Board layout

Simplicity

The BH7’s layout is done very well, without annoyances that exist on other boards such as DIMM slots being too close to the AGP slot, requiring the removal of the graphics card in order to install or remove a DIMM. All connectors are positioned not to interfere with anything else.

ABIT BH7 motherboard

Horizontal IDE connectors

At the front of the board, the BH7 is standard equipped with two IDE connectors, leaving out extra IDE RAID features that are common on its other boards. Looking at the layout of the BH7, there’s still a lot of room left for features such as these, and a second SATA at that. Currently, the BH7’s design only has one SATA connector, indicating that SATA is still in its trial stages. The fact is, it’s still very difficult to find SATA drives readily available.

Realtek audio/networking

BH7 back plane

On the back, we see the RealTek connectors that support 10/100 speeds but would have preferred an Intel or 3Com controller, as controllers from those two companies tend to use less CPU resources. You may have also noticed gigabit Ethernet appearing on certain boards. A group of companies are currently in the move to push for gigabit Ethernet as the mainstream standard and one of the things they’re doing is making the controllers inexpensive. This makes it a no-brainer to feature gig-E onboard.

Serial ATA – not yet

Serial ATA, as far as it has come, just hasn’t been living up to much of the hype stirred some twelve or so months ago. If it is such a boon and such a hot technology, hard drive manufacturers would do a better job of pushing drives to market because even the cable and chipset guys are doing a far better job in terms of time-to-market. A clear indication of where SATA stands today can be seen on the BH7. Currently sporting only a single connector, it shows that while SATA is a nifty feature, it isn’t yet practical and isn’t in high demand. What’s also interesting is that the Marvell 88i8030 controller is simply a bridge between PATA and SATA. The underlying layer is still parallel ATA. On Marvell’s website, they say:

The Marvel Serial ATA bridge

“By converting Parallel ATA (PATA) to Serial ATA (SATA), the Marvell® 88i8030 SATA bridge product allows hard disk drive, PC/server motherboard and storage subsystem manufacturers to use their current PATA electronics for fast time-to-market.”

Serial ATA isn’t where it wants to be yet and until drives are in abundance, manufacturers like Abit won’t start stocking their boards with SATA connectors. It’s a clear indication that we still have a while to wait until really taking advantage of what SATA promises.