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Motherboard: ABIT KG7-RAID :: Features
First important thing is this motherboard supports Athlon XP CPU's. If you bought this board a long time ago, like the first release on July 2001 the new BIOS has been available about a month. This will allow your board to support the Athlon XP CPU's up to model 1900+.
This Socket A motherboard is using the AMD 761 System Bus Controller (Northbridge) and the VIA VT82C686B Southbridge. As we tested and compared chipsets for CPU's this chipset combination tops most of the chipsets based on performance, but early testing shows KT266A chipsets can surpass this.
This board comes in three flavors, the KG7-Lite with two DDR slots, the KG7 with four DDR Slots, and the KG7 - Raid with four DDR Slots plus RAID option. For memory support if you use unbuffered memory you can add up to 2 GB's of 100-133 MHz DDR SDRAM (PC1600/PC2100 DDR SDRAM). If you choose registered memory you can go up to 4 GB excluding KG7-Lite model which supports 2 GB. We learned that since BIOS version 4J we could even use 4 GB of unbuffered memory. But that is uncertain and they told us the stability depends on the quality of the modules we use.
For overclocking you need to stabilize the system for high frequencies and at the same time you must stabilize the voltage and current. So there are 6 MOSFET transistors for system stability and 6 large 4700uF capacitors for the current and voltage. One of these capacitors is located at the other side of the CPU socket and is not in the photo frame range. To take the heat out of the AMD 761 chip we have a heatsink and fan attached on it.
It has 6 PCI slots as expected, a 4X AGP slot with sideband support (not AGP-Pro), 2 standard IDE connectors + Highpoint 370A powered 2 RAID Sockets. This board offers Raid 0 (Mirroring) Raid 1 (Striping) and if you connect four drives it offers Raid 0+1 (Mirroring and Striping) solutions. As RAID enthusiasts already know Striping increases performance and mirroring is for safety. The board comes with two IDE UDMA 66/100 cables, for RAID motherboards this is standard. There is no CNR (Communication and Network Riser) slot, and somehow I don't feel any problem with its absence! I never saw anybody buying a CNR or AMR card, but for mass manufacturers it is a flexible solution although I have never seen any using these slots. The KG7-RAID includes standard BIOS Antivirus protection, Wake On LAN, Modem Ring On, System Management Bus, Infra Header, and complete health monitoring system. I could not see Suspend to RAM, Suspend to Disk, and especially Keyboard power on features. If your PC is under the table and the switch is hard to reach it's really cool to turn the power on by pressing a combination of keys. This board is lacking of those features. There is one more important feature on the ABIT KG7-RAID that can save your CPU. If you forget to hook up the CPU fan cable, or your CPU fan stops working for some reason, this board will shut itself off for the CPU's safety. To enable this feature you turn on the correct settings in your BIOS. This is a good thing because AMD CPU's are famous for burning themselves in a few seconds without fans, especially the faster ones. As USB becomes more popular everyday and nearly every printer, scanner, and digital camera comes with USB connectivity, we need more and more USB ports available. Because of this four USB ports for motherboards are mandatory. Many motherboards only have 2 USB ports built onto the board and they provide a header for additional USB ports, but sometimes they do not provide the necessary external USB ports. The KG7-RAID does include this add-on. If you have external USB output in front of your case you don't have to use this add-on. But it's useful. Some motherboard manufacturer packages include a 4 Port add-on and this is not bad either.
What I like about ABIT packages are their manuals. They always prepare detailed thick manuals that you can find everything inside. This has been the case since I saw my first ABIT motherboard.
Package Contents
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