For their rookie effort, ABIT has gone no-holds-barred in order to position themselves as the manufacturer of choice for the Athlon community. As we saw in our KA7 preview, the shipping product shows evidence of a planned ATA/100 controller as well as the additional IDE connections, allowing up to 8 devices.

In addition to the planned ATA/100 implementation, ABIT has also integrated an additional RAM slot, raising the potential maximum to 2GB. While we wouldn't prophesize that the 1.5GB limit of most other boards would be an issue, the KA7's fourth slot provides a higher level of expandability than we've seen on competing boards. For the sake of enhanced stability, ABIT has also incorporated six TI CBT16292 multiplexing switches that balance extremely high memory loads with the added PC133 compatibility. Although we were unable to discern a stability difference with these memory buffers in place, such a feature may become crucial for the power user pushing the upper limits of the KA7's 2GB memory ceiling.

At 9" x 12", the KA7 isn't at all a compact motherboard. Nevertheless, it is narrower than ASUS' competing K7V, even with the extra DIMM slot and the silk-screened ATA/100 controller. While the KA7 was a snug fit in our mid-tower ATX cases, enough room remained so that we could tuck the IDE cable back behind the hard drive carriage for a cleaner, more professional finish.

ABIT has adeptly targeted the KA7 at the higher echelon of Athlon owners. With a 1 AGP / 6 PCI / 1 ISA board layout, the seldom-used AMR slot has been completely forgone in favor of PCI connectivity. Since most enthusiasts would rather use their preferred sound card instead of a taxing audio codec, ABIT didn't bother to include an on-board audio solution either. While this provides performance-conscious users with more freedom, OEMs may look down on this decision as a lacking feature.

Component layout is an extremely important convenience consideration with motherboards that offer an ever-increasing level of connectivity. ABIT knows that capacitor placement, fan header location, and power supply connections around the Slot-A interface often hamper those with oversized heatsinks. Needless to say, there is plenty of room on the board, with the ATX power connector located conveniently at the top of the board and the extra DIMM slot to justify an oversized heatsink that would otherwise block the first slot.