ATA RAID
Integrated ATA RAID is nothing new for performance-oriented motherboards, and neither is ATA/133. However, four channels of ATA/133 RAID via Highpoint's 374 controller are certainly useful, even if you're not into RAID setups.

Four channels of ATA/133 RAID love

Apart from enabling RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 with up to eight hard drives, the 374 controller can serve four storage devices without having to share an IDE channel. Combine that with the 845E's two channels of ATA/100, and you can plug in a whopping six ATA devices without having a slave drive. Finally, something to do with all those 5 1/4" bays in your tower case!

Here I'd like to make a small request of Highpoint and others: please give us something other than RAID 0, 1, and 0+1. If there are going to be four ATA RAID ports on the board, why not go for something a little more exotic than basic mirroring and striping?

Abit's custom black ATA/133 IDE ribbons

Abit even throws in a couple of slick, black ATA/133 cables so you can plug in your ATA devices in style. If you're new to mucking around inside your PC, the cables have some helpful labeling on the pull tabs to let you know which end goes where.

Integrated goodies
The IT7 MAX's PCB is littered with a wide array of chips supporting its integrated peripherals.

Realtek Ethernet: Fear the crab

First up we have Realtek's 8100B 10/100 Ethernet chip, which has seen a lot of action in motherboards of late. Integrated Ethernet makes a lot of sense given the pervasiveness of broadband Internet connections, especially among the type of consumer that's going to go through the trouble of buying a motherboard individually.

Though I didn't have any performance problems with the Realtek chip, I was using it on my rather dated 10BT home network, which doesn't really stress things as much as I might like.

Realtek's tiny ALC650

Realtek also sees some action in the IT7 MAX's audio spec. A miniscule ALC650 sound chip adorns the board. Audiophiles—and even mere audio enthusiasts—will probably scoff at the chip's sound quality, especially on a high-end speaker setup, but the sound and signal quality should be more than acceptable for most ears. I haven't heard nForce audio first hand, but the IT7 MAX's on board audio is as good as any other integrated audio implementation I've listened to.

The IT7 MAX's S/PDIF output does give it a theoretical edge when it comes to audio output quality. However, if your speakers or stereo setup is high-end enough to support S/PDIF, it's probably good enough to expose the ALC650's aural deficiencies.

Firewire by Texas Instruments

For all the digital video enthusiasts in the crowd not lucky enough to have access to a Firewire port already, the IT7 MAX brings you Texas Instruments' IEEE 1394 solution.

VIA's USB 2.0 chip

At odds in the courtroom over a Pentium 4 chipset license, Intel and VIA get along just fine on the IT7 MAX's PCB. VIA's USB 2.0 chip provides some extra USB 2.0 ports to fuel your need for digital cameras, printers, MP3 players, and the like. With a total of ten USB ports to offer, you're going to be hard pressed to max out the IT7 MAX's USB docking potential.