Quote from our last review:-
"The KA7 integrates the latest and greatest VIA Apollo KX133 chipset combination currently available VT8371 North Bridge and VT82C686A South Bridge Controllers. The chipset brings AGP4X, PC133, a 200Mhz Front Side Bus, and ATA-66 technologies to the AMD-Athlon processor platform. Does Abit stop there? oh no, not Abit they have gone even further and made an allowance for the up and coming ATA-100 chipset from Highpoint and 2 x extra IDE connectors to allow a massive 8 IDE device connectivity at a later date. It is important to understand the Highpoint ATA-100 chipset will not be available for a while and in any case, no hard disk drives for this technology have yet been announced, so it is going to be a while before we see ATA-100."

Well it's here. The -100 in Abit's model no. signifies the arrival of the integrated Ultra ATA/100 controller, embedded in close proximity to the IDE connectors. Yet again Abit is first off the blocks with new technology, based on an already successful KA7 motherboard. The KA7's last visit in our labs earned it our double award, the first ever to be awarded to any manufacturer at that time. Armed with the IBM DTLA 307030 Ultra ATA/100 hard disk, and a combination of previous One2Surf award winning products we put the Abit KA7-100 through its paces.

How we carried out our test
Our objective was to test the performance, implementation, stability, ease of use and most of all compatibility of the newly launched embedded controller from Highpoint Technology, on the KA7-100 Motherboard. To achieve our objective, we used 3DMARK 2000, and to compare performance ratios of the Ultra ATA/100 and Ultra ATA/66 we utilised the Business and High-End Disk marks in Winbench 99.

CPU:	Athlon 750Mhz CPU - Slot A
Motherboard:	Abit KA7-100 Motherboard
Memory:	128Mb SDRAM Samsung PC133 - 6ns CAS Latency 2
HDD:	IBM DTLA 307030 - 30.0GB UDMA/100 7200rpm
FDD:	3.5" 1.44Mb - Panasonic
CD ROM:	48 x Creative
Video Card:	ELSA Gladiac GeForce2GTS 32Mb DDR
Video Driver:	4.12.01.0202-0040 using Direct X ver 7.0a

Ultra DMA/ATA 100
Ultra ATA/100 is the next logical step in the Ultra ATA protocol. Providing a 100MB/s burst transfer rate for hard disk drives. This opposed to ATA/66 and ATA/33, which gave us 66Mb/s and 33MB/s respectively. The Abit KA7-100 Motherboard uses the Highpoint HPT370 embedded controller on its motherboard to implement this standard. The HPT370 is no ordinary controller, with RAID 0,1 and 0+1 support it allows users to connect multiple hard disk drives for data mirroring and striping applications for extra performance and data-redundancy concerns. Not so long ago, this was exclusively the domain of SCSI based technology. Currently a RAID IDE controller will set you back around £145.00 - not bad to get it as standard on the motherboard. The HPT370 is fully backward compatible with all IDE/ATAPI devices. Add to this Hot Swapping capabilities and the ability to remove IDE/ATAPI devices from the system on the fly and you suddenly have a system with huge potential.

The installation of Windows 98 SE went without any hitches; and a distinct feeling of joy as the time it took to load Windows 98 SE was the shortest we have recorded in our labs. The first procedure was to install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers, which readers of One2Surf may recall we had to perform in the course of testing the ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS as this patch is recommended for all VIA KX-133 Chipset based motherboards. Another vital driver to download is the AGP Driver 4.03,which improves chipset performance and compatibility with AGP video cards. The order of installation was to implement the VIA 4-in-1 driver first, which included the following options; IDE Busmaster 2.1.47 (de-select), VIA AGP Driver 4.02 (de-select), IRQ Routing Driver 1.3a (select) and VIA INF Driver 1.02 (select), followed by the installation of the AGP Driver 4.03. Once this was accomplished without any problems, we proceeded to install the HPT370 for Windows 98 SE from the supplied Abit CD ROM, if you use Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4 then installation should be carried out from the floppy disks supplied by Abit. The remainder of the drivers were installed without any problems.

The first thing you notice about the KA7-100 is the inclusion of the HPT370 embedded controller (see figure 1), besides this no other changes have been made, a sensible move on Abit's part as the KA7 motherboard is proving to be a as popular as the BX chipset motherboards from Abit's point of view and most certainly our's judging by the number of emails we have had from customers who have purchased the KA7 following our review in April 2000.

Our first test result was to run 3DMark 2000, this was run at a resolution of 1024 x 768 - 16-bit, which produced a result of 5,794 (see figure 3) marks and at a resolution of 800 x 600 - 16-bit a result of 6,347 (see figure 2) marks, both results are a significant increase to the one we had in the previous ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS review we featured recently and top's our best ever to date. The combination is the same except for the inclusion of the Ultra ATA/100 controller and the IBM hard drive. Well done Abit and Gladiac for manufacturing such fine specimens, the combination is awesome. For our disk benchmark we used an old IBM 30Gb hard drive with Ultra ATA/66, 7200rpm for the ATA/66 test and the IBM DTLA 307030 ATA/100 7200rpm hard drive for the ATA/100 test. Under Winbench 99 the Business Disk WinMark was 7110 and 8540 (see figure 4) respectively while, the High-End disk WinMark 99 was 19,500 and 23,500, the performance ratio was greater than we were expecting. A clear indication the power ATA/100 is going to wield over the old ATA/66 standard. This is a welcome sign especially as we are nearing the stage of new operating systems (Windows Me), which have added features of Digital Video and Sound embedded within, and we shall require all the help we can get from our I/O sub systems to eliminate any bottlenecks. The Ultra ATA/100 standard is welcomed and is the one to embrace for Desktop solutions.

The IT industry has to be unique, in as much as changes occur at such short intervals, and as latest government studies for industries show, we are the hardest working of the lot! is it any surprise? This brings us to the Abit KA-100 scenario, the motherboard is going to be outdated once the new AMD Socket-A Thunderbird is readily available, and requires a new chipset either from VIA (KT-133), or AMD (AMD 750). However, Abit is a company with attitude and vision, and as such we are sure Abit will find a way to ensure the KA7-100 works with the slot A Thunderbird (possibly Slocket?), and you will not go wrong if you wish to utilise the AMD Thunderbird Slot-A solution. We will be publishing a full AMD CPU report and will be available by the time you read this, so be sure to read the report as a reference guide.

All in all, the Abit KA7-100 lives up to it's promise, the company had confirmed with us previously that controller would be available soon as an embedded solution, and so, it was. Our opinion of the motherboard has not changed from our last review, it is still head and shoulder's above the rest in performance, stability, compatibility and now with the inclusion of the ATA/100 controller, in terns of value for money it's unbeateable. The Abit KA7-100 steals the show with our Excellence and Performance award. Well done ABIT.

NOTE: One2surf will be publishing an AMD based Motherboard Group test at the end of July.

	Congratulations to Abit for winning our One2surf Excellence and Performance Awards!!

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