Confused about AN7 SATA feature, please read.

I've been reading all the current threads about this board and i'm confused about this.

The board comes with the MCP-T, rather than the MCP-S, which to me means that it doesn't come with the onboard SATA connectors. However, in the descriptions of the NF7-S and the AN7 they both have the similar feature:
NF7-S:Onboard Serial ATA: Supports transfer rates 150MB/s (1.5G bps)(newegg description)
AN7:On board SATA PCI Controller, Support 2 channels SATA 150 RAID 0/1 (newegg description)

Also in the pictures, it is hard to make out what these are on the AN7 (look below the last PCI slot on the very edge of the board). To me, they look like SATA connectors.

Does the AN7 have onboard SATA connectors like the NF7-S? And one other question that i have is what is the maximum PC-xxxx that the NF7-S and AN7 support? It says up to 400mhz but i dont know what PC-3500 and PC-3700 operate at.

Any help would be great.

AN7 and NF7 both use the exact same southbridge. No motherboard to my knowledge uses the new MCP-S southbridge that has native support for SATA yet. Both AN7 and NF7 have a SATA controller on the board that handles it. Both have two SATA ports.

When confused about what a board has or doesn't have, the first place to look should be that company's website:

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=158

Mark

oh my bad, i was thinking NF7-S - MCP-S

Why is it a dissapointment that the AN7 doesn't use the MCP-S?

Because the MCP-S has SATA integrated into the SB, which means it could provide much better performance, and it doesn't have another chip sitting on the PCI bus. Not to mention that the Silicon Image controller is not the best SATA raid controller out there. And, Nvidia seems to be fairly good about getting linux drivers out for their hardware, silicon image is not.