Need advice with upgrade to Athlon ABIT mobo.

[EecheE]

Hi guys,

I found a great deal on a PC upgrade. My current specs:

celeron 400
Abit bx6 rev2
256 mb sdram
G400 max
SBLive (vanilla)
NIC
ISA 3COM 56K modem.

For the upgrade I want to replace the mobo and cpu with the following:

ABIT KT7A
Athlon 1.2

Could someone tell me what kind of things to look out for with the upgrade? I read the VIA thread and that scared me shitless because the mobo I want has the same VIA chipset, and I have a SBLive :-(

Most of the forum posters complained about the combination, but how many people have had success with it? I'm scared of buying this and not having it work.

Should I go with the ASUS one instead? Personally I've always hated asus since one of their earlier mobo's left a bad taste in my mouth (not literally, of course :-)

ps. Great Site!

Lurking for years,
EecheE.

[Wombat]

The VIA chipset thingy: Yeah, it's not designed so well, and people have problems. But if an individual user puts a little time into it, you can have things running well (except for fast IDE access, I don't know why VIA finds this sooo hard).

The latest VIA 4-in-1's, or George Breese's program, will work pretty well.

I don't know many people who have an easy time with VIA + W2K + ACPI, but installing in APM mode seems to avoid this.

Abit MB's, and particularly the KT7A: It's a crap shoot. By my rough estimates, 30% of the owners of this board have some sort of significant problem, especially if they're OCers.
If you want to see what a different kind of crowd is up to, check out the forums over at www.amdzone.com. If a board is bad, they bitch a LOT about it. There are some real morons there, but there are also guys that know what they're talking about.

1) I recommend something else like Epox (my current favorite), MSI, or Asus, in that order. Maybe I left somebody out.

2) The KT7A is a little old. Have you considered a DDR setup? If in the US, for example, Crucial DDR, 256MB sticks are < $45, with shipping. I'm considering getting an AMD 760 board, myself.

3) Just how good is this deal you're getting? It's something to consider.

P.S. Palomino's are right around the corner. And who knows when the SiS boards will start showing up.

P.P.S Sorry, I meant to try to make this <I>easier</I>. Oops.

[PeTe]

Well atleas if i was buying a mobo+memory right now.. id go for EPoX 8K7A+ DDR motherboard and some Cruzial PC2100 memory.

That Epox is a o'clockers dream.. you can get the bus up to 160-180 depending on your other hardware.. mainly how good your memory is.

I have the older Abit KT7 and i really dont have any problems with my mb, but you might have to do some tweaking.. ( well i didnt have to do anything with Duron, but when i moved to TB my matrox card coudnt handle it.. so disabled ACPI and everything is ok again. )

PeTe

[EecheE]

Thanks guys for replying. After reading your reponses, I thought of up some more questions.

VIA has slow ide access?? That sucks much. How slow is it?

The reason I wanted the ABIT was because it has an ISA slot, so I can reuse my modem. And I like the softmenu. I once had an asus and to flash the cmos memory, I shorted the two points on the asus mobo and it never booted after that. That was the stupidest flash mechanism EVER. Two microscopic points...grr...

amdzone is a cool site, checked it out. It will be a handy place to check for help.

Another big factor in my decision is that I want to reuse my 256mbs of pc100 ram. I can't affort to buy pc133 or go DDR.

How about the asus a7a266? That has DDR and SDR slots. Do you know if it supports pc100 ram? I couldn't figure it out from it's manual.

Epox I checked is only DDR :-(

The deal I'm getting is:

ABIT KT7A
arctic silver II
enermax 350W power supply
80mm case fan zentac
goldwin fop32-1 cpu fan
------------
Total= $550 canadian after tax.

If I go ddr with KG7 + corsair 2400DDR + Athlon 1.33, price shoots to >$700. I can't afford that now (just got out of school with big debt)...maybe if I save extra this month....

I'm not a big overclocker either, so that doesn't affect my decision.

Sorry, this is getting long, but to summarize:
I want to reuse ram
I want to reuse my ISA modem
I want good stability
I don't care about overclocking (yet)

Thanks a lot guys,
EecheE.

[The PIT]

I wouldn't go for an Abit Via solution they're crap. Try Asus Msi Epox if you're unlucky you'll get loads of trouble but you're less likely to than will a bit. I can't comment on the Abit KG7 as there new and not many poeple have got them yet.
Check out the via hardware forums to see the sorry tale of woe.
Sblive also causes a lot of problems with the buggy Via chipset so thats something else to consider. If you're not really techie I suggest you stick with Intel.

[Belwarrior]

I'll stick to Asus and MSI mobos... they tend to be more stable..have assembled a lot of pcs using them.

I have not tried the A7A266 ..looks good but has any tried it out?

[Topha]

i have the abit kt7a, and after a bios update i had no problems at all with it.

but why dont you get a board that supports ddr ram??

check this link, it might interest you:

http://www.chip-online.com/products_tests/products_tests_5307.html

i say: support the sideproducts whenever they deserve it


edit: for the money you save you can get a new modem and/or a faster cpu

[Guru]

Even thou I have 3 abit mobos at home I would not recomend anyone to buy one (well te bx-133 raid have worked fine so far)! Espesialy not if you are planing to keep it for over a year (only 1 year warranty on abit mobos) + plus that the all chipset fans on the abit mobos I have seen has had to be replaised (some several times)! If you ask me I would recomend getting a MSI mobo (3year waranty) I have built many and have yet to have one fail on me!

[Grail]

If you really want to keep that ISA modem....

You could try the Soltek SL-75KAV-X motherboard. www.soltek.com.tw They seem to be alright at work. Not the best for overclocking, but very cheap and seem to work for most of the ppl I have seen buying them.

[EecheE]

Wow, I'm convinced not to go with the via chipset motherboards. Thanks for your inputs!

The Elitegroup's K7S5A is only $100 canadian! OMG, Topha, you're right, I could get a 1.4ghz or more ram or modem. That's an *awesome* idea. I'll do some more research on this motherboard.

So my 1st choice is the k7s5a (any of you have strong opinions on this one? aren't too many reviews yet).

Asus a7a266 is 2nd choice.
MSI and Epox are next.

Last is Abit, which I'm ditching for sure.

Thanks a lot guys!

Happy camper,
EecheE.

[Topha]