The BIOS
The key to unlocking the performance of your system lies in the BIOS. Abit's SoftMenu BIOSes have been among the best, and the KR7A-RAID exemplifies what it's all about.


The KR7A-RAID's SoftMenu III. What more could you ask for?

With multiplier adjustments, front side bus options up to 200MHz (and now 250MHz with the latest BIOS), and voltage manipulation for Vcore, I/O, and even your memory, the KR7A-RAID's BIOS is stacked.


Push your DDR memory to its limits

The KR7A-RAID's SoftMenu III BIOS is also rife with memory tweaking options that will tax even the most exclusive high-performance memory available. The BIOS detected our Crucial DDR at its CAS 2.5 rating, but the KR7A-RAID was quite happy running at CAS 2 without any stability problems.

The KR7A-RAID would allow me to set the core voltage on my Duron 1.2GHz test processor no higher than 1.85V. I suppose one could ask for voltage options more than a tenth of a volt above the default, but that's going to require some hearty cooling to avoid frying a CPU. Still, the KR7A-RAID offers core voltage increases in 0.025V increments, which is fine-grain control as good as anything else we've tested.

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

The KR7A-RAID takes on Gigabyte's KT266-based GA-7VTX today. It's not the most fair comparison, pitting the KT266A against the older KT266, but it will illustrate the performance benefits of the KT266A chipset.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

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. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the high detail image quality settings, with the exception that the resolution was set to 640x480 in 32-bit color.

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.