KG-7 Lite...great mobo for power users and gamers (Abit KG7-RAID)

Name:

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Product:	Abit KG7-RAID
Date:	13/11/01 (294 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very quick DDR motherboard, Stable, yet supports wide range of CPU's, Very tweakable

Disadvantages: none really

I was using Abit's KT-7 Raid for several months until I tried to update the BIOS and it all went pear shaped. The mobo was sent back to ABIT UK through my London reseller, and 4 weeks later I got a new KT-7A Raid motherboard. The KT-7A supports the new Athlon chips running the 266mz front side bus. Running some SiSoft Sandra benchmarking showed that my motherboard and PC-133 memory was lagging behind my processor (Athlon 1.2ghz 266fsb) and graphics card (Leadtek Geforce 2 Ultra): it wasn't doing these components justice.

Also, I had been having major stability problems with the Via chipset on the KT-7A (latest Nvidia Detonator XP drivers on Geforce 2 Ultra), and didn't feel confident flashing the BIOS after my last disaster!

As the new motherboard was only 2 months old and in perfect condition I sold it to a mate for £70, who wanted to build a kick-ass Pc for his music studio. The RAID function of the KT-7A RAID mobo was perfect for him, he could run 2 or 4 hard drives in a stripe to get maximum speed.

I bought the KT-7 Raid originally because i liked the idea of Raid functionality: however, I couldn't justify buying 2 or 4 hard drives for playing games, so I never used the Highpoint Raid controller, it was just sitting there redundant.

After selling my mobo, I looked at loads of other mobos from different companies. I ended up going back to ABIT, because I love their Softmenu III BIOS, wicked for overclocking and tinkering with chipset settings. This time around, I didn't want RAID, waste of money paying for something I wouldn't use. Also I wanted to upgrade to DDR memory to make the most of my Athlon 1.2GHz chip which supports DDR.

The on-line reviewers were banging on about Abit's new KG-7 Lite, a "cut-down" version of the KG-7 and KG-7 RAID. The Raid version differs from the KG-7 because of the Raid controller, self explanatory really. But what about this "lite" busin
ess, sounds like a fizzy drink?

The Lite doesn't have Raid controller, or 4 DDR slots, just 2 slots allowing a maximum 2GB of unregistered DDR or 4GB of registered DDR. I could never see myself buying 2GB of DDR, that would cost major $$$ and Win98SE doesn't like going above 512mb without stability and control issues.

I settled on two 256mb slabs of PC2100 DDR from Crucial for the great price of £54...to think I paid £80 and £70 for two 128mb slabs of NEC PC-133 back in March and June this year! Shows how much prices have tumbled. A quick note of caution about buying memory, don't get cheap memory. always spend additional 20% on decent branded memory, and try to get matched pairs, otherwise you'll get all kinds of random problems.

The KG-7 Lite looks very pared down compared to my older KT-7A Raid, as it has solder covering the empty space where the additional 2 Dimm slot sit, and a sticker over the missing Raid controller. The FDD socket has been pushed across to the far side of the board, overall this board is far less cluttered and really well built (Abit's boards are always good..)

The KG-7 Lite uses the AMD 761 chipset to run the Northbridge, this was one of my primary reasons for buying this mobo; I wanted to get away from using a Via chipset as I'm sick of stability problems with the AGP port, it seems that Via have solved this with their new 266 chipset (as found on many new DDR boards) but using an AMD chipset with an AMD processor seemed a really good idea. There is a Via chipset on the board, but it doesn't control the Northbridge so I felt more comfortable laying out the cash.

Installation was really simple, Abit's manual is much better than the manual for the older KT-7A Raid, this time round it has decent black+white photographs, detailed explanations and tons of techy stuff. The new BIOS has a host of new features to support the DDR memory and AMD 761 chipset, loads of stuf
f like "DDR recharge rising Slew rate" which I understand but don't want to mess with..

..basically if you are a power user or power gamer (think Quake III at max resolutions with all settings on, or the new stuff like Return to wolvenstein, Doom III, Max Payne) then you'll love this board. It cost £118 which is a good value, and I like the uncluttered layout. Performance wise, this board flies. Even though it doesn't have the RAID controller, it does have Ultra DMA 100 controller for the two IDE channels, use this with a UDMA 100 compatible hard drive and you'll get great results.

The DDR memory makes a very real difference to system performance, clean install of Win98SE took about 15 minutes compared to the usual 40 minutes. Testing using 3D Mark 2001 and SiSoft Sandra showed a real jump in performance, approx 30-40% faster than my previous PC-133 memory based system.

To conclude, if you're looking for a powerful, stable, a tweakable DDR board then look no further. The Softmenu III BIOS is the best on the market, allowing jumperless resetting of processor / fsb / pci speeds, total control over voltage and all chipset featurtes.

This mobo supports a wide range of Athlon processors including Athlon 200mhz fsb, Athlon 266mhz fsb and the new Athlon XP. This would make a great upgrade choice for someone with an Athlon 900mhz (200mhz fsb) or similar, allowing you to change your chip to Athlon XP later on.

I can see why users are raving about the KG-7 Lite, it gets tops marks from me.

Summary: