| Fantastic
performance all around for the Athlon at 750 and
878MHz. The KX133 chipset proves to have much better
bandwidth versus AMD chipset boards we have tested
here in the past. In addition, versus a 750MHz.
CPU on an Intel BX platform, these scores look damn
impressive as well. The KX133 is showing even
better memory bandwidth numbers with an Athlon driving
it versus its VIA Apollo Pro133A cousin.
However, you are probably wondering why the memory
scores are slightly lower in the 878MHz. test.
Remember we told you that we couldn't get the SDRAM
stable with the "Host+PCI" Clock
setting? The scores at 878MHz.are indicative of
a 117MHz. memory clock at CAS 2 versus the "Host+PCI"
setting at 750MHz. (100+33=133MHz.) at CAS2.
Regardless, we were impressed with the CPU and Memory
scores. The drive benchmark score that you see
above, on the other hand, was lack luster. We
didn't even include the 878MHz. drive score since it
was nearly indenticle. We feel this is because
VIA still has some work to do with the UDMA66
Drivers. Hopefully, this will improve over time.
ZD
Winbench
We
then set out to test the KA7 and our poor stressed out
Athlon, in a more comprehensive suite of Business
Application Benchmarks. We took scores at both
750 and 878MHz. here.
Click
image for full view
The CPU
and FPU scores here put KA7 and Athlon 750 roughly on
par with an Apollo board and Coppermine at the same
clock speed. An i820/RAMBUS platform would most
likely outrun the Athlon in business apps but at a
considerable cost disadvantage.
Quake
3 Arena
You got
game? The KA7 sure does! All scores taken
from the KA7 and Athlon @ 878MHz.
Click
image for full view
One
word.... nice. These scores are far and away
better than an i820/Coppermine setup we recently
reviewed. You can't complain about the bang for
your gaming buck with this set up.
The
verdict is in
The Abit
KA7 impressed us, big time. We don't often get a
chance to review Abit products here at HotHardware
(something we hope will change in the future) but the
KA7 is a board that should stand out prominently in
their product offering. The feature set on this
board is second to none in any motherboard platform
today. Stability was decent although perhaps not
as solid as some of the other more straight forward
approaches to Athlon base products. Then again, we
tested a very early release of this board so hopefully
things will improve as time goes on and further BIOS
releases are issued. Abit has an excellent track
record when it comes to BIOS updates as well.
Compatibility, as far as we could tell within our
test-bed, was also good although we don't want to make
any wide sweeping judgments here, since we have only
lived with the KA7 for a few days. We may come
back to this product with an update article. We
have talked about "fun factor" in a few of
our reviews here and it is high with the KA7.
There may be more discovering to do with all of its
interesting features.
We give
the Abit KA7 a HotHardware Heat Meter rating of....
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