SUMMARY: Abit. When you hear this name you think of a manufacturer that has brought out some great motherboards in the past. But when they introduced the AT7 board with it's Legacy-Free packaging, some folks had second thoughts. Come join Asher "Acid" Moses as he takes a look at the new Abit KX7-333R Motherboard. It takes the KT333 chipset, the newest Highpoint RAID controller, and then adds back in the legacy support that many feel they still need. Can it live up to the Abit tradition? Let's find out!
When we initially reviewed the Abit AT7 Motherboard a few months ago, we were very impressed with its speed, features and overclockability. However, two things stopped it from being a motherboard for everyone. Firstly, its lack of legacy ports will obviously be a problem for users still using legacy devices, and secondly, the board is far from cheap. Realizing this, Abit set out to create a KT333-based motherboard for the mainstream market; keeping the legacy ports and a few of the AT7's features but losing the ultra-high price.
The end result was the KX7-333R. It may be based on the same chipset as the AT7, but it really is quite different in many ways. For example, rather than including firewire, 6-channel audio and 4-channel RAID, this time Abit has kept the legacy ports, scrapped the onboard audio and only included 2-channel RAID. The lack of integrated features has also allowed Abit to include more enthusiast features on the KX7 such as 6 PCI slots, compared to the 3 slots seen on the AT7. The AT7 and MAX was a totally new concept and direction for Abit, while the KX7-333R is a traditional Abit motherboard in every way.
The question on many of your minds will probably be: "Were we as impressed with the KX7-333R as we were with the AT7?" Well, I guess you'll have to read on to find out!
