Part Five: The Retail Package
Of increasing importance to the value
conscious buyer, the bundled software can prove to be a deciding
factor when shopping for your next motherboard. We have seen
packages worthy of only the highest levels of scrutiny here
of late at 3dvelocity from Iwill and Epox. Lets see if Abit
have felt as generous as we investigate what the box of the
KR7a holds...
Included in the retail package
for the KR7a / KR7a RAID: -
1x Abit KR7a / KR7a RAID motherboard
1x PCI USB bracket [Two extra USB ports]
1x Abit KR7a / KR7a RAID user's manual
1x Floppy cable
4x ATA 100 HD cable [2x for the KR7a]
1x CD-ROM [driver & tools]
1x Floppy Disk [High-Point RAID drivers not applicable for
the KR7a]
It is here then we must introduce our first negative feelings
about the KR7a. The bundle is one that I can only describe
as adequate. All the essentials are here yet the package seems
somewhat less generous than the offerings from Epox. For example
included upon the excellently presented CD we find the equally
impressive WinDVD, yet it is but a time limited trial. The
full retail version is limited to Abit's Ti based graphics
card packages. It would have been nice to give customers this
little extra with their motherboards as well. Of course Abit
could very well suggest that time and money has been spent
in other areas to ensure the end user has the best performing
VIA based motherboard available. While the performance is
unquestionably outstanding, many users seek extra products
in with the motherboard.
Part Six: Full Specifications
(Quoted from Abit's
website)
CPU
Support AMD Athlon XP 1500+ ~1900+/AMD Athlon 700MHz~1.4GHz
or future Socket A Processors based on 200/266 MHz(100MHz/133MHz
Double Data Rate)
Support AMD Duron 600MHz ~ 950 MHz or future Socket A Processors
based on 200 MHz
(100MHz Double Data Rate)
Chipset
VIA KT266A / VIA VT8233
Memory
Four 184-pin DIMM sockets support up to 4 GB PC1600/PC2100
DDR SDRAM module
BIOS
SoftMenu™III Technology to set CPU parameters
Functions
Four channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 8 Ultra
DMA 33/66/100/133( RAID 0 /1/0+1).
Miscellaneous
1 AGP slot, 6 PCI slots.
Ultra DMA 100/RAID
High Point HPT372 IDE Controller
Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
Page Five: Testing
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