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Socket A processors have been around for a few months now, and so we thought it was time to take a look at motherboards that give users the chance to harness the power of these new chips.
The Abit KT7 is based on the VIA KT133 chipset, which has become the de facto standard for Socket A processors. The overall layout of the board is good with Abit including a HighPoint HPT370 controller for onboard UltraDMA100 EIDE RAID. This allows you to set up your own RAID system without shelling out for expensive SCSI hard disks.
The controller supports four configurations: RAID 0, for performance-enhancing striping; RAID 1, for mirroring data security; and 0+1 that combines both modes, although since it requires four drives it becomes a little costly. The fourth mode, spanning, is also known as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) and is exactly as it sounds: you can use drives of any size and span them together to create one extra-large drive. This is not an ideal solution if you are after extra reliability, but it is a great option for those on a tight budget with a few old hard drives they would like to use for storage.
Abit have supplied two UltraDMA66/100 EIDE cables with their board, there is an optional USB header in the box and two extra connectors are also included. The KT7-RAID has another neat feature - a fan on the north bridge. This will be useful for over-clockers, as it will help to keep the north bridge cool if you increase the bus speed of the motherboard.
The board also has an ISA slot, which will be useful for those with legacy cards. There are three DIMM slots for a maximum of 1.5Gb of Ram. The rest of the specifications are fairly standard, with the usual complement of PS/2, serial, parallel and USB ports at the rear, together with five dedicated PCI slots. There is also an extra PCI slot if you don't want to use the ISA slot.
The board was easy to set up with a well-written BIOS that will appeal to the novice and more advanced user alike. Abit has produced an excellent manual that covers how to set up the BIOS, installing drivers and so on.
Comparing it to its peers, a decision to buy this board or not is a matter of personal preference more than anything else. The Abit is clearly a five-star product.
Contact: dabs.com
0800 138 5240 www.abit.nl
See also:
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Intel's Coppermine processors have been eagerly awaited. this system from Armari is the first to feature the first of this new breed to processors. But how do these 733MHz processors stack up against AMD's Pentium beater, the Athlon? We put the chip to the test. 13 Dec 1999All Motherboards
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