ABIT was late entering into the Athlon market, likely for the same reason as ASUS. With their novice entry, ABIT impressed us with unprecedented stability, performance, and constant BIOS upgrades that added feature after feature to the already intricate CMOS. OK, so maybe we got tired of flashing the BIOS, but we have to admit that cache dividers and SDRAM interleaving really made these updates worth the time.

By no means is the KT7-RAID a small board, however, it does manage to squeeze into those mid-tower cases a little easier than ASUS' A7V by about half an inch. Unlike ASUS' flagship though, ABIT opts for the conservative 1xAGP/6xPCI/1xISA configuration, a decision we see as favorable. Since it is unlikely that the KT7-RAID will end up in any OEM-built systems, there really is not a need for the additional AMR connector and anyone who still uses ISA will just sacrifice the sixth PCI slot.

Fortunately, ABIT has historically been very attentive to board layout. The ATX power connector is aptly located at the upper right hand corner of the board and the IDE connectors are all placed in a standard "stacked" configuration. Several 2200uF electrolytic capacitors located uncomfortably close to the Socket 462 interface make installing a heatsink somewhat of a hassle, but other than that the KT7 is easy to work with.