KT7A-Raid: One step over the KT7-Raid
Written: May 27 '01 (Updated May 28 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: ATA100 Raid controller, 266MHz frontside bus speed support
Cons: Does not support DDR memory
The Bottom Line: This is a good board for AMD Duron and Athlon Thunderbird but it does not support DDR.
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| Gr8ful's Full Review: Abit KT7-RAID Motherboard |
The KT7A-Raid in comparison to the KT7-Raid
The KT7A-Raid motherboard from Abit is one of the best boards for the latest AMD Athlon processors. It supports the AMD Duron and Athlon processors in the Socket A style just as the KT7-Raid does but it goes one step further by adding support for the latest Thunderbird Athlons running on a 266MHz frontside bus. This allows using processors up to the current 1333MHz and faster when they are released. The KT7-Raid only supports the 200MHz frontside bus, but has the same EIDE raid hard disk controller built in.
Processor support
The KT7-Raid and the KT7A-Raid motherboards both support AMD Duron and Athlon processors from 650MHz to 1200MHz but the KT7A supports the 1133MHz and the 1333MHz using the 266MHz bus speed. The benefit of the faster bus speed is overall data processing speed. There are two different Athlon processors rated at 1200MHz, one runs on the 200MHz bus and the latest one runs on the 266MHz bus. The one running on the 266MHz bus is not a faster processor but it recieves more data per clock cycle to process so the overall system speed is increased.
Drive support
Both motherboards can support up to 8 EIDE devices. Four of these devices can be ATA100. The ATA100 Raid controller is built onto the motherboard and can be set to either "0" or "1" in the HPT-370 BIOS. Setting the Raid controller to "0" will get the best performance out of an ATA100 hard drive but setting the Raid controller to "1" will give you redundant data across multiple hard drives used as a single drive for backup purposes. The chipset and cotroller used is the High Point Technologies HPT-370 Raid. Setting up drives is simple and quick whether you use a raid configuration or standard drive operation.
Memory support
Both board support PC100 and PC133 SDRAM up to 1.5GB. Both have three DIMM slots and each slot will recognize up to a 512MB DIMM. Neither board supports DDR memory.
BIOS
These motherboard both feature two BIOS sets. The Award BIOS allows you to set up the primary features of the motherboard such as boot device order, on board peripherals, power management, USB and AGP support, memory configuration and so on. The HPT-370 BIOS allow you to configure a raid and set the configuration of the ATA100 devices on the raid controller.
Expansion slots and other features
Both boards feature 1 AGP slot, 5 PCI slots and 1 shared ISA/PCI. This was one of my favorite features because I could use my good old U.S. Robotics 56k ISA modem instead of having to purchase a "not quite as good" PCI hardware modem or a more expensive external serial modem.
The boards also feature four USB ports. Two are located below the PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports and two are on the board and require a USB motherboard adapter to give you two extra ports.
Each board also supports wake on ring, wake on lan, infrared and Soft Menu III CPU setup. The Soft Menu III feature works great for most processors but with my new 1333MHz Athlon Thunderbird I had to set the configuration manually. For some reason the board kept detecting it as a 1000MHz processor on a 200MHz bus and afterwards the computer would not boot or even post. I had to clear the CMOS and go back and set the CPU frontside bus and PCI bus speeds manually. After that I never had another problem with it.
Operating systems
Since building this new addition to my collection of computers, I have tried the following operating systems with no trouble. Keep in mind I only own the KT7A-Raid but the main features of both boards are basically identical except for the bus speed supported.
* Windows 98SE
* Windows 2000
* Windows NT 4.0 (Service pack 6)
* Windows ME
* Linux Mandrake 7.2
* Linux Mandrake 8.0
I have not tried Windows 95 but there should be no problem as long as you use version 95B or later. Version 95A will work but without USB support.
Performance
I can only give personal experience here with the KT7A-Raid and this is with the 1333MHz Athlon Thunderbird processor. I used many peripherals from my last creation to build this system so I will list what I had and what I have now, then give my evaluation of the performance.
I had...
* Abit KA7-100 motherboard
* AMD Athlon 800MHz Slot A
* 320MB PC133
* ATA100 15GB hard drive
* ATI Rage Fury 32MB AGP Video
* Sound Blaster Live!
I have now...
* Abit KT7A-Raid motherboard
* AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1333MHz Socket A
* 320MB PC133
* ATA100 15GB hard drive
* ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB video
* Sound Blaster Live!
Comparing the new system to my last, it is definately faster in high CPU usage programs. As far as games and 3D accellerated programs I don't see a vast improvement, although there is a difference it is not very noticeable. However, 3D benchmarks are slightly higher but this also could be from upgrading the video from the Rage 128 chip to the Rage 128 Pro chip.
Using Symantec's Norton Utilities system infomation, my old system benchmarked between 318 and 360 times faster than a 386SX 16MHz processor and the new one benches at between 718 and 736 times faster than the same 386SX 16MHz. The 386SX 16MHz processor is used as a base at 0 in this benchmark.
I did notice when benchmarking the ATA100 hard drive that on the new motherboard with the raid controller I get a higher logical benchmark at 159.6MBps (high) and 134.3MBps (low) compared to the old system's 133.4MBps (high) and 118.8MBps (low). The physical benchmark of the drive is the same at 5.0MBps.
Overall the performance is satisfactory, not awesome but satisfactory. The increase in the hard drive performance was enough to justify the entire upgrade for the price I paid of $364.00 over the internet.
What I got for $364.00
I ordered my purchase from http://www.bzboyz.com and it arrived in less than 10 days via insured U.S. Mail. The package contained an Abit KT7A-Raid motherboard, AMD Athlon 1333MHz processor (266MHz FSB), standard Thunderbird heatsink and fan combo and themral paste.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): $364/combo
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