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Taiwanese manufacturer ABIT is enjoying a strong standing in the DIY community. Since the days of the first jumper-less ABIT boards featuring ABIT propriety "Soft Menu" many regard ABIT mainboards as the overclocker's choice. However, there was some disappointment when it took ABIT almost 1 year to come with their first DDR socket A solution, the KG7. ABIT came late, but strong because the KG7 is regarded as one of the best AMD 760 chipset based mainboards to date. But time is moving fast, and the DDR speed-crown is now firmly resting on the head of the revised VIA Apollo KT266"A" chipset. The "specialty" of the KT266 chipset is V-Link hub architecture providing for a speedy 266MB/sec bandwidth between the chipset's North and the South Bridge. The details of this chipset are explained here. The KT266"A" predecessor chipset, the KT266, did not make good on this promising design and disappointed in terms of performance. ABIT wisely skipped this chipset and has just released their KT266"A" based KR7A. As AMD seems to dry out or stop altogether very soon the single processor AMD 760 chipset production, the KR7 will be a ABIT mainstay in the socket A DDR market for some time to come. Today, we're taking a look at the RAID version of this motherboard, called the KR7A-RAID.

click to enlarge

Package, design and installation
The KR7A comes in a new designed all red ABIT box containing the board, several cables for floppy and HDD, an additional USB bracket, the manual, and the installation CD. The CD carries the usual drivers and a Windbond monitoring utility (very handy). It also includes the OEM version of Norton AntiVirus 2002 with only 30 days virus definition update instead of the 1-year free update in the retail version.

The KR7A follows basically the standard layout for boards with a RAID controller positioning the 2 additional IDE RAID connectors at the lower right part of the PCB. The KR7A components and the finish give a first glance feeling of quality and careful production.The PCB comes in the usual ABIT light-brownish PCB. We find the MSI red and the Gigabyte blue more eye pleasing.

Here are the points we find worthy to mention:

• The KR7A is without jumpers and dipswitches, with the exception of the usual CMOS jumper.
• The CPU is fed by a 3-way power supply with 6 MOSFETS for increased system stability and reduced heat.
• The ATX connector is well located, the cable is not inferring with the airflow from the CPU HSF.
• The area around the CPU socket gives enough space to accommodate the new type of 80 mm HSF like the Swiftech MC462 and the Alpha PAL8045.
• The floppy connector is located below the 2 RAID IDE connectors. That's unusual, but not inconvenient.
• In addition to the usual, PCB power-on LED indicator, the KR7 has 2 additional LED's on the PCB: one indicating "stand-by" 5VSB voltage and the other one flashing when the reset bottom is pushed. That helps to verify their functionality, but is no replacement for the LED POST debugger EPoX boards are sporting or the Asus rear and front panels.
• Also remarkable is that 2 of the most useless motherboards functions, the AMR riser slot and AC97 on-board sound are not present.
• The KR7A CPU temperature sensor is touching the bottom of the CPU. Such a sensor gives a more accurate reading than the usual in-socket sensor. The CPU load temperature reading with such a bottom-touch sensor is up to 10 C higher than with an in-socket sensor.

click images to enlarge

raised thermal diode	6 mosfets
diagnostic LED's	under-lug protection

It's always a good sign, when a board is "self-explanatory". At least an experienced DIY person should be able to install and run the board without a manual. This is the case with the KR7A. The board is jumper-less. Anybody familiar with the popular AWARD type BIOS, will find it easy to handle the KR7A BIOS. For those who have to resort to the manual: It's well written in correct English, which does not hold true for many other manuals we have seen recently. With 104 pages the KR7 has a very detailed manual. It's one of the very few that does not only list what the boards offers, but also explains what it is for, advises for optimized setting and points at potential conflicts/problems. We recommend printing out the KR7A manual form the installation CD in color, which makes it much easier to work with. Anybody who wants to study the manual before buying the board can get it here.

Features
The most important KR7A-RAID features are this:

These features make the KR7A currently the best-equipped KT266A board. The KR7A lacks adjustable AGP voltage or onboard support for USB 2.0. If you wanted USB 2.0 connectivity you would have to pay extra for a separate card - but in reality I don't think many people need this yet. The only feature we are indeed missing with the KR7A is a dual BIOS. A single BIOS system like the KR7A is easily blocked after the FSB frequency or the CPU ratio has been set too high. In that case the CMOS has to be cleared to regain posting capability. In case of a dual BIOS system, the fall-back BIOS kicks in. Even more important is the second (fall-back) BIOS if the first BIOS has been corrupted or damaged. This happened just recently with one of the boards in this test.

A complete list of KR7A features can be found here.

The HPT 372 RAID controller
The KR7A-RAID is featuring the brand-new 2-channel HP 372 ATA 133 on-board RAID controller. The implementation of this controller explains possibly why it took ABIT a little longer to come with the KT7A. No other KT266A board is yet featuring ATA 133. The reason is simple: the current VIA KT266A Southbridge does not support ATA 133. By implementing the HPT ATA 133 RAID controller ABIT has managed to bring this feature in through the back-door, because the 2 IDE channels the RAID controller are also usable for regular, non-RAID operations with up to 4 HDD in master + slave settings. We think it's nice to have this feature and sooner or later most people will move to ATA 133 as they moved from ATA 66 to ATA 100. Details about the new HP 372 RAID controller can be found here.

An onboard RAID controller is not in particular our first choice. Due to various reasons we prefer stand-alone PCI controllers. However, we have to admit that the KR7A High Point 372 RAID controller has several good points going for it:

• First of all: the HPT 372 controller is ATA 133 capable, means the maximum transfer speed is 133MB/sec, the competition is still using ATA 100 RAID controllers.
• The KR7A's HPT 372 RAID controller comes with the following RAID functions: RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirror), and RAID 0+1 (striping and mirror). The widely used Promise Fasttrak 100 LITE onboard RAID controller offers only RAID 0 or RAID 1, but not the combined mode.
• The HPT372 RAID controller let you run RAID 0 with 4 ATA 133 HDD. This provides the best RAID 0 performance, around 10% better data transfer than the already fast RAID 0 with 2 HDD. RAID 0 with 4 HDD is also not possible with the on-board LITE RAID controller from Promise, which is used by Asus and Gigabyte.
• The HPT372 let you change the stripe size (RAID 0) to optimize performance in dependency from the task. Gaming or working with MS Office applications, for example, need a smaller stripe size than A/V editing. Changing the stripe size is also not possible with the Promise Lite controller.

Everybody seriously interested in RAID should have a very close look at the KR7A on-board RAID solution from Highpoint. It outclasses other boards with the Promise Fasttrak 100 Lite controller or the older HPT onboard version.

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