KT133E?
The KT7E is based on VIA's seemingly nonexistent KT133E chipset. This chipset uses the notorious VIA 686B southbridge, but oddly enough, there's no information on the northbridge on either Abit or VIA's web sites. Furthermore, Abit and VIA have both failed to respond to our requests for information. A motherboard with what appears to an undocumented chipset doesn't exactly inspire confidence. VIA's documented chipsets certainly have their share of problems, especially those using the 686B, so the KT7E has a long way to go to prove itself.

While there remains a lot about the KT133E that we don't know, here's what we do know about the KT7E's specs.

The layout and specs are reminiscent of other Abit favorites, with the notable exclusion of a RAID controller. While I really like to see on-board RAID controllers given the benefits of IDE RAID, I realize most on-board controllers go unused. Let's face it, there are plenty of machines out there lacking even the second hard drive necessary for any RAID configuration.

Grandma doesn't need RAID to surf the Internet. RAID isn't going to boost the frames per second counter in any games, and most people's computer use really doesn't match profiles that reap RAID's benefits.

While Abit has ditched RAID for the KT7E, they've left the rest of their trademark features intact. Among these, and perhaps the most useful, is SoftMenu III. You don't really appreciate the simplicity, power, and flexibility of SoftMenu until you use a board that lacks it. SoftMenu III provides a staggering number of motherboard variables to manipulate, and should satiate even the most seasoned user's tweaking fetish.

It's through SoftMenu that we can first glean a hint of what the KT133E has to offer: a 133MHz (266MHz) front side bus. Is the support for 133MHz on the KT133E official? One would think so given the name, and given the 133MHz option (with correct AGP and PCI multipliers) in the BIOS. However, Abit only lists the board as supporting processors based on a 200MHz bus. We'll explore this one in more detail a little later.

Rounding out the BIOS are the usual suspects. When it comes to VIA chipsets, the KT133E doesn't fall far from the tree. Everything is in there, from memory timings to interleaving to clocking your RAM at HOST+PCI, should you elect to run a 100MHz front side bus.

On paper, the KT7E looks pretty good, despite its mysteriously undocumented chipset.

Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. All tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.

The KT7E system used the following hardware:

Processor: AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz

Motherboard: Abit KT7E (VIA 4n1 4.32 drivers)

Memory: 256MB Micron PC133 CAS3 (single DIMM)

Video: Evil Kyro 32MB

Audio: Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value

Storage: Maxtor 20GB 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• SiSoft Sandra Standard 2001.3.7.50
• ZD Media Business Winstone 2001 1.0.1
• ZD Media Content Creation Winstone 2001 1.0.1
• BapCo Sysmark 2001 (Office Productivity and Internet Content Creation)
• Quake III Arena with Team Arena Mission Pack

The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.