Tuesday, March 13, 2001

Additional features

Additional features of the Micro Star K7T Pro-2A motherboard include: Wake on LAN, Wake on Modem Ring, PS2 connectors for connecting mice & keyboards, 4 USB ports - two of which are located on the back panel, an integrated AC"97 sound-card supported by a CT5880 chip, Power Failure Recovery, Suspend to RAM, RX/TX connectors for infrared, and start-up from the mouse, keyboard, or at a pre-set time. Hardware monitoring of fan speed, CPU temperature, and of voltages is also included as a standard feature of this PC99-compliant motherboard.

A LED diagnostic system is also included.

The Pro-2A also comes with Fuzzy Logic 3, which - like the Easy Tune system developed by Gigabyte - allows users to Overclock their systems without needing to restart their computers.

Finally, the MSI Live BIOS update system is also included, as well as a Windows-compatible hardware monitoring utility.

So, in terms of features, the Micro Star K7T Pro-2A comes out ahead.

Below, a photo of the Micro Star K7T Pro-2A.

Installation

Installation of the K7T Pro-2A is quite simple, as there are no jumpers to play with. Simply place the board in a case, plug it in, and turn it on.

The software bundle

The installation CD includes the VIA 4-in-1 version 4.26 drivers, drivers for the sound-card, DirectX 8, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a digital version of the user's manual, and several utilities, including: Trend PC-cillin2000, MSI Live BIOS, Staq System configuration setup, Fuzy Logic 3, MSI 3D Turbo 2000, MSI PC Alert 33 hardware monitoring for Windows, and many others besides.

On this point, the K7T Pro-2A comes out way ahead of the EPoX EP-8KTA3.

The hardware bundle

The K7T Pro-2A comes with: one 80-pin ATA66/100 cable, and a floppy-drive cable.

Next: Specifications.