Abit KT7A Vs. Asus A7V133

[Reverend Maynard]

Howdy all. Time for me to upgrade, I have come to the decision that DDR boards are entirely not worth buying at the moment, which leaves my choice of motherboards to the ones in the title. Any personal experiences with either of these boards? Or, can anyone give me a good solid reason to buy DDR? Thanks much.

[cerb]

All I can say is I've owned 2 asus boards in the past (both with AMD processors, strangely enough) and they've both been really great.

I think you're right to hold off on the DDR mobo - the AMD chipset looks good, but doesn't support SDRAM, and the Ali supports both, but is Ali's first AMD chipset, so I'd be a little iffy about it until at least a second revision.

[SCompRacer]

I've had a KT7A RAID board and never encountered any of the horror stories that go along with them. I never had any permanent IDE drives installed on IDE 1 & 2 though, just one IDE DVD drive.

Had four PCI cards, two RAID arrays, both serial ports and USB were enabled and used. ACPI was enabled in Win2000 and Win98SE, and no one at Icrontic ever beat my Win200 ATTO RAID bench, even with ACPI disabled.

Read lots of horror stories about the A7V133, but never had the board.

Got an A7M266, and while I read bad things about it over at amdmb, I never experienced any. Even had an Elsa Gladiac in it for about a week too, sharing with a SB Live (cause all PCI slots are full).

Someone bought my KT7A with the CPU and Crucial 7E, so I upgraded to the A7M, DDR and 1333 CPU. DDR was and still is cheap, and even mildly overclocked it beat my O/C KT7A benches. SO DDR to me was more performance with less hassle.


------------------
ASUS A7M266, 1333MHz/266FSB, 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR, Two RAID 0's, Win2000/Win98SE
The Rest

[This message has been edited by SCompRacer (edited 30 May 2001).]

[phxtoyman]

I'm jealous.

[az]

What about MSI mainboards? These are a bit cheaper here than both ASUS and ABit. Although I have had good experience with my ASUS p55t2p4 in the past (still one of the best boards ), I dislike ASUS because their behaviour against small review sites that don't give them two thumbs up reviews (forgot which site it was, but I really don't like their behaviour), and I don't trust ABit

AZ

[dZeus]

I've built over a dozen computers with the A7V133, and never had a problem with one. Just make sure to connect the HDD to the VIA southbridge when installing the OS, and switch it over to the promise controller if needed _after_ loading it's drivers in the OS.

[The PIT]

Keep clear of the abit if you're unlucky you'll have loads of probs.
They advise re-installing windows well I had no choice as win2k was wiped out totally by the 686b timing bug. Plugged it in powered it up and no win2k.

[SCompRacer]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by az:
....I dislike ASUS because their behaviour against small review sites that don't give them two thumbs up reviews (forgot which site it was, but I really don't like their behaviour)...
AZ</font>

amdmb was one. Big problems with the ASUS I Panel and a less than favorable review on an ASUS MB according to a moderator there. Ask about an ASUS board, and he responds MSI.

[SCompRacer]

Hello phxtoyman. Welcome to the forum.

[Guyver]

Here's what I've got running right now...

Microstar (MSI) K7T266 Pro with a T-Bird 1.0Ghz (266 FSB), 512MB Crucial CAS 2.5, PC2100SDRAM running Windows XP. It ROCKS!

ABIT (not ASUS - thx SCompRacer) KT7A-RAID, T-Bird 1.3Ghz (266FSB), 256MB PC150HSDRAM, and it runs very well as well.

IWILL DVD266-R, with dual PIII-933@1008, with 512MB Crucial CAS 2.5, PC2100SDRAM running Redhat 7.1. It's smokin...

ABIT BE6-II, with single PIII-1.0Ghz, with 256MB PC133HSDRAM. It runs quite well, with the latest BIOS upgrade that is.

They all run very well, and I haven't had any problems worth mentioning. The PC2100 boards both get better memory benches under SiSoft Sandra. None of the Via based boards give me troubles with sound (as I've pulled my SBLive!5.1s out of them).

I was pleasantly surprised with the turnaround of VIA chipsets as of late. I really despised them for about 3 years during the EPOX fiascos...

Have fun, let us know what you decide upon..

Guyver

[This message has been edited by Guyver (edited 04 June 2001).]

[Electric Amish]

I just got an Asus A7V133a. My first Asus board. I've used Abit up until now. The place I went to get my setup didn't have any KT7A's in, so I went Asus. Currently running my Duron 800 @ 1042mhz. Solid. All I had to do was get used to the Asus BIOS setup. It's completely different from Abit.

Also, the Promise controller can be stubborn to get installed in Win98SE, but it'll go eventually.

amish

[Guru]

If you ask me I would go for an MSI! The most stable I have tried + a 3 year waranty!