Good AMD platform board with layout issues...
Written: Mar 17 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great chipset with wide range of supported CPU's and memory at a good price
Cons: Questionable layout, no fixed AGP/PCI ratio selection
The Bottom Line: This is a pretty good board for AMD platform; Better layout and OC options would make it better!
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| ivplay's Full Review: Abit KD7A Motherboard |
A friend of mine from work recently had a bad experience with his computer where the system would simply shut down during normal operation. He bought it online and the warranty had just run out, so he brought it to me to see what I could find. I first looked at the PSU, but it was a good 350W brand name, so I began swapping out parts to rule out what the problem might be. Turns out that the motherboard was the problem! I explained this to him and he asked me to go ahead and swap it out for him.
Why the KD7A?
The computer in question had a low range Gigabyte motherboard(fried!) with a GeForce 4 MX 440 graphics card, an AMD Athlon 1700+, 512MB of Kingston Value RAM on a single stick and a Samsung 60GB HD. Cory didn’t so much care to upgrade the motherboard with a significant amount of money, but he had heard me talking about overclocking in the past and wanted to safely bleed as much out of his Athlon as he could. Since the computer had a standalone video card that fit in an AGP slot, we didn’t need to worry about onboard video. The processor and the memory were rated for speeds of 266MHz FSB, so we didn’t need to go any higher, but if I could I would like to give him options to expand. He didn’t have an immediate need for Ethernet, but his wife was talking about getting broadband internet in the future, so an Ethernet port would be nice. Cory and his wife didn't even know what SATA and Firewire meant, let alone RAID, so I was not too worried about getting them the top of the line with all the widgets.
My past experience led me to the ABIT site, as I have had good luck with the boards I have purchased through them in the past. I was drawn to the KD7A, as it offered all that I mentioned above and was listed on Newegg.com for a good price of $59. First, lets get the specifications out of the way:
Specifications of the KD7A
Specifications:
Supported CPU: AMD Barton/Athlon XP/Athlon /Duron Processors
Chipset: VIA KT400A and VT8235CE
FSB: 333/266/200MHz
RAM: 3x DIMM support Single Channel 200/266MHz DDR: Max 3 GB; supports 2 DIMMs of DDR 333/400: Max 2 GB
IDE: 2x UltraDMA 33/66/100/133 connectors for up to 4 devices
Slots: 1x 8X/4X AGP slot, 5 PCI slots
Ports: 2xPS2,1xLPT,1xCOM,1xLAN,SPDIF In/Out,6x USB 2.0 with four on rear, Audio Ports
Onboard Audio: 6-Channel AC97 Codec, 24bit S/P DIF OUT
Onboard LAN: 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet with Wake On LAN
Form Factor: ATX
Purchase
As I said, I found this at Newegg.com for $59 and that included free FedEx super saver shipping. I did some checking around on Newegg for a motherboard by MSI, ASUS, and SOYO that would match the performance at the price and didn’t find it. I then searched on Pricewatch and a few other comparison sites and found that Newegg again was the best value. I bought it.
Out of the box
Upon arrival I found the box to contain the motherboard, IDE cable, floppy cable, driver disk, manual and the obligatory I/O shield that fits in your case. The motherboard is obviously in a static proof bag, and the remainder is underneath a cardboard tray below the motherboard. Also along for the ride is an abundance of screws, studs, and cable ties to assist you in installing your motherboard. You will not be left short of screws to install this board.
If this is the first board you have bought from a top of the line manufacturer, you will be surprised to learn that the included documentation is well written in English. The manual is easy to follow through the installation and setup, and overall took me less than 1 hour from start to finish. That included taking apart the system to eject the fried motherboard and then reassembling the system with the new board!
Installation
I of course disconnected all of the cables, power connectors and power supply, and then removed the cards in the AGP and PCI card slots as well as the memory module. I then took out the processor and Heat Sink Fan (HSF). I find it is easier to do this with the motherboard still installed, as there is some resistance to the force needed to get the HSF unsecured. It is all done with a flat screwdriver, so it is pretty simple. Next I pulled the old motherboard and swapped it out with the KD7A, which lined up with all of the studs as it is also an ATX form factor. I reinstalled the cards, memory and processor, connected the cables and power supply and was ready to start it up.
Layout
That all made it sound easy, right? Well, in all truthfulness, this process was slowed down somewhat by the poor layout of this board. For starters, the Floppy Drive connector is located at the very bottom of the board, below the level of the lowest PCI slot. It is positioned about in the center of the board, as well. This means that you have to stretch the FDD cable through the IDE cables as well as quite a distance to connect it to the Floppy. After owning the IS7-E myself, I was very surprised that they chose such a poor position for this connector! The IDE connectors are poorly positioned as well. IDE 1, which you will connect to your hard drives which are generally in the bottom of your case, is on top of IDE 2. This in itself does not cause a major problem. However, that means that IDE 2 is on the bottom, and has to reach to the top of your case to hit the optical drives. It would have been better placement to switch the two IDE connectors so that the Primary slot is on bottom and the Secondary is on top! On the positive side, this board uses the 90 degree IDE connectors similar to the IS7-E. I really like these, as it eliminates the extra bend in your cables that you get with the traditional IDE connectors.
