Abit IL-90MV Core 2 Duo Mobile Motherboard - HTPC Ready

BIOS

The IL-90 MV comes with a Phoenix AwardBIOS which is much more simplistic than we've seen with other Abit platforms. As Abit is not targeting this motherboard at their typical enthusiast-minder consumer, the BIOS of this motherboard is quite simple. Tweaking options are kept to a minimum and there are no overclocking features of any kind. As you can see, the BIOS did correctly see our brand new Core 2 Duo T7600 (2.33 GHz) processor, but it required a BIOS flashing to do so. With the motherboard's stock BIOS, the board would boot properly with the Core 2 Duo mobile processor, but would bizarrely show the system as having "3 CPUs". With the latest BIOS, everything is A-OK, as seen below. 

Core 2 Duo Mobile on the IL-90MV

This isn't to say that there isn't any BIOS flexibly at all. One has control over basic DDR2 memory timings, and can also monitor temperatures and voltage levels through the BIOS as well. You also can control some basic settings in regards to onboard video (how much system memory is utilized, which output ports to use), but in comparison to other Abit boards we've tested with in the past, the IL-90MV is quite basic. For HTPC usage though, the options which Abit has presented are just fine. Of course, we would have liked to see some basic overclocking options to see how far we could overclock our Core 2 Duo mobile processor, but it's not in the cards right now. Perhaps in a future BIOS release. 

Memory Timing Menu

Temperature Monitoring

DVI / HDMI Output Toggling

Basic CPU Controls