Mega Test: 14 Boards with KT266A and nForce 420D

QDI KD7-A (KuDoz 7) - Standard OEM Board

The QDI is geared towards OEM customers.

Board revision: 2.0

BIOS version: V1.6LCP

QDI's core business is with OEM customers, for whom the holiest commandment is to have a stable motherboard. The lion's share of these boards is produced in a special economic zone in China. This keeps costs down and allows the manufacturer to pay more attention to its less-profitable project business. QDI deliberately leaves out extras such as a USB adapter or overclocking features that would draw in end customers. In the end, it came as no surprise that the board lagged behind the others in practically all the benchmark tests.

However, there is also a retail motherboard of the KudoZ 7 available, which includes everything that a home user wants, such as the USB adapter cable mentioned before and a comprehensive manual. In addition, QDI provides two interesting programs for Windows. The first is called ManageEasy and allows extensive hardware status control and management. The second one is an overclocking utility called StepEasy. Though the CPU multiplier cannot be altered on-the-fly, this utility allows you to change the FSB speed in 1 MHz increments without rebooting. You can also save profiles and load them if needed, e.g. if you want your system overclocked to provide maximum performance for a gaming session.