Micro-Star K7T Turbo-R Review :: Features

The K7T Turbo-R is the latest motherboard in the MSI arsenal, and it has a lot going for it in the way of onboard features and expandability options. Built on a 30.4cm x 23cm four layer PCB and designed in the standard ATX form factor, this motherboard will fit into any standard ATX case. The K7T Turbo-R is based on the AMD processors and requires a special power supply, as the Athlon motherboards need a minimum of a 300 Watt unit to run properly. So upgrades should be an easy thing to achieve case-wise, but you might have to spend a little bit of your money investing in a new power source.

The K7T Turbo-R features a wide variety of ways to run your hard drive configuration. These options come in the form of the Promise Ultra100 RAID controller that supports IDE RAID modes 0-1 for Striping or Mirroring your hard drives, or another choice comes in the form of your dual onboard ATA100 controllers that can support a total of up to four IDE devices simultaneously in DMA modes 33/66/100, and which is backwards compatible to all lower speed transfer rates. You will want to use the onboard ATA100 controller if you are planning on using just one hard drive or choose to use a non-RAID array setup in your system configuration.

Based on the VIA KT133A chipset, which consists of theVT8363A (North Bridge) and the VT82C686B (South Bridge), the K7T Turbo-R supports up to 1.5 GB of PC133 SDRAM via its three onboard DIMM slots. The VIA KT133A chipset has an adjustable 200/266MHz FSB along with control for your voltage setting, so stable overclocking should be a very achievable goal with this motherboard.

The K7T Turbo-R supports 600MHz through 1.5 GHz AMD Athlon and Duron series CPUs, which have shown the best results in the overclocking test once properly modified using the Pencil Trick, a simple task that can be done by anyone new or old to computers. This and an increase in the FSB and few minor voltage increases should serve up some nice results when done properly in conjunction with this motherboard's features.

When it comes to your multimedia needs, the K7T Turbo-R has incorporated the onboard features of the AC'97 CODEC that supports Direct X , Direct sound, and two channel audio, not to mention the chip is Sound Blaster compatible. There is also a standard game port for older joysticks and game pads along with MIDI devices such as digital keyboards or drum machines. This is a decent sound solution that they have here onboard, and will be good enough for the music enthusiast or light gamer.

The onboard peripherals of the K7T Turbo-R include one floppy port that supports 2 FDD drives, two serial ports, one parallel port, and one infra red connector as well as support for up to four USB ports. Two are on the rear panel and there is a header that occupies a PCI slot for the included cable that provides an additional two rear USB ports. These are the usual suspects here, not much is different from one motherboard to the next as one ATX design is pretty much the same as the next on most motherboards.

For system options, the K7T Turbo-R has an Award BIOS that provides a true "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the installed peripheral devices and expansion cards of the motherboard automatically for ease of use to the system builder, and increases built time efficiently. This is a well-built and finely laid out motherboard, and the Fuzzy Logic feature adds a nice touch to an already feature filled product. What this does is give the user another means of custom setting up the CPU and hardware settings, and it has many built-in fail safes to make overclocking a task that even the computer illiterate should find easy enough to do through its simple and easy to configure interface.

You will receive in the retail package the motherboard, all the needed cables, one motherboard manual, one RAID manual, and a CD containing all the drivers for the board and a few extra programs for monitoring your system. All in all, this is not a bad deal at all being offered by MSI here in the K7T Turbo retail package.