Taking FSB where no-one has gone before (Abit KT7-RAID)

Member Name: thepanther

Product:	Abit KT7-RAID
Date:	14/12/00 (242 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Raid, very overclockable

Disadvantages: expensive option

Abit continues to be the one and only when it comes to boards that can overclock today’s processors. The KT7 Raid is no exception, Abit’s famous soft menu III is included and has some pretty impressive features in order to get the most out of your CPU. The Socket A chips have a very high overclocking potential especially the Duron. So this type of motherboard is exactly what you need in order to get it to the top. On entering the BIOS and the soft menu III you will notice that this board will let you change the voltage the FSB (front side bus) and the multiplier. You can only change the multiplier if your Athlon/Duron isn’t locked or if you have unlocked it yourself. However if like the most of us you don’t fancy doing that, you can stick with the FSB and the voltage settings. I don’t think I have seen this in a motherboard before but you can actually take the FSB of the KT7-Raid to a staggering 183Mhz! I doubt anybody will be getting to that point in a hurry. The best feature of the FSB overclocking though is that you can raise the speed in 1Mhz increments all the way to 183Mhz. Basically meaning that you can pick the exact speed which you feel is the fastest it will go and still be a stable platform.

The Raid feature again I class as very useful to myself personally and to many other people in same position as myself. Raid, which stands for (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) allows you to have 4 IDE channels instead of the normal 2. Basically meaning you will be able to have 8 IDE devices instead of just 4. I’m sure many people have to decide which devices would be the most useful and have to discard the rest of them out of thought. But now I can have 2HD’s a CD a CDRW a DVD and a ZIP drive altogether. Just have to make sure you have a big enough case and decent PSU :)

Abit includes a 4x AGP port (standard with the VIA chipsets) 6 PCI slots and 1 ISA slot and support for 4 USB ports. Abit continue t
o support the old ISA slot for those of us who still have that one old device. Other companies decided to drop ISA for dead, and move on but this gave Abit another selling point. I have an old 10Mbit network card that I still use because it still does the job, I appreciate having that opportunity to still use it in the latest motherboards. 1 nice little extra is that you get a Heatsink and fan on the North bridge of the chipset. Never seen that before. Maybe its really necessary or maybe its there just to show they try and give you everything they can. It might even be there to push up the price either way another initiative from Abit.

The stability of the board seems very reliable no problems for me, if you are overclocking though I wouldn’t blame problems on the board, its 99% certain that the chip is causing the problems at a speed it cant handle. This board is my personal recommendation for Athlon/Duron High end systems.

If the Raid feature is not that necessary for you then you can pick up the KT7 for a lot cheaper with the same features.

Summary: