The Layout (Continued)

ABIT positioned the AGP slot lower so that a seated AGP card will not interfere with the installation or removal of memory modules. The Intel chipset supports up to six PCI slots but the AI7 only comes with five PCI slots.

With an ASUS 9600XT graphics card

The reason for removing the sixth PCI slot was to allow the AGP slot to be lowered a slot space down. This increases the amount of free space for components above the AGP slot.

The Realtek ALC658

Front audio connectors and internal audio connectors

The ABIT AI7 uses the Realtek ALC658 which is a six-channel AC'97 audio codec. You can get more information about it from Realtek.

The ABIT AI7 also uses the Realtek RTL8100C as its 10/100M Fast Ethernet network controller.

Realtek RTL8100C NIC

For IEEE-1394 support, the ABIT AI7 uses the Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 chip. It is a 3-port OHCI 1.1, 1394A controller with a maximum transfer rate of 400Mbps.

Texas Instruments TSB43AB23

The ABIT AI7 comes with two Serial ATA ports with RAID support, courtesy of the ICH5R south bridge. The Serial ATA controller only supports ATA100 or faster hard disks.

Serial ATA connectors

Another interesting find on this budget board is the LED device which displays the POST code.

LED device which displays the POST code