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ABIT KT7A-RAID
Company: ABIT
Product: KT7A-RAID Motherboard
Street Price: ~ $160
Complete Motherboard Spec's: ABIT-USA Spec's
Date Reviewed: January 30, 2001
Reviewed By: Jason

(click on image for close-up)
To Be Or Not To Be:
Continuing on the success of the original KT7 &
KT7-RAID, ABIT swapped out the Northbridge chip with the new VIA KT133A
giving the KT7s true 133 FSB support (Really 266 MHz because it's a DDR
architecture) and hence the KT7A & KT7A-RAID were born. Physically
there are no other major changes to the board. The two pictures below
show you the VIA Northbridge & Southbridge chips. The Northbridge
being the KT133A (nice and shiny!) with 133FSB support, and the
Southbridge is the new 686B Southbridge supporting ATA/100. The RAID
boards also include the HighPoint 370 chip to support an addition two
ATA/100 channels (with the traditional RAID 0/1/0+1 abilities of
course).

Overall the board is nicely laid out, sporting a regular AGP
slot, 6 PCI slots, and a lonely ISA slot for you legacy people. The CPU socket
does have a few capacitors that are very close to it near the left clips which
you must be cautious of, but there is plenty of clearance on the sides. Along
with the usual cables, software, and manuals, ABIT was also kind enough to
include a connector for the two extra USB ports, which mounts in the back where
an unused PCI card would go. Thankfully there
is no AMR/CNR slot, I think these companies have realized that those are a
complete waste. As you can tell from the picture up top, the Northbridge chip is
actively cooled (with the metal inset on the chip itself to aid in heat
transfer). There are 3 memory slots (pretty standard for the VIA chipsets), I
did all the tests with one 256MB memory stick in DIMM1, however, as with any
board I've run across, using two or more slots almost always yields in a little
less stability under heavy overclocking. Sometimes it takes a little time and
patience to get a pair of memory sticks to work right, sometimes you can just
plug and go with no problems.
A very nice feature of the KT7 boards is all the power
connectors they give you. You have two near the ATX connector, and if you use
the default "ww" BIOS then there has to be an RPM sensing fan on FAN1
or your system will not boot. However, ABIT has released a beta 01 BIOS "WZ"
that allows you to disable this option. The next power connector is to the top
right of the AGP slot (which is in the perfect location if you have an
aftermarket 3-pin fan on your video card), and the last power connector is down
on the bottom corner, which allows you to plug in a fan that you might have in
the bottom-front of your case.

(All 3 images are linked on a single close-up page)
ABIT's 3-Phase Power Solution really distinguishes ABIT apart
from other boards I have seen. While everyone else so far has opted to use a
2-phase solution, ABIT went a step further with their 3-phase solution, which
you can read about in numerous ABIT Press Releases:
The last thing you need in your system is excess heat, or the
stability and CPU lifespan issues that go with it. On the KT7-RAID, ABIT has
gone a step further in preventing extra heat: A six MOSFET transistor set for a
“3-Phase Power Solution.” These six transistors dissipate heat more
effectively than the four transistor (“2-Phase”) solution found on most
other Socket A motherboards. Additionally, should future Thunderbirds require
higher amperage, the KT7-RAID will address power and heat issues better than
boards with 2-phase solutions.

Another cool little feature I really like is their thermal probe
choice, rather than use the smaller surface mount types, they used one that will
actually touch the backside of the CPU, and thus will give you a more accurate temperature
readout. As hot as AMD CPU's run, I like to get as accurate of a temperature as
I can.

Oh, I almost forgot to say that this board also uses the kick
ass ABIT SoftMenu III BIOS so you have NO jumpers to mess with for voltage or
FSB, it's all in the BIOS! There are more things to tweak in this BIOS than I
have seen in any other board!
Go To Page 2 For The Benchmarks
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