Motherboard Specifications

The Good

The ABIT IT5H excels in nearly all the possible areas, performance, stability, ease of use, and quality. First, lets discuss the manufacturing qualities of the IT5H. The board has by far, the best layout I've ever seen in an AT form factor board. The fairly large AT board resembles an ATX board in almost every single category except for the obvious differences. Cooling the board is quite easy especially if you have a secondary case fan which places it directly in front of the CPU/Voltage Regulators. All the SIMM Slots are easily accessible and the DIMM slots are not positioned at the end of the board like many others. However, due to the form factor, only one of the ISA slots can be used for a full length card. The board is also quite stable due mainly to the manner in which it was manufactured, not only were the very best components selected but the 2 voltage regulators the board is supplied with all have massive heatsinks which dissipate heat very, VERY effectively. The manual of the IT5H is classic of all ABIT manuals, very detailed and very user friendly. It accurately describes the proper way to install, configure, and setup your new motherboard. Like all ABIT manuals it draws attention to key points using legible and noticeable fonts as well as art, something which is much needed in some of the competitor's manuals. Since the IT5H is jumperless, setup and configuration is a breeze. Upon initial bootup the IT5H, like its successor the AX5, detected the processor and voltage correctly therefore saving the average user some trouble. Revision 1.5 of the IT5H fully supports the 50, 55, 60, 66, 75 and 83.3MHz bus speeds as well as support for 512MB of RAM cacheability due to the additional tag ram and the optional BIOS setting. The IT5H hardly crashed when I was testing it, however it took a backseat to the Megatrends HX83 in terms of stability since it wouldn't boot at 250MHz with either of the CPU's (K6 or P55C). Performance wise, the IT5H is among the best. The IT5H doesn't really fall behind in any category, making it a nearly perfect motherboard. Or is it?

The Bad

Although this board comes as close to perfect as you can get, there are some flaws I just can't overlook. First of all, the Socket-7 is surrounded by large capacitors which is a good thing when considering stability, but a bad thing when you consider that you have to attach a fan to that socket without damaging the capacitors. I had a nice time trying to get my Peltier to slip on easily without bending or breaking the capacitors. Bottom line? Be VERY careful when installing a heatsink/fan on the IT5H, or be prepared to return your board. I originally experienced a keyboard lockup with the IT5H (as I was told I would) however after receiving email from all of you I fixed the problem (Thanks everybody), you simply must increase the 8 Bit and 16 Bit I/O recovery times to 2 and 3 respectively, not a huge drawback. With the HX83 I could get the board to run stable at an 83.3MHz bus speed without having to use the auto-configuration for 60ns EDO DRAM (I could use my own rigorous timings), however the IT5H required me to use more liberal timings for bus speeds higher than 66MHz. Another problem I experienced was that I could not get either chip (the K6 or the P55C) to boot at 250MHz for some reason, I tried everything, it just didn't want to happen. And unlike the AX5, the IT5H Revision 1.5 doesn't support the Turbo Frequency of the 66MHz bus speed which was a bit of a disappointment, although not enough to make me dislike the board. A minor problem I became aware of with the IT5H Revision 1.5, is its lack of proper support for ECC DRAM although it is officially supported by the HX chipset. This problem isn't that major for most users, however it should be fixed in the next revision of the IT5H. Overall, the IT5H is an excellent board with a few minor problems.

IRQ Usage

The usage of IRQs is a very important factor when choosing and configuring any peripheral, including a motherboard. How the motherboard manages and uses IRQs is very important, and often causes conflicts with other peripherals. The IT5H does not skimp in this area, the AWARD PnP BIOS included with the IT5H allows the user to enable or disable the usage of IRQ12 for a PS/2 mouse if one is present. Also you can individually set the IRQs for each Legacy ISA card just in case some are present in your system. You have the option of manually setting an IRQ for your Video Card if you desire to do so. The IT5H is truly a board for the tweaker, it allows you to configure each and every IRQ usage setting to the max. As with most boards, you can select which IRQ your Serial and Parallel Port(s) use which often comes in handy when you have devices such as modems, printers, and serial mice attached to your system. Immediately after POST, the AWARD PnP BIOS detects and configures all PnP cards including PnP ISA cards. The board definitely does a great job of allow you to allocate IRQs in order prevent possible conflicts with other devices.

BIOS Settings

Here are my Recommended BIOS Settings for those of you who have been having problems with the IT5H and higher bus speeds. Below are my recommended settings for bus speeds < 66MHz, 75MHz, and 83.3MHz. If you are using Non-EDO RAM, then use the settings the in the 2nd (Non - EDO) column, if you are using EDO RAM with a 50/60/66MHz bus speed use the 3rd (66MHz Setting) column. If you are using EDO RAM with a 75/83.3MHz bus speed use the 4th (75/83MHz Setting) column. Finally, if you are looking for the safest and most stable setting, use the last column.

IT5H Revision 1.5 Chipset Features Setup

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

Test Configuration

As you can see from the benchmark results, the IT5H is extremely fast when it comes to performance especially with the AMD K6 processor. I should state this now to avoid any confusion, do not compare these Winstone scores to the HX83's scores in its review since those scores were taken using the ATI 3D Xpression+ which is receives slower Winstone results than the Matrox Millennium. I will have a head to head comparison of the IT5H and HX83 tomorrow for those of you that wish to compare the two boards.

I'm not exactly sure why the IT5H kept on failing the high end tests, but nevertheless the performance is astonishing. I'll try rerunning some of the High End tests when I get some more time to see if I can get them to complete successfully.

The Final Decision

Should you buy this board? YES!!!! ABIT has showed me that they can produce a SoftMenu enabled board with hardly any problems as well as tremendous performance qualities. If you hate settings jumpers and simply love performance, run out and grab this board now! Then you'll be able to really tweak, have you ever tried running your CPU at 225MHz for one application then 208MHz for a game? Well, with the IT5H you can. It is especially useful if you have a peripheral which you use some of the time that doesn't work at a higher bus speeds (i.e. Parallel Port ZIP Drive), so you can reset your bus speed with the flip of a reset switch.