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MSI K7T Spec's &
Features |
| The
hit's just keep on
coming... |
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Hey, I
love technical spec's as much as the
next guy. But, for liability reasons, I
can't post all the "generic"
spec's of this here motherboard. You
see, every time I'd ever check out a
motherboard review, for some
inexplicable reason I'd always end up
with a splitting headache. This seemed
rather odd to me. So one day, after
reading a rather long winded excuse of a
motherboard review, at a website I won't
name for fear of them unleashing their
billions of minions on me, I went to the
bathroom to check out this strange bump
I had found on my forehead. Oddly
enough, I noticed imprints of the
letters "G", "H",
"T", and "B" right
above my eyebrows. Perplexed, I
explained my situation to my good friend
the Neurosurgeon. He seemed rather
unfazed by my condition. He smacked me
around a bit (my friends tend to do
that), and then explained to me that I
suffer from a condition he'd seen many
times in the past. This affliction is
known as "Boringstataritus
Avoidicus". "It's a condition
where your brain tries to protect you
from "boring" material, by
shutting down your nervous system at the
first hint of contact", he
explained to me. Golly! Imagine my
relief! He then went on to say 9 out of
10 geeks also suffer from this
condition. So, because I wouldn't want
to be responsible for the destruction of
your 9 out of 10 geeks foreheads, or
keyboards for that matter (the HH budget
isn't that big...), I'll try to keep the
dry stuff to a minimum.
 There
are two, strikingly obvious, physical
characteristics that make this
motherboard stand out from all the rest
(that I've seen, and that would be
three, including this one). First and
foremost, these have to be the biggest
flippin' capacitors I've ever seen on a
motherboard. I mean to tell ya, for
those of you who've ever smashed a
camera after you discovered that the
film was missing (you know, the film
with the pics of your girlfriend) and
because she then dumped your ass because
you lied when you said you were just
"pretending" to be a Playboy
photographer, and she was supposed to be
your personal "lil' bunny" and
not the whole internet's... will know
exactly what I'm talking about. You see,
for those of you who haven't smashed a
camera, well they have big capacitors
inside of them. And this thing... this
here K7T... Trust me when I say this...
its capacitors are definitely "muy
largo" (six years of spanish, and
that, and "Yo quierro taco
bell" is all I know...). We're
talking 30mm big, according to the
BiZ Approved Tempered Stainless Steel
Mechanical Measuring Device™. Of
course, those of you who are
"seriously" into car audio
systems will probably scoff at my
calling these caps big. I've used caps
as big as your arm, in some of my more
serious mobile audio systems. But, we're
not discussing the finer points of
automobile audio systems at this
particular juncture in time, now are we?
So then, let's get this train back on
track, shall we?
The other nifty physical feature of the
K7T is how the MSI engineers cranked the
Northbridge chip 45 degrees from center.
According to people I can only imagine
are  much,
much smarter then me, this was done to
shorten the lengths of the connections
between the Northbridge, and the various
things a Northbridge chip might connect
to, what ever they may be. Personally, I
really don't care what they are, so long
as stability and/or performance is
increased. Seeing how I didn't have any
stability issues with the K7T at normal
settings, I'm going to go out on a limb
and say the MSI engineers might be on to
something. You know, it'll be pretty
interesting to see if any of the other
manufactures start copying MSI's design.
Some other mentionable features are it's
6/1/1 (pci/agp/amr) layout, 3 SDRAM
slots, 2 IDE/ATA66 ports, 2 fan headers,
as well as the now standard colorful
serial/usb/mouse/keyboard connectors.
Too bad my mouse and keyboard are so old
school, that the colors don't help me
one iota. Got to love that beige. Um...
Where was I? Oh yeah. It'd been nice to
see three fan headers but that's no big
deal. Actually, the less power you're
pulling through your motherboard to
power fans, the better overall system
stability you'll enjoy. At least in my
experience, that is. Of course your
results may vary.
The K7T
also has the very cool Line-O-Blinkin'-LED's,
to glaringly point out the fact that
you've plugged
you IDE cables in backwards.
While I'm
blabbering about the features and
layout, I'd like to comment that things
are pretty much all where they need to
be. A feat seemingly difficult to
achieve, if one goes by the layouts of
99% of all the other motherboards on the
market. Let's start with the power
connector, shall we? It's out of the way
(That was easy.). Full length PCI cards
can be used in any of the six available
PCI slots, without fear of drawing blood
while trying to plug in an IDE cable.
The capacitors, while amusingly large,
are all sufficiently spaced away from
the CPU socket to allow for the fitment
of virtually all the socket HSF units
you're libel to get your grubby mitts
on. I was kind of hoping that they
would've placed the AMR slot below the
AGP slot, that way you won't have to
lose a PCI slot when you stick that
abnormally large Global Win heat sink on
your G100 Matrox. But then again, with 6
PCI slots to play with, unless you're
still pimpin' out the Voodoo2 SLI rig,
chances are losing one PCI slot isn't
going bother you too much. The MSI folks
also saw fit to throw in an ATA100
controller card, in the event you're one
of the lucky few with an ATA100 capable
hard drive. However, to keep you from
selling it, they conveniently left off
the bios chip, rendering it useless in
anything but an MSI motherboard.
Another worthy mention would be the
software package. It's not very often a
motherboard manufacture includes a
software package worth mentioning. But
MSI actually gives you some good stuff,
so I figured why not. First, we've got
3DTurbo, which is remarkably similar to
Entech's Powerstrip. It gives you the
ability to adjust pretty much every
setting on your monitor/video card via
"hot-keys", plus over-clocking
features. Then we've got PC Alert III
which includes pretty much everything
you can get from H.Oda! and Motherboard
Monitor, all rolled into one. It also
has a "software" cpu cooler
(no effect on my Duron), as well as the
ability to change modem settings to
increase performance (or decrease, if
you don't know what your doing). There's
quite a few more proggies, including a
"fuzzy logic", WinXX BIOS
changer program. But the thought of
changing my BIOS, in the most unstable
piece of OS ever conceived by any living
being in the universe, makes me cringe
with fear. Needless to say, I was unable
to work up the nerve to try it out.
Anyways, I've covered the most worth
while programs. If I were to have
covered them all, I'd end up going into
double digit pages. Then I'd have to
look into posting this review over at
some other website that could drag a
review of a fan into a 75 page thesis if
they wanted. Of course, that
website will also remain nameless for
fear of the unleashing of all their
billions of minions upon us. Besides,
I'd never submit you guys to that kind
of torture in the first place (at least
not without some sort of monetary
exchange of cash before hand).
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