combination of both when using four EIDE hard disks; the Promise controller on the Gigabyte 81RXP and MSI 845 only provides

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mirror or striping options. Both controllers support UltraDMA/133, but this doesn't offer any great benefits over UltraDMA/100 for current hard disks.

Oddly, there are three USB ports integrated on the backplane, and the audio ports are mounted vertically, leaving no room for a game port. This is supplied on a separate backplate, so if you want to make use of it then one of the six PCI slots will be rendered unusable. Also note that this board has just two DIMM sockets.

Overclockers will appreciate SoftMenu III's features, including voltage adjustment for the CPU and DIMM sockets, as well as the FSB/PCI divider that locks the AGP and PCI slot frequencies when overclocking.

The BD7's performance was average in our 2D suite, scoring 3.41 overall, but was more impressive in 3D with a total of 6,462 3DMarks earning it second place. Sadly for Abit, the Gigabyte 8IRXP has integrated LAN, USB 2 and better audio for the same price. Unless you need the Abit's advanced RAID features, the choice isn't difficult.