abit bg7 - p4

Approx Price: $120USD

MFG Link: Abit BG7 Northbridge Intel i845G Southbridge Intel ICH4 Supported FSB 100/133 MHz Form Factor ATX DIMM Slots Three PC1600/2100 Max Memory 3 GB Integrated video Yes, Intel i845G Shared Video memory 1,8MB IDE 2 Ultra/100 AGP 4xAGP, 1.5V Lock PCI 5 32bit PCI's ISA None CNR/AMR/ACR None LAN 10/100 Realtek 8100B Audio Realtek ALC650 5.1 AC'97 USB 4 USB 2.0 Power Supply Pentium 4 Misc 1 Serial, 1 Parallel

The first thing we noticed about this motherboard was the relative small size for a standard ATX motherboard. It was very refreshing to see that this motherboard was barely larger then old i440BX based boards. Other then the placement of IDE and floppy drive connectors, we really liked this board quite a bit.

Like the two Epox motherboards, the BG7 is a standard ATX motherboard but still has the usual onboard USB 2.0, LAN, 5.1 audio and video.

Since it is a standard ATX board it has five 32bit PCI slots and three DIMM's. One really cool feature that we found very useful was the Power and Reset buttons on the PCB. This makes things very handy when trouble shooting the motherboard in the case.

We were very happy to see that Abit is starting to use longer jumpers on their motherboards. This makes things very easy if we want to clear the CMOS or adjust a few of the other jumpers on the motherboard.

Like the Epox boards, the BG7 had some major problems with all three DIMM's populated. The board simply refused to boot up. With two DIMM's we didn't have any problems, but once the third DIMM was installed the system was a no go.

We thought the Epox boards were expensive, but the BG7 is a little more so. With an approximate price tag of $200 CDN, the board may be out of the range of most budgets.