Written By:
Date Posted: June 14 , 2002

The AMD 768 Southbridge sits alongside the IDE and floppy cable connectors. I am used to seeing the drive connectors place adjacent to the ram slots, and not the PCI slots. I found that this orientation forced me to drape my IDE cables across the backside of the RAM, which could constitute to overheating. A quick twist of the cables solved the problem.

The K7D Master sports an AGP Pro slot along with five PCI slots, two of which are of the 64-bit, 66 MHZ variety. The 64-bit slots are backwards compatible with 32-bit slots, but there is a problem. There has to be a notch on the front of the card or else it won't fit into the 64-bit slots. Fortunately, my modem had the necessary notch, and I was able to test it with the 64-bit slots. The modem worked fine when it was installed in the 64-bit slot. Keep in mind that if you intend on using the included USB card you will have to give up a PCI slot, reducing the amount of open slots to four.

I was extremely pleased with the packaging and layout of the K7D Master. It included well-written documentation and up to date drivers. The inclusion of the USB 2.0 card was an added bonus, since MSI could have just thrown in a standard USB card. The fact that only one IDE cable was included was kind of annoying. The only other thing that bothered me was the way the drive connectors were laid out. Besides those two minor issues, I was very pleased with the layout and packaging of the K7D Master.

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