ABIT ANNOUNCED its new MAX line of motherboards last month with an enthusiastic press release and a lot of hype. This motherboard launch showcased more than just an incremental improvement in features and performance; this was something much bigger. Not only had Abit integrated just about every peripheral you could want onto a single motherboard, they'd also done away with the majority of the board's legacy components. MAX was to be a forward-looking platform not only because of its wealth of integrated peripherals, but also because of its attempt to phase out legacy components altogether.

MAX isn't a completely new idea. Intel had a prototype legacy-free motherboard back at last year's Comdex. Still, the ideas behind MAX have considerable promise, and this was a production motherboard you could find on store shelves, not some one-off trade show demo. With the AT7 MAX, not only do you get a feature-rich, high-performance motherboard, you also get rid of a bunch of old ports you probably don't use anyway. Less is more, and more is less—more or less.

So just how many integrated peripherals are we talking about here? And beyond the hype, does the lack of legacy components really do anything other than leave you without a few empty ports? Does the AT7 MAX uphold Abit's reputation for blazing speed, great tweaking options, and rock-solid stability? Sit tight; you're about to find out.