3DVelocity would like to thank Abit and especially Scott Thirwell for their help and courtesy in providing this motherboard for review.

 

Take just about any motherboard on the market today, pack it in a box and put the Abit name and logo on the front and you can be sure everybody will want it. This kind of loyal following doesn't just come from clever marketing and hype, it comes from generation upon generation of high performing and innovative products that always seem to take the best of what's on offer then add to it. Abit motherboards are amongst the most desirable on the market, but in a fickle world they also know that a reputation like theirs can't just be taken for granted and that every new product needs to exhibit that Abit magic that will keep them in the hearts and minds of the true enthusiast.

Our first KG7R arrived as nothing more than a rather large paper weight, the obvious victim of carriers who had treated it with the care and respect you'd expect from a herd of wild Buffalo. With worldwide interest so high evaluation samples were rarer than rocking horse manure, yet all credit to Scott Thirwell, he managed to source a replacement for us and get it over. It may have taken a month, but with sample boards flying out of Abit's doors faster than rounds from a Gattling gun, we have to say a huge thank you to Abit for hooking us up with a replacement.

The KG7R is a very appealing board on paper, with a range of features that lift it above the competition. Based on AMD's 761 North Bridge and with the popular choice of VIA's 686B South Bridge, Abit have taken this solidly performing partnership and combined it with an impressive board design and a bios that allows tweaking of just about everything there is to tweak. I haven't tried yet, but I'm fairly certain that if you get just the right combination of settings, you can actually get this board to wake you up in a morning and make your breakfast.

Let's get the specs out of the way first :

CPU
Support AMD Athlon/Duron 700MHz ~ 1.33GHz or future Socket A Processors based on 200/266 MHz(100MHz/133MHz Double Data Rate)

Chipset
AMD761/VIA 686B

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( RAID 0 /1/0+1).

Miscellaneous
1 AGP slot, 6 PCI slots.
Ultra DMA 100/RAID
High Point HTP370 IDE Controller

	KG7 / KG7-RAID
North Bridge Chipset	AMD 761
South Bridge Chipset	VT82C686B
CPU Cartridge	Socket-A
BIOS	2Mb
Memory DIMM	4
SoftMenu	III
Support VCM
Support ECC	Yes
Support DDR	Yes
Support ATA/66	Yes
Support ATA/100	Yes
Support RAID	Yes
AGP 2X	Yes
AGP 4X	Yes
FAST-WRITE	Yes
H/W Monitoring	VT82C686B
SMbus	Yes
AMR/AGP/PCI/ISA	0/1/6/0
F.F	ATX

Page 2 - A Closer Look