SUMMARY: Something old, something new, something borrowed, and uGuru

Our friends over at Newegg have sent us a motherboard to look at, Abit's AN7 motherboard.

Based on Abit's highly acclaimed NF7-S series, the AN7 v1.0 builds upon the foundation there, and brings a few new things to the table.

The biggest of the new is Abit's new uGuru feature set (microGuru is the literal translation, given the actual name). The uGuru chip, located in the lower right corner of the motherboard just above the CMOS battery, is a Winbond built chip that allows some of the usual BIOS tweaking to be done from within Windows itself.

Abit's first venture with the uGuru technology was with their AI7 motherboard, which is the uGuru variant of their rock solid Springdale based IS7 platform. It only made sense therefore, when they turned their uGuru thoughts toward their AMD lineup, to meld it and their successful NF7 series boards.

Big news? Yes and no.

While there have been various programs available for some time that will accomplish the tasks that uGuru encompasses, these have all been third party applications. This is a major manufacturer wading into those waters.

But, Abit doesn't just wade in though, they jump in with both feet.

We're about to find out.

Let's start out by having a look at what's in that box at the top of the page, and go from there.

Of late, Abit has come up with a rather slick packaging for their boards, placing the literature and software, and the cables into a pair of separate boxes.

In researching this product, I read an early review of this item, and that person was "disappointed" with the bundle included with the AN7. This is partly because Abit has included so much with some of their recent products, spoiling us. I can kind of see that person's point of view....to a degree.

When I got my Abit IC7 (intel P4, i875 based) motherboard recently, it was packaged similar to the AN7 here. The cardboard used in the AN7 boxes is of lighter weight material (big deal). The IC7 ships with rounded IDE and floppy drive cables, whereas the AN7 (as can be seen above) doesn't.

Let's be honest here though.... How many of you base your decision to buy a particular motherboard on whether or not it has rounded cables included?

I don't.

It's a nice touch if and when they do come with a particular product, but really shouldn't be expected.

One could make an argument that the IC7, which is the low end of the related family (below the IC7-G, and "MAX" offerings) gets a better bundle than this board, which is more the flagship of the Abit AMD based boards.

Should I check the price of tea in China now, or....?? =)