Abit KT7 - ATA/100 supported?

[Zincq]

I thought I had this all figured out, but after a trip to the computer store, I became confused. The dealer told me the Abit KT7 does not support ATA/100. Now what exactly does that mean? Does it have soemthing to do with the hard drive? Throughout the Abit manual, it says it supports ATA/100, but I need some clarification from some pros. Could you guys give me a little pointer here? Thanks.

Zincq-

 

[LXi]

Abit KT7
686A south bridge that supports ATA66 only.

Abit KT7-RAID
686A south bridge supporting ATA66, in addition to that, it has the HiPoint ATA100/RAID controller, so there is your ATA100 support.

 

[Dexion]

Abit KT7 - ATA66 only.
Abit KT7 RAID - ATA100 Raid support.

Just check which one you bought. Abit is kinda lazy issuing the same manual for both boards, they are identical except for the extra onboard Hi-Point RAID ATA100 Controller on the RAID board.

 

[Dexion]

LOL LXi you beat me to it

 

[Zincq]

Does this mean that if I were to buy a hard drive that were ATA/100, it would not run on this motherboard? I hope I know what I am talking about.

Zincq-

 

[LXi]

First of all, do you have the K7T, or the K7T-RAID?

If its the K7T, you'd still can use ATA100 hard drives, they'll just run on ATA66.

 

[Dexion]

No. All motherboards and harddrives are backwards compatible supporting from EIDE, ATA33, ATA66, and ATA100(if supported on your board). For now there isn't much performance gain from ATA100 anyways. Nothing to be too concerned about.

 

[Zincq]

Ahh, there we go. Lxi cleared it up for me.

btw, I have a KT7 =).

 

[thEnEuRoMancER]

Zincq,

Current state of hard drive technology does not yet enable transfer rates over 66 MB/s (apparently not 100 MB/s either), so the controller speed - ATA66 or ATA100 - is not really so important for you. This ATA100 thing is more like a marketing trick.

However, if you have the KT7-RAID board, you are able to connect two or more hard drives into a RAID array. Search for threads with 'RAID' in the title for explanations on how and why to use RAIDed hard drive arrays.