Abit AN7 (nVidia nForce II 400 Ultra) Review
Overclocking and stability
During the tests, I had nothing to complain regarding the operation stability of the board running both at rated and increased speeds. The power converter is made on the 3-channel scheme having five 3300 mkF and four 2200 mkF capacitors. At that, the board is completely identical to NF7-S. More than that, even the design of the power supply module is identical in both the boards.
We are now moving on to the overclocking tools which are traditionally gathered in the SoftMenu section.
Abit AN7 allows varying the system bus speed within 100 to 300 MHz in 1-2 MHz increments.
The next item deals with changing the 5-bit encoded multiplier. As we remember, this feature is supported by merely few boards: ( Abit NF7-S, Acorp 7NFU400, Gigabyte 7N400 and Soltek 75FRN2-L ), and allows using multipliers set to >=13.
In AN7, the multiplier is adjustable within 5 to 22 in 0.5-1 increments. And, there is a "fly in the ointment" though: the board won't start with the multiplier set to =9. In fact, the same problem was observed also in NF7-S as well.
The next important item is raising the processor voltage (Vcore). The board offers a wide adjustment range: within 1.375V to 2.313V in 0.031V increments.
The next item allows raising the memory voltage (Vmem). The overclocker can raise the Vmem from the nominal 2.5V up to 3.2V (in 0.05-0.1V increments: a really powerful feature as compared to competitor solutions).
The remaining features are also powerful indeed: AN7 allows raising the chipset voltage - from 1.6V to 1.75V in 0.05V increments,
as well as raising the AGP voltage from 1.5V to 1.65V in 0.05V increments.
As regards the practical overclocking, I was able to attain stable operation at FSB=225 MHz using memory of the types Transcend PC4000 (DDR500), at 217MHz with Kingston HyperX PC2700, and at 220 MHz with Corsair PC3200 TwinX memory. In all the cases, the system was running in the dual-channel synchronous mode.
It makes sense mentioning a program for overclocking the system from within Windows - the OC Guru.
Its potentials are anyway restricted (e.g., there is no way changing the multiplier), so I wouldn't recommend it to the beginner users.
Summing it up, I can say that Abit AN7 offers powerful overclocking tools: it offers a very high margin for Vcore raise, with the no less memory voltage adjustment range. The board also allows raising voltage on the actively cooled chipset.
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