KT266A motherboards succeeded to gain the market due to their maturity. Personally I consider KT266A the most mature VIA chipset for Athlon with the most mature implementation from motherboard manufacturers. The story repeats: KT133 and KT133A, KT266 and KT266A. I don't expect a KT266B, but I bet on a KT333. I think that KT333 is still at several months distance because the DDR 333Mhz modules haven't entered the mass production stage yet. But until we will face powerful 333Mhz memory performance, a KT266A motherboard can deliver a very good performance. The truth is that many manufacturers presented 333Mhz DDR modules and for many KT266 motherboards reaching 166Mhz FSB is not a problem. Apparently we deal with a very flexible platform, but there is only one question which should be asked: how reliable? Intel fans say that AMD + VIA is a killing combination and it doesn't deserve attention. In fact they may be right from several points of view, but they also don't know that both AMD and VIA products improved in the last years. While Intel products followed the same pattern, both AMD and VIA made huge efforts to come up with products needed on and by the market. In the beginning both companies tried to fill Intel gaps, but in the last years they also started to compete on several markets with the giant.

Product identification

What I noticed at a first look was that Abit changed the box look. Nothing spectacular, don't worry. Inside we were able to find a KR7A-RAID version 1.0, two UDMA100 cables, one floppy cable, one USB bracket, one floppy disk with RAID drivers, one CDROM and the users guide. The quality of Abit manuals has increased with every release and we really appreciated the writing style quality because it described almost everything a user must be aware of during and after the board installation. I certainly like the physical organization of Abit boards and KR7A-RAID is one of the best examples. The motherboard features 6 PCI, 1 AGP and 4 DDR memory slots that can handle up to 4Gb of system memory.

I didn't fully like the position of the CPU socket because the space around it may not be the best for an extreme cooler. But there are also positive things about this socket: diode thermal sensor in direct contact with the CPU core, plastic protected motherboard surface near the socket's edge (take a look in the left picture). I found very interesting this feature because many coolers need to be installed with a screwdriver and many users are not very skillful with it. It may happen very easy to touch the motherboard and to damage it, so Abit idea to protect the surface with a plastic layer was very good. The screwdriver must be used in the other part of the socket, but that's another story. It's quite hard to install the cooler in a small or medium case because the socket is very close to the power supply.

The voltage regulator is placed in a good position between the socket and the AGP slot. The ATX connector is also placed in the best position possible, between the socket and the DIMM slots. Unfortunately two CPU fan headers are placed far too close to the ATX connector, making hard the fan header insertion. By the way, there are four fan headers on board, very useful if you want to monitor every fan in the case.
The KT266A chip is cooled by a small heatsink and a fan, the thermal interface being made by thermal grease.
The four DIMM slots increase the motherboard dimensions, but KR7A is not so big to raise installation problems even in moderate sized cases.

Six PCI slots mean memory installation problems with a long AGP card in place. I cannot tell that the position of the RAID IDE connectors is the best, but Abit didn't have many options for their placement. Near the RAID IDE connectors there are three status LED, which are not very useful, because they are mainly the case front LED: power, standby and reset indicators. The motherboard includes the AC2001 chip, but no diagnostic BCD are available. I didn't like the position of the WOL header between the PCI slots because it's quite hard to insert the connector even with the PCI slots free.

Abit KR7A-RAID product picture

On board there are six PCI USB ports: two on mobo rear and four on headers. The position of the USB headers can be described as inspired for airflow optimization, although you won't find very easy to insert the USB connectors into the headers. I said not too easy because there are two capacitors near the USB headers which are placed near the case wall.

There is only one jumper on board which deals with the CMOS reset, an absolute record for the software setup motherboard.