After the spectacular success of the revolutionary IT7-MAX, ABIT has done it again by releasing the new IT7-MAX2. Based on the same Intel 845E chipset as the old MAX, the IT7-MAX2 still offers users a robust high performance computing platform with 10 USB 2.0 ports, 3 IEEE 1394 ports, ATA133 RAID, onboard LAN, 6-Channel Audio and, of course, Abit's awesome Softmenu III.

The first thing you will notice about the IT7-MAX2 is the return of the PS/2 ports. While the parallel and serial ports are still gone, Abit decided to put PS/2 ports back on. Why, you may ask? Well, Abit listens to their end users, and while many of them applauded the removal of the legacy devices, many were not ready to go out and buy a new keyboard and mouse. Which really sound silly to me. If you're going to buy a cutting edge motherboard, why would you use it with an old keyboard and mouse?

The IT7-MAX2 comes with a new feature call Abit "Seriallel" ATA. This is a converter card that enables users to connect parallel hard drives to the Serial ATA150 ports on the IT7-MAX2. A very cool feature to have since there are no Serial hard drives on the market right now. Users have the option of using parallel or serial drives (when they became available) without having to worry about wasting system resources on serial ports that may not be used. The IT7-MAX2 allows the hooking up of 4 channel RAID with parallel or serial drives, making the IT7 MAX2 the one of the most flexible motherboard on the market.

While every other motherboard manufacturer has included Serial ATA on their latest motherboards, Abit has gone one step further and enabled Serial ATA RAID on the IT7-MAX2. Serial ATA RAID is accomplished through the use of the Highpoint 374 RAID controller. What's more, with Abit's Seriallel cards, users can run any combination of serial and parallel drives in RAID, allowing them to experience serial ATA RAID right now, not 6 months from now.