Stable Like A Rock (Not A Chevy!)
Written: Dec 21 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Layout, looks, stability, price.
Cons: Bus speed, over clocking.
The Bottom Line: Great board for inexpensive gaming machine.
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| jumperless's Full Review: Abit KT7E Motherboard |
This is a great motherboard to consider based on it’s price alone, about $80.00. For gamers and other users who trick out their computer, this is also a great choice for clear cases or cases with windows because this is nice color blue board that is worth showing off.
This board has no built-in sound, RAID or video controller, important for the frequent upgrader. It also comes with a detailed manual.
CPU Support – This boards supports the AMD Athlon/Duron 700MHz ~ 1.2GHz using Socket A. The socket is located far from the memory slots, giving plenty of room for an oversized heat sync.
Chipset - VIA KT133E /VIA 686B. This is the advanced version of the KT133 chipset, supporting some new advanced power features. It also supports a 200MHz DDR bus. There is not much more information available on the web about this new chipset, not even on VIAs website.
RAM – 3 168-Pin SIMM Slots that support PC100/133 RAM up to 1.5 GB.
Overclocking – There are great overclocking features in the BIOS. You have control of the front side bus and the clock speed. The default bus speed is 100MHz, but you can get it up to 155MHz, weather or not your system will run stable with bus speed depends on cooling and hardware. I have heard successful overclocking stories with the Duron up to 145MHz bus and running stable!
BIOS - SoftMenu™III Technology to set CPU parameters and voltage settings. It has the wake-on LAN and wake-on ring features.
Controllers - 2 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports support 4 Ultra DMA 33/66/100. It uses the VIA 686B gives 2 ATA100 channels.
Slots – 1 AGP, 6 PCI and 1 ISA. The ISA slot is nice, I’m glad this board does not have an AMR slot because no one uses it, a waste of space. The ISA slot on this board is not a waste of space, because it shares the slot with a PCI, so it can be used for either. You can either use all 6 PCI or 5 PSI and the ISA slot. There are still people using ISA SCSI cards on even ISA modems.
There is one flaw with this board, the AGP slot is located close to the memory slots. If you have a long AGP card, you have to remove it to add or remove memory. This is a hassle if you have extra fans added to you card. There is a fan header near the AGP slot.
Connectors – The ATX power connector is in the best location possible, the top of the board. This helps keep the power cables out of your way and away from the CPU fan. It’s easy to cable tie them to the top of the case. The IDE and floppy connectors are located on the right edge, standard on most boards. This is the best location because you can easily tie to excess cable out of your way and there is better air flow.
The keyboard, mouse, serial and printers ports are color coded on back.
With this new board, who will purchase the more expensive KT7 when this board is just as stable? If you’re building a cheap gaming system, this is the board to get. This is also a good board to upgrade to if you want to keep your old PC100/133 RAM and because it still has an ISA slot.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 80
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jumperless
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Location: Northern California
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