ABIT Introduces KA7-100 “The Best AMD K7 Platform” 

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. May 17^th 2000—Revealing the next version of the award winning KA7, ABIT is announcing the KA7-100. This board is designed to support AMD-K7 Athlon Slot A 200MHz FSB Processors using the VIA VT8371(KX133) /VIA 686A chipset.  It also supports all normal industry standard functions for motherboards such as Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI), AGP 4X and 100/133MHz SDRAM Memory Bus Settings. The KA7-100 uses four 168-pin DIMM sockets supporting PC100/PC133 SDRAM modules up to 2 Gigabytes MAX. (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512MB SDRAM). In addition, ABIT has added a new level of stability and performance with their famous 6 chip Data Buffer Set with ECC support.

ATA/100

Ultra ATA/100, or Ultra DMA/100, is an extension of the current Ultra ATA/33 interface. This new high-speed interface has a 100 Mbytes/sec transfer rate and maximized disk performance under the current PCI local bus environment.

6 Chip Data Buffer

        With systems now at the 133MHz external clock speed, the circuitry design is crucial, especially concerning the SDRAM.  Signal bandwidth and length need to be adjusted accordingly. As one slight mistake could cause an error, a high speed data buffer chipset called the Data Switch was developed to guarantee the proper RAM stability at 100MHz and 133MHz when using 4 DIMMs. 

The chips act as buffers to increase the stability and data integrity when using all 4 DIMM slots. The buffers are recommended highly in order to prevent system crashes when using 8 banks of memory. Since this data buffer is not required, but only strongly recommended, you will not find it on most other motherboards with 4 DIMM slots.

SoftMenu™ III

While you might find some of the features you want in other Athlon boards, only ABIT has Soft Menu™, and now only to be found on the new KA7-100, there is the newly designed SoftMenu™ III for the Athlon platform. The KA7-100’s SoftMenu™ III has some special added features and functions that will allow the maximum performance and enhancement tweaks specifically for Athlon based CPUs, like FSB settings from 100MHz to 183MHz in increments of 1 (84 settings). In addition to SoftMenu™  Technology, the System BIOS features and supports Award Plug and Play BIOS and Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS.  

Multi I/O Functions

The KA7-100 has on board Bus Master IDE Ports offering 2+2 Channels of Bus Master IDE which support up to four Ultra DMA 33/66/100 devices.  Also supported are 6 PCI slots and 1 ISA slot for maximum upgradeability.  While most other boards only have 5 PCI slots, ABIT has added an extra PCI slot, making the KA7-100 the most expandable and upgradeable board in its class. In addition to the normal serial and parallel ports, the KA7-100 has 2 USB ports PLUS an extra header for 2 extra USB channels, built-in Wake on LAN/Wake on Modem header, built-in IrDA TX/RX  header and one Thermal Sensor Cable Included for hardware monitoring.

 ABIT KA7-100 Special Features:

DRAM Clock: Host Clock plus PCI clock (ex. Host Clock 100MHz, DRAM 133MHz)
6 PCI (Including 6 master signals with added IC)
AGP 4X (Up to 1GB/Sec Transfer rate)
USB (EXTRA USB Header for 2 extra USB channels)
4 Fan Headers for Maximum Cooling 

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