TH7 successor already?

Building largely off the design of their original TH7-RAID, ABIT is back at it again with their TH7II-RAID. And if you were expecting another boring Pentium 4-related release, the TH7II-RAID will be quite a pleasant surprise!

For starters, the TH7II-RAID is the first 850-based Socket 478 motherboard we've tested designed for use with Intel's latest Pentium 4 (P4) processors. That's right, unlike the original TH7-RAID; the TH7II-RAID utilizes Intel's brand new mPGA (micro pin-grid array) 478 interface, which will be slowly replacing today's PGA423 interface. Intel's already commenced shipments of 478-pin Pentium 4 chips based on the original Willamette core. Our samples were clocked at 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz, although our testing focused exclusively on the latter processor (it was the better overclocker after all).

Built for Northwood!

In addition, TH7II-RAID is the first motherboard designed for use with Intel's upcoming 0.13-micron Pentium 4 processors codenamed "Northwood". Along with the die shrink, Northwood P4s are expected to bring with them a number of performance enhancements. Unlike today's Willamette CPUs, which are available in 423-pin or 478-pin packages, Northwood chips will be manufactured exclusively in 478-pin packaging. This means today's Socket 423 Pentium 4 motherboards will not work with Northwood CPUs.

Dual display works!

One big cooler

This infrastructure change was one of the chief reasons we've been so unenthusiastic about the Pentium 4: why purchase a new CPU and motherboard if it's going to be completely replaced with something new less than a year after you've purchased it? This leaves an upgrade path of about 700MHz (1.3GHz to eventually 2.0GHz for Willamette CPUs). On paper 700MHz sounds like a lot, but when you're dealing with the Pentium 4 microarchitecture, things really don't begin to get exciting until the chip reaches high clock speeds (remember the CPU performance=IPC x clock speed equation from the Palomino Performance Preview?). In particular, we've found Intel's Pentium 4 1.8GHz offers extremely competitive performance with Athlon 1.4GHz - each chip wins its fair share of benchmarks. Since the TH7II-RAID works with both Northwood and Willamette CPUs however, end users have an upgrade path of over 1GHz. That is a much better upgrade path don't you think?

Besides the new socket, overclockers will also appreciate the addition of ABIT's newer SoftMenu III BIOS interface. The original TH7 utilized SoftMenu II. With SoftMenu III, bus speeds can be adjusted in 1MHz increments, giving end users much more flexibility when overclocking.

Features
Intel 850 chipset
400MHz front-side bus
SoftMenu III: bus adjustments in 1MHz increments
Supports CPU multiplier 10.0x-24.0x
Supports up to Four 184-pin Direct Rambus RIMM modules up to 2GB
High Point HTP370 IDE Controller
4 x UltraDMA 33/66/100 IDE Ports
Support IDE RAID 0, 1, or 0+1 ; Can connect up to four additional IDE devices
1 AGP/5 PCI/1 CNR Configuration
AC'97 Digital Audio controller integrated