Intro

Even with the recently released Athlon64 platforms and the various other chipsets available for AMD and Intel CPUs, the Intel 875p chipset still hangs with the best of them and when it's strengths are fully taken advantage of, it tops the competition. The IC7-Max3 from Abit is already well-known amongst the overclocking community for it's outstanding stability and top notch performance. This board is the Creme de le Creme of the 875p boards on the market today, you will soon see why. Another motherboard that is known to be on par with the IC7-Max3 is the Asus P4C800 Deluxe. I will be taking a look at the IC7-Max3 including some head to head benchmarks against the P4C800 Deluxe. Unfortunately, the benchmarks I ran on these boards were done with just a 9700 Pro. I had a GFFX 5950 in place and was benching the systems with it when it suddenly began to flake out on me.

Package and Contents

The box was definitely sharp and would attract my attention were it sitting on a shelf. The components included in the box is impressive. I am really pleased with the fact that they included a couple SATA power converters as well as SATA and IDE cables. This is definitely evidence that Abit is thoroughly supporting the transition to the new SATA spec. Here is a list of the items included:

- IC7-MAX3 Motherboard
- SATA Single cable x 4
- User's Manual
- SATA power cable x 2
- English Quick Installation Guide
- IEEE 1394 6P + 4P + USB 2.0 Bracket
- Support CD, Utility Disk
- Jumper Setting Label
- I/O Shield
- Ultra DMA Cable
- SecureIDE
- FDD cable

Specs

Here are some specs for the board straight from the Abit website:

Features

Processor
- Supports Intel® Pentium® 4 Socket 478 processors (Prescott and Northwood) with 800/533/400MHz FSB
- Supports Intel Hyper-Threading Technology

Chipset
- Intel 875P / ICH5 RAID
- Support Intel CSA Gigabit LAN
- Supports Dual Channel DDR 400 with ECC function
- Supports Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT) function
- Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)

Memory
- Four 184-pin DIMM sockets
- Supports 4 DIMM Dual DDR 400 memory.(Max. 4GB)
- Supports configurable ECC function

AGP
- Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP PRO 8X/4X (0.8V/1.5V)

Gigabit LAN
- On board Intel CSA Gigabit LAN

Dual SATA RAID
- 2 channel SATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID function (0/1) via South Bridge
- 4 channel SATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID function (0/1/0+1) via Silicon Image PCI Chip

Secure IDE™
- X-Wall® Chip ensures privacy and confidentiality of your data through entire disk encryption
- Hardware secure key authenticates during computer booting
- Without the key, your hard disk can not be accessed
- Device Driver free, Compatible with all OS
- Zero CPU and memory utilization
- Ultra ATA 100/133 hard drive supported
- Automatic and transparent encryption/decryption

Audio
- 6-Channel AC 97 CODEC on board - Professional digital audio interface supports S/P DIF optical In/Out

ABIT Engineered Technology
- SoftMenu™ Technology
- FanEQ™ Technology
- CPU ThermalGuard™
- FlashMenu™
- TweakGuard™
- ABIT FanSecure™
- OTES™ Technology

IEEE 1394
- Supports IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400 Mb/s transfer rate

Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 x AGP, 5 x PCI slots
- 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88MB
- 2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100 Connectors
- 4 x SATA 150 Connectors
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers, 2 x IEEE 1394a header
- 1 x CD-IN, 1 x AUX-IN

Back Panel I/O
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse
- 1 x S/PDIF Out connector, 1 x S/PDIF In connector
- 1 x Audio connectors (Front Speaker, Line-in, Mic-in)
- 1 x Audio connectors (Center/Sub, Surround Speaker)
- 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE 1394a
- 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector

Miscellaneous
- ATX form factor
- Hardware monitoring: Including Fan speeds, Voltages, System environment temperature