The next problem I ran into was that Cory’s computer had Front Panel Audio connectors that they use as opposed to the rear panel(or I should say they did). This means that a cable needs to be run from the front to the pin connectors on the board. The cable that came with Cory’s computer was not long enough to reach to the far back of the case, which is where ABIT decided to place these connectors! To further complicate this, it is right in between the cards that you may populate in PCI slots 1 and 2, so it is a maze to get it connected. I didn’t really have to worry about it, as the supplied cable was not long enough to reach! Cory and his wife now use the rear panel audio ports…
The final problem I had is similar to the front panel I/O. Cory has a DVD/CD-RW in his computer and plays DVD's directly from the player. This means that I have to get the audio from the player to the board using a cable. The connector for this is just below the front panel I/O card, at the far rear of the board between PCI slots 2 and 3. I had to actually buy a longer audio cable to make this work, as this was a non-negotiable item for Cory. Better placement of these connectors would make this a better layout and install!
Setup
I booted the computer and it automatically POSTed, but it showed the processor as being a 1.1GHz as opposed to the 1.47 that it rightly is. (The actual speed of the 1700+ is 1470MHz, not 1700) I immediately hit delete to enter the BIOS and change the default system clock speed from 100 to 133MHz, which then multiplied by the multiplier for this processor of 11 gives us the 1470MHz, or 1.47GHz that this processor was designed to run!
Softmenu BIOS
The proprietary Softmenu overclocking tool is part of the BIOS that ships with this motherboard. It allows you to set the FSB frequency, processor multiplier(if applicable), the memory multiplier or ratio, the AGP/PCI multiplier and the power supply to the components. One thing I didn’t like about this particular board was that the AGP/PCI multiplier could not be fixed. This means that as you raise the FSB, you are also raising the speed at which the AGP and PCI cards are communicating, and that will turn into a bottleneck faster than anything!
The BIOS also offers what is called FanEQ which is proprietary to ABIT. This is a system to quiet down your PC. If you go into the BIOS and enable it, the board will monitor the Northbridge chipset and the CPU temperature and raise the speed of the fans to cool them off. What this does for you is make your computer case quieter when running normal applications, but as soon as you put the CPU under load it will ramp up the fans to dissipate the heat! It works rather well in my experience.
Another nice function of this board is called Thermal Guard. The hardware system monitors the temperature of the CPU, and if it raises above a threshold value defined in the BIOS, it will shut down the computer. This is protection against cooling fan failure or being too aggressive in your OC’ing. I have personally never seen it work, but I trust that it would do as it says.
Overclocking
One thing I did like about this board was that it had several preset configurations. You could choose 1700+ settings, which is what this processor was, or you could choose 1800+, 1900+, etc. This is nice for someone new to overclocking that does not know too much about it. With the default core voltage at 1.7, I didn’t have much hope of overclocking far as the heat generation would go up quickly with only the stock heat sink fan assembly. The processor had a locked multiplier, and Cory did not want to unlock it even though I had told him that it was generally safe, so we had only the front side bus for OC’ing.
As I said earlier, this particular processor runs at a FSB of 133 multiplied by 11 to arrive at 1463MHz, or 1.47GHz. I was able to get the processor up the 1.6GHz with this motherboard and stock cooling, which is the equivalent of the 1900+. Not too shabby, but I would suspect that if you could fix the AGP/PCI ratio and put in some better memory we could have done better. The temperature of the processor was not heating up and the voltage was only raised to 1.75, so there was still room to go, I believe!
Overall
I set out to buy Cory a Motherboard that he could be pleased with today and grow with tomorrow. I believe that with a few minor tweaks we could get this processor hopping even higher for him, but he is happy. If Cory decides to upgrade later, he is set with a board that will support the Barton core and higher RAM speeds. The board filled his need and did so cheaply with room for expansion later.
This board gives you USB 2.0, AGP 4x and 8X support, and DDR400 memory support, although this would be somewhat cheated in performance by the FSB. The layout leaves quite a few things to be desired, and the overclocking has a few issues such as non-fixed AGP/PCI ratio. If you need Serial ATA or Firewire, this board will not supply it. If you want to run an Athlon 64 this board will not support it, but for most any other AMD system this board can handle it.
I hope you enjoyed my review, and I would appreciate any feedback in the forms of comments or ratings. Thanks!
Other ABIT boards I have owned:
Abit IS7-E motherboard
Abit NF7-M motherboard
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 59
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