kt133 and kt133a owners: opinions?

[Wombat]

Hey folks,
I'm looking to get a kt133a based board. The Epox board is out and is getting good reviews, and I've also read good reviews about Abit's offering.
I haven't actually heard anything about Asus's board, but it's showing up on pricewatch (whatever that means). I'd like another MSI board, but I see nothing of reviews or release dates on the K7T Turbo.

Can any owners of these boards (or their KT133 counterparts) offer their opinions?

[CHHAS]

I have a Soltek SL-75KAV and I'm very happy with it. It has loads of tweaking options, and seems very stable.

[Himself]

I have a chaintech 7aja, I modified to add my own mulitplier settings, it just works, no issues whatsoever. Prompt, yet useless tech support though and no bios updates. The included utility software doesn't work, never has and by the looks of it, never will. Rumours abound that companies like this may go out of business soon.

[Sir Hitech]

Built quite a few systems with MSI K7TPro2 and K7TPro2A(not KT133a chipset) and they have been rock solid. The Epox 8KTA3 board you mentioned seem okay, but I think the placement of that power connector sucks and it will block air flow to the rear case fan if you dont tie the power cables to the frame. The Lithium battery is in odd place, you would have to take out AGP video card to get to. But, most people don't ever have to change their battery during their ownership.. I believe you have a MSI 6167 or k7pro with AMD Irongate chipset sporting a classic Athlon? I have both MSI boards and they have served me and the next owners well. I'll wait and see what Asus and MSI have to offer before picking up a KT133A board.

[Gurm]

It _REALLY_ depends on the board. Not even the manufacturer anymore. ASUS's KT133 Athlon board has a dozen BIOS updates, all available, and none of which seem to work to fix the numerous problems.

On the other hand, my Microstar dual-P3 board seems fairly stable. Of course I'm not trying to use the USB and the on-board IDE. *shrug*

AMD generally does have better chipsets. If you're gonna go Intel, get an 815 or 850, and if you're gonna go Athlon get a 760.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Grego]

I have an early revision (1.01p) of the ASUS a7v and I have not had any problems at all, usb works fine, and the 3 bios updates I have tried all worked like a charm!

Based on my experiences this is a good and stable board, I wouldnt hesitate buying this board again!

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System:
Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1004.c
AMD Thunderbird 800
SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
Matrox g400 MAX
LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
Pioneer 103-s dvdrom
Win98 1.st edition
directx 7.0a
128mb pc133

[isochar]

I second what Gurm said. Get i815, i850 for Intel or 760 for AMD.

STAY AWAY FROM VIA.

Intel and AMD Chipsets are the way to go... (that might change when Micron and nVidia release chipsets)

[Wombat]

This will definitely be an Athlon board. I haven't heard anything about the 760's release date, but it doesn't matter. Unfortunately another AMD-chipset board isn't an option. The 760 chipset will only support DDR RAM, and I'm sticking with my Crucial PC133 for a while.

So, technically the ALi MaGiK (whatever the caps are) is a possibility, but I don't know when that's coming out either.

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MSI-6167 w/ Athlon 500@750 (thx Greebe!), 256MB Crucial PC133, G400MAX,SBLive!-MP3,Pioneer 10x DVD, Plextor 12/10/32A, IBM 45GB 75gxp, and a Sony 420GS. Running RH7.0 (2.4.0-test8), and Win98 (when I have to).

[SCompRacer]

I was real apprehensive of the VIA chipset but they have worked fine for me the last two boards. First the KT7 and now a KT7A RAID. Have 4 PCI cards, a SCSI card, and an ISA scanner SCSI card, all the problem stuff according to forums. USB enabled with a 970CSE printer attached and occasionally a Kodak DC265.

900 @ 1000, RAID enabled, SCSI hard drives still in it. SB Live sharing with MAX with no performance hit. So to me, it's a great alternative to Intel.

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ABIT KT7A, RAID 0 * 900MHz Athlon T'bird * 256MB Crucial 7E PC/133 RAM * Two 30GB IBM 75GXP * Two Cheetah LVD's * Barracuda UW * DiamondMAX IDE * Plextor Ultraplex 40max/Plexwriter 12/4/32 * Hitachi IDE DVD * 2940U2W * SB Live * 3Com 905B-TX NIC * 3Com Courier V. Ext. * Hollywood + * Win 98SE, Win 2000 *

[Alfie]

i have used the Asus A7V board and the Epox 8kta2 board.
Both are very stable.
The Via chipsets seem to have matured and I have had no problems with them.
The Epox board runs a little cooler than the Asus board and also has my G400 working at 4x(Asus only got 2x)There's no visible difference but nice to have.
Epox boards seem to have better protection from overload and surges,etc.
A bad power supply took the Asus board out.
If the 8kta3 is as well constucted as the ta2,I wouldn't hesitate in buying it.
The 8kta3+ sounds even more intriging,similar to the Abit board with Raid built in (4 ide controllers)and configuration through bios.
The battery placement is stupid,but not a major concern.
The power cable can be strapped out of the way and posed no major obstruction.
Benchmarks have shown the Epox boards to be a tad faster than the Abit and Asus counterparts.

[2Whyzzi]

Personal Experience with A7V (@Work)..

interesting board. I don't have any video problems being a standard Rage128GL 32Meg(Although I understand there is a patch avail from M$ about AGP & VIA systems in W2K). BIOS 1005C has the "boot from atapi cdrom feature" that was not there in 1003.

But for the life of me I wasn't able to use CDROM writer (older Ricoh MP7040) on any either of the promise controller ports or the VIA's secondary IDE port. Only when I followed a link to TechWeb? article on the A7V and they recommend all R/Writers go the VIA Primary IDE channel on the A7V -- THAT worked like a charm, thank god. I was ready to through the mainboard out the window.

What I'd like to have seen was a way to disable the Promise IDE Controller & IRQ and thus freeing up PCI slot2 (afterall, I didn't have any ATA100 devices).

Any new product is going to have bugs in the first 6mo of release. I guess its up to the individual to decide which ones he/she can live with

Good Luck

[Nuno]

Do yourself a favor and get a AMD 760 motherboard.

I upgraded from a AMD 750 board and I had to try 4 KT133 boards until I found one that worked fine (A7V ATA100). Even so none of the boards was able to recognise my secondary 6.4 hdd properly in the via 686A controller.

Everything you heard on the web about abit USB problems is true. I coudn´t get my USB scanner to work with the KT7-raid (the third board I´ve tried) with any bios. HP930 usb worked fine though. All works fine with Asus (although my fujitsu hdd is only recognised by the promise ATA100 controlelr).

I feared VIA and I was kind of righ. I should have waited for AMD 750 boards and DDR

[DentyCracker]

Apart from the fact that my KT7 shipped with a bios that was incompatible with my Duron, (making me think I had killed the bastard)which I fixed by pencilling the voltage on the duron to 1.8V so I could download the bios upgrade, I haven't had any serious board related problems. I'm working on an ASUS A7V right now that is behaving strangely, and seems not to like changing memory. Of the two I prefer the ABIT. I will be getting an Epox next week to configure (8KTA+). My advice would be to get the KT133A board seeing as you can use PC133 in that. The Epox or Abit boards should be fine, but as always you may not get a good board so make sure it is easily returnable.

[Indiana]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by SCompRacer:
I was real apprehensive of the VIA chipset but they have worked fine for me the last two boards. First the KT7 and now a KT7A RAID. Have 4 PCI cards, a SCSI card, and an ISA scanner SCSI card, all the problem stuff according to forums. USB enabled with a 970CSE printer attached and occasionally a Kodak DC265.

900 @ 1000, RAID enabled, SCSI hard drives still in it. SB Live sharing with MAX with no performance hit. So to me, it's a great alternative to Intel.

</font>

The same here. I heard so much about the VIA-troubles that I was very reluctant to buy a VIA-based board.
But up to now I've had 0 (that's "zero" in words) problems with the ABit KT7-RAID, less than with my previous AMD750-based Asus K7M. BTW, the AMD750 and AFAIK also the 760 boards need the VIA southbridge as well.

I've got quite some boards in the comp, an Initio UW-SCSI, a Hauppauge WinTV, a SBLive!, a Fritz!-ISDN card and - of course - the G400.
In addition to the SCSI, the RAID and one of the internal IDE controllers are enabled.
No problems in Win98SE, nor in Win2k, although I do need a lot of IRQ's with this setup (the Hauppauge alone takes two).

The USB is enabled and working well, with an Epson printer connected the whole time to one connector and an Epson scanner or an Olympus digital camara connected to the other. This, again, in both Win2k and 98SE.

So: don't let those old-time Intel fanatics scare you away from VIA, I guess problems most times depend on the individual setup and can occur on VIA, ALI and Intel chips.
In any case the KT7 gave me the least problems of all motherboards I've owned so far, if I had to put them in an order (worst to best), I'd give the following rating: Asus K7M - Abit BX6 - ABit KT7-RAID.

[Wombat]

Indiana,
Just a few things. I avoided the K7M b/c of the VIA southbridge. It was a hybrid VIA/AMD board, and that didn't appeal to me. The 750 chipset does not need the VIA chips at all. My 6167 has the Viper/Irongate combo, so it's all AMD.

I'm not really afraid of VIA (the MVP3 chipset on my 503+ was good, but it was the CE revision, which helped). I just don't like mixing manufacturers.