In all honesty it sees like the release of
the VIA KT400A chipset was a desperate move from a company worrying about losing
its' market share. It is okay for a company to concede defeat for one or even two
releases if it will allow them to catch up. nVIDIA did just that when their
original nForce chipset bombed, and they waited a full year before releasing the
highly successful nForce2.
As the benchmarks have shown, the KT400A based Magic-Pro MP-K7V-400A does
outperform the Albatron KX400-8XV Pro KT400 motherboard, but it's still not
up to the mark set by nForce2.
I guess with a retail price of $118 CDN ($85 US) all can be pretty much be forgiven. As
always you get what you pay for and in the case of the Magic-Pro MP-K7V-400A,
you get a decent performing motherboard with a few features (10/100 LAN and 5.1
audio).
This is a great motherboard for newbies to learn on, it's well labelled and
the manual is quite detailed but if you do end up killing the mobo it's not that
expensive that it'll break the bank. You need not fear if you have a small
cramped ATX case, the Magic-Pro MP-K7V-400A should fit just fine.
Because of the relatively small size, I understand that some components will be placed
in awkward positions. The IDE and floppy drive connectors are a bit low on
the PCB for my tastes, and you're going to have to remove the videocard if you're
plugging in IDE cables.
If you're looking for an inexpensive motherboard, or one for a second
computer, the Magic-Pro MP-K7V-400A should serve you just fine but if you're
looking for something with a bit more zip, you're absolutely going to be looking
elsewhere.
Thanks to Canada Computers
for providing the Magic-Pro K7V-400A motherboard to PCstats.com for
review.
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