Features

ATA/100 RAID

Like all of ABIT's newer motherboards, the TH7-RAID utilizes HighPoint's HPT370 controller for ATA/100 RAID support. While the ATA/66 HighPoint controller got off to a rocky start with ABIT's BE6 (having problems with older Maxtor hard drives), the HPT370 offers considerably more polish than its predecessor. We've thrown a wide variety of ATA/66 and ATA/100 hard drives at it with no problems.

The RAID implementation on the TH7II-RAID supports RAID Level 0 (striping), Level 1 (mirroring), and 0+1 (striping+mirroring). Many of the RAID offerings from other motherboard manufacturers only supports RAID Level 0, or don't offer 0+1 (or some other combination of the three levels). ABIT is one of only a few motherboard manufacturers that offers' fully featured RAID implementations on their motherboards; many others use lesser implementations to keep costs down. Even if you don't plan on configuring a RAID array immediately, you can always use the HighPoint controller to support up to four additional hard drives.

Profile shot of the TH7II system

The mPGA 478 interface

Cost

Like the original TH7-RAID, the TH7II-RAID is a 6-layer design. In an effort to cut production costs on 850 motherboards Intel released a 4-layer reference design for the 850 chipset earlier this year. So far MSI is the only motherboard manufacturer to produce a 4-layer motherboard (the 850 Pro2) although ASUS and Gigabyte are currently developing their 4-layer boards.

As far as we know, ABIT has no immediate plans to produce a 4-layer 850 motherboard, but as always those plans can change. While this may sound alarming initially, keep in mind that 845 motherboards are already built on four layers, as is VIA's P4X266 chipset. If DDR does gain momentum on the P4 platform, four layer boards will certainly be out there en masse. ABIT must have felt the development time on a 4-layer 850 board wasn't worth the time and expense. Better to be among the first with an mPGA 478 RDRAM product on the market than among the last (as they were with the original TH7), even if the latter board would have cost less to manufacture. Currently MSI's 4-layer 850 Pro2 sells for around $15 less than the 6-layer board, so the cost savings is passed on to the consumer, although it certainly isn't dramatic.

Like the other 850 designs on the market, the TH7II-RAID utilizes a 5 PCI configuration with one CNR slot. Coming from ABIT we're a bit surprised to see the CNR slot (as well as the onboard 2-channel AC'97 audio), but they must have felt someone wanted it.

The lower portion of the motherboard

Another dual display shot

Before we get into the board's layout, we wanted to briefly discuss the new 478-pin interface, CPU, and heatsink we used for our tests.