As
my late Grand Father would say, "HOLY
MACKEREL" ! My Grandfather was an
excitable Italian type and this "fishy
phrase" would be one that he would use to
indicate his amazement with something. In
this case, the phrase is very fitting because I am
totally amazed at the buzz and hype, with this
review product that we have for you today.
Since Abit
announced their KA7 VIA KX133 Athlon based
motherboard, there has been a whirl-wind of press
articles and commotion surrounding the
product. Well, in true HotHardware fashion,
we just had to see what the fuss was all about and
got our hands on this new Athlon supporting beast,
as soon as we could! Does this board do
things for the Athlon in terms of overclocking
that Abit
has been able to deliver for Intel based boards in
the past? What about stability and
compatibility? We'll attempt to cover all
that and more in the following pages. Sit
back and enjoy the ride.
Many thanks go out
to our good friends at Outside
Loop Computers for hooking us up with this
board in a jiffy. For all of your
HotHardware needs go
to this online shop and they will never let
you down. Top notch products from top notch
people. You will have to endure many
gratuitous links for OL
throughout this review, so get use to it!
;-) Well then, on with the fun...
Abit
KA7 Specifications / Features
It's
got it all...
Click
Images for full view
CPU
Supports AMD-K7 Athlon 200MHz FSB Processors
Chipset
VIA VT8371(KX133) /VIA 686A
Supports Advanced Configuration and Power
Management Interface (ACPI)
Supports AGP 2X/4X (Sideband) 3.3V device
Supports 100/133MHz Memory Bus Settings
Memory
Four 168-pin DIMM sockets support PC100/PC133
SDRAM module
Supports up to 2 GB MAX. (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256,
512MB SDRAM)
6 chip Data Buffer Set
Supports ECC
System
BIOS
SOFTMENUTM III Technology
Award Plug and Play BIOS
Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS
Year 2000 Compliant
Multi I/O Functions
On board Bus Master IDE Ports supporting UDMA
33/66
PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse Connectors
1x Floppy Port (up to 2.88MB)
1x Parallel Port (EPP/ECP)
2x Serial Ports
2x USB Connectors
On board USB header for Two extra USB channels
Miscellaneous ATX form factor
1 AGP slot, 6 PCI slots and 1 ISA slots
Built-in Wake on LAN/Wake on Modem
Built-in IrDA TX/RX header
One Thermal Sensor Cable Included
We'll
be including a lot of pictures in this review
because the physical specifications of the KA7 are
a thing of beauty. In my opinion, the
feature set on this board is perfection. I
am beginning to look far and wide for new
motherboards with 6 PCI slots and this board has
them as well as an ISA slot for your legacy cards,
should you need it. Another notable, is the
number of three pin power headers for your cooling
fans. There are 4 total on the KA7 and all
in the right place. As you'll see in the
close up shot of the PCI slots above, there are
two next to the CPU slot and 1 next to the AGP
slot. There is an additional header down in
the left hand corer of the board for a front
mounted case fan. Abit really went the extra
mile to support adequate cooling.
There are also six
SDRAM Data Buffer chips supporting the wealth of 4
DIMM sockets. These will lend added
stability when you have all sockets occupied with
memory. This board supports a whopping 2GB of
PC100/133 SDRAM. It is begging to be setup
as a Web Server. Maybe we should donate this
board to our host? As a side note, the last
picture is of the PLL Clock Driver on the
KA7. It is an ICS 9179BF-01. We have
to check out H.Oda's page to see if SoftFSB
supports this chip. However, you probably
won't need SoftFSB when you see what the SoftMenu
III BIOS has in store! Finally, there
are full health monitoring features built in for
Fan Speed and Temperature Sensors, both on board
and with an external thermistor probe that comes
with the board. In summary of our
features and specs section here, Abit really
delivers all that you could want in a motherboard
with the KA7. No expense was spared in
offering room for expansion, in stability, and
with respect to overclocking.
