X-bit labs

ABIT KV7 Mainboard on VIA KT600 Chipset Review (page 2)

Category: Mainboards

by Grigoriy Gubankov

[ 11/25/2003 | 11:19 PM ]

Specifications and Accessories

The KV7 mainboard is the only product from ABIT featuring the KT600 chipset. It doesn’t have any more or less functional analogs under slightly different names, like it was the case with the MSI KT6 Delta with its four modifications. The lack of modifications is actually an untypical thing for the modern mainboard market.

The ASUS A7V600 also came without any other modifications, but that was the position of the company. ASUS doesn’t like to make several products with similar-sounding names. As for ABIT, they usually roll out the whole family. The only exception is the MAX3 series. The MAX3 mainboards are overloaded with various controllers and technologies and come into this world as truly unique products.

First, let’s look at the snapshot of the mainboard. I placed a standard-sized ASUS A7N8X for the sake of a more illustrative comparison:

As you see, the ABIT KV7 is substantially smaller in dimensions. Maybe ABIT specially targets users with smaller cases where the optical drive may interfere with the memory modules. Anyway, the short size of the mainboard may be good even for the owners of normal system cases. Particularly, they will have more freedom in laying the IDE cables out.

By the way, the KV7 is not the only mainboard from ABIT to have such small dimensions. The VI7 mainboard (for the Pentium 4, on the VIA PT800) is similar-looking; we had a news post about it. Is it a new standard for inexpensive mainboards from ABIT? This looks logical enough, since the smaller dimensions of the PCB mean cost savings. In the current market environment, when every dollar is important, this small economy might come in handy.

The following table lists the official specifications of the ABIT KV7 mainboard:

The specifications are another proof of the mainboard’s “value” nature. There are no FireWire or IDE RAID controllers or Gigabit Ethernet. This is of course no drawback, because the users it is intended for don’t need those functions.

The only quirky point is the use of the VT1616 codec from VIA rather than the popular Realtek ALC650. VIA’s solution should provide higher sound quality. This chip is unlikely to have increased the cost of the mainboard, as VIA Technologies is almost sure to discount its partners who buy the codec together with the chipset. Interestingly, the physical-level network controller on the ABIT KV7 comes from VIA, too. It is the VIA VT6103 chip.