Review: Abit KG7-RAID - Part 2

Dave Cook gets practical in his second look at Abit's new motherboard, hauling an ageing 233MHz Pentium II into the 21st Century.

Product	Abit KG7-RAID
Company	Abit
Web	www.abit.com.tw
Price	Around £170 inc. VAT
We like
We don't like
Rating	10/10
Requirements

Cocooned in its packaging, Abit's KG7-RAID motherboard looked rather impressive - our next step was to see if it performed equally as well. A quick inspection of the 233MHz Pentium II computer (ATX powered) revealed a basically sound machine. Luckily, a decent HighPoint IDE RAID system was already present, so connecting the four existing drives to the RAID setup on the KG7 would be easy.

That aside, because a user-friendly RAID Administrator utility is supplied with the new board, anyone new to setting up a RAID system should also have little trouble. Users that don't require RAID are also catered for, with the inclusion of two regular IDE channels (specification up to Ultra DMA 100) that can accommodate up to four devices. This means that the motherboard can take up eight devices in total.

Bring In The New

Since the KG7 motherboard supports a completely different processor to the old one, the most fundamental item to replace was the CPU. In our case we chose an AMD 1.2GHz (266-FSB) Athlon/Duron Socket A processor, along with a new CPU heatsink and fan.

The next item that would require updating was the memory. Our old motherboard was fitted with 64MB of 168-pin SDRAM, but the KG7 requires the latest 184-pin DDR SDRAM. This is the newest memory standard. It provides maximum translation bandwidth, improving overall system performance, especially multimedia applications.

The KG7 can take up to four DIMMs of registered DDR SDRAM, but only two DIMMs of unbuffered DDR SDRAM. So we plumped for a couple of sticks of 184-pin 256MB PC2100 (CL2.5) registered DDR SDRAM, which left two slots spare for future expansion.

Not including the price of the motherboard, the whole caboodle, came to a modest £180. Best of all, though, having placed the order via Dabs' Web site (www.dabs.com), the items arrived safely the very next day - so well done Dabs!

Installation

We began by disconnecting the computer from its power supply. The case was removed, and the computer was flipped on its side so that all cables attached to the board could be clearly labelled (you can skip this if you're reasonably competent) and then disconnected.

The new board was placed on a flat surface. Installing the CPU to the board proved a breeze thanks to the ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket, and the heatsink and fan were fitted immediately thereafter. The two DDR SDRAM modules were fitted next, and the board was then introduced and secured to the ATX-powered case via five small screws.

We re-attached all the PCI cards and cables with no problem. Indeed, access to the board was excellent. The only disappointment was that the extra USB port header was positioned at the bottom of board. Since the supplied USB cable was short, there was no option but to fit the two USB connectors to a back plate reserved for a PCI card. This effectively decommissioned one of the board's six PCI slots.

With everything re-attached, we replaced the case, booted the machine and entered the powerful SoftMenu III to inform the BIOS of the speed of the processor. This took all of ten seconds. The machine was rebooted and, with the launch of Windows 98 SE, we began to configure the new settings. Some settings were configured automatically, while others required the Windows 98 SE CD.

The supplied Via service pack and drivers were also installed at this time. After half a dozen or so reboots, the machine was running as sweet as you like - and boy, was it fast! The upgrade had also been fairly quick; from start to finish, the whole process had taken under 90 minutes.

Verdict

Can you live without the Intel inside logo? If the answer is yes, and you like the benefits of DDR SDRAM and the increased performance (stripping) and data security (mirroring) features of RAID 0+1, then Abit's KG7-RAID motherboard is extremely hard to beat.

Read part one of this two-parter

 

Dave Cook