ABIT KA7 KX133 Slot-A ATX

AnandTech Motherboard Rating

Performance

The KA7 performed about average in comparison to other KX133 motherboards in its class.

Price

ABIT has always been noticeably cheaper than ASUS as well as the other larger motherboard manufacturers, so it is expected that the KA7 will be priced noticeable lower than the ASUS K7V or the AOpen AK72.

By actually taking advantage of the 686A South Bridge, ABIT helped their price/value rating as well.

Stability

While it's not the most stable KX133 motherboard we've tested, it came extremely close which is very impressive for ABIT. The KA7 is quite possibly one of ABIT's most stable motherboards.

Quality

ABIT has never been known for producing the highest quality products and our standard metric puts ABIT quality at approximately average. In spite of this, the board was still extremely stable during our tests.

Features

The KA7 is undoubtedly the most feature rich Athlon motherboard that we've ever tested. By doing away with the AMR slot not only did ABIT make room for a 6th shared PCI/ISA slot but they also managed to please quite a few enthusiasts that couldn't stand a part of their PCB being occupied by a slot they'd never use.

The SoftMenu III setup of the KA7, although a bit overboard at times offers the greatest overclocking/tweaking potential of any jumperless utility we've seen on an Athlon motherboard. The KA7 is truly a motherboard for tweakers, basically those that like squeezing every last ounce of performance out of their system and enjoy hours of adjustments to get everything working just the way you want them to.

The ability to adjust both the CPU and I/O voltage settings, not to mention to CPU Drive/Pull Up strength settings can all come in handy when overclocking to the extreme.

Layout

The KA7's layout is better than that of the ASUS K7V or the AOpen AK72, but it is still pretty large. The EPoX 7KXA and Tyan Trinity K7 are still much more manageable designs.

Availability

Finding ABIT motherboards isn't a difficult task at all, most people have heard of them and when you have a large demand for a particular brand, you'll always find vendors that stock them.

We have already heard reports of users in Europe getting their hands on KA7 boards, so these things will definitely be available on a global level as well as on a local/regional level.

Documentation & Software Bundle

ABIT has always had strong written documentation bundled with their motherboards and the KA7 is no exception.