Since the new methodology introduction I haven't tested any motherboard. I had to work for other projects and right now I have the lab full again so we will have plenty of ocasions to test the methodology success :). I received several emails from our readers with a lot of questions and suggestions. I didn't have time to answer to all of them but I really appreciate all the feedback. I promise that all good suggestions will be considered and I'll update the methodology when needed with all the good ideas. But today I will try to apply the testing methodology on a motherboard, to be more precise on Abit KG7-RAID. Further reviews will not carry the label of each step, but today I will identify the steps. If you want to read the general testing procedure go here. If you want to read the motherboards testing procedure go here. Wish me luck :)

Product identification

The motherboard is Abit KG7-RAID revision 1.0. As you may know Abit announced KG7 two months ago but most online magazines don't have it in stock but it's available for preordering. Like most motherboards for Athlon this mobo is targeted to the medium market segment, but being one of the most expensive solutions we had several pretentions from it. Right now there are several strong candidates on the market, one of them being Epox 8K7A+ the AMD761 motherboard reviewed early this month at PC Hardware. There are also several other offers based on VIA like MSI K7T266Pro-R.

KG7 is shipped in the regular Abit box with a drivers CD, one floppy disk with HighPoint drivers, a manual, one IDE and one floppy cable and one USB bracket. Abit ships all motherboards in the same package and conforming to the same standards. The users manual is good quality, it describes the hardware installation in detail and the BIOS settings enough to make an idea about most functions. The RAID BIOS is also described in the manual and in the end there is a section for Windows software: VIA hardware monitor installation and the BIOS upgrade procedure are described there.

Abit motherboards are known for the good layout and KG7 is not an exception. With six PCI, one AGP and four DDR slots KG7 offers very good expansion possibilities. I went on several forums and most users were curious to know if the motherboard accepts more than two sticks of unbuffered DDR memory. As Abit specifications reveal KG7 is unable to have more than four banks populated with unbuffered memory. But we tested this and you will find out soon.

I was quite happy to see that Abit didn't go for onboard sound. Close to the socket there are several large capacitors which may make harder a cooler installation. There is enough space for a large cooler, but the clip operation may be incommoded. There are six large 4700uF on the motherboard but in front of the clip Abit used two little 2000uF capacitors to make the screwdriver operation easier. The socket is close to the edge and may cause problems if you want to install it in a medium case with the power source next to the mobo. The AMD760 chip is active cooled by a heatsink and a fan. The thermal interface is assured by thermal grease. The ATX connector is placed next to the socket in a position which doesn't incommode the CPU cooler airflow. Two fan headers are close to the CPU socket while the third one is located between the two RAID IDE channels. KG7 has two USB slots onboard and a header for connecting the supplied bracket which adds another two ports.

Like all Abit boards that carry the RAID label KG7 uses the HighPoint 370 controller to offer IDE RAID to the masses. If you wan to find more detailed info about this controller including several benchmarks you can check our Abit Hot Rod 100 Pro review. On the board there are no jumpers except for the Clear CMOS one. I would have prefered the RAID IDE channels to be parallel to the board edge, not perpendicular.

The components quality is good for a motherboard targeted to medium market segment. There are manufacturers which included an AGP retention mechanism, but KG7-RAID doesn't have one. The motherboard suffers from DIMM insertion problems. With a GeForce3 in place I was able to insert the DDR memory in the two slots close to the IDE HDD connectors, but to insert memory into the other ones it was necessary to remove the video card.