Epox EP8-KTA3+ vs Abit KT7A Raid, Opinions anyone?

[Wombat]

The 8kta3 requires you to choose your base FSB with a jumper. I had a few problems when my pencil mods would stop working (a different pencil fixed that). I also penciled in a low default multiplier, and maxed out the voltage (adjustable in BIOS). You can hit a higher max voltage this way too (It seems that the 8kta3 chooses its Vdd range relative to the default CPU voltage). If you overclock, and sometimes the machine won't reboot on a warm reset, it's because the CPU is trying to run according to its bridges, and the MB hasn't had a chance to up the voltage yet.

[RichL]

After a gentle prod, my Duron 800 is now running 7.5x114 at standard voltage. The CPUs guaranteed to run at 1ghz