BIOS
ABIT's excellent SoftMenu III is the beating heart of the IS7's BIOS. Let's take a closer look.
Almost identical to the IC7-G's, which is no bad thing in itself. We're reviewing this board with the shipping IS7_10 BIOS. We fully expect ABIT to launch a performance BIOS in the near future. That's precisely what occurred with the IC7. As it is, we have FSB manipulation from 100 - 300 FSB in 1MHz increments. We appreciate that you can manually key in whichever FSB you require. There's no need to cycle through each individual FSB. Much like the IC7-G, you have a few DRAM ratios. At 200FSB+, the DRAM can be set to synchronous (1:1) or asynchronous (5:4 and 3:2). The all-new ICS clock generator gives rise to some strange and wonderful ratios, as shown below.
The simple and sage advice is to leave this at fixed. You'd need a calculator to work out the resulting frequencies for the AGP, CPU and PCI speeds respectively.
Memory timings give us the usual degree of manipulation. Fortunately, this particular subscreen isn't as complicated as the IC7-G's. There's little need for the additional settings, we feel.
Jumpers used to dictate how the features were implemented, now it's all via tweakable BIOSes. Notice that the lower screen defines the PCI-based features. There's no S-ATA here. The on-chip S-ATA, though, is toggled from a separate subscreeen. You have the usual combinations of S-ATA and P-ATA, all of which are clearly explained in the manual.
Another excellent hardware monitor screen, which is a must for enthusiasts looking to push their components. The temperature readings appeared more believable than other ABIT boards. The 4-phase power design kept voltages steady under reasonable load, and certainly didn't under-volt heavily like a few competitors' boards. The CPU FanEQ is ABIT's method of reducing overall system noise. Another pleasing BIOS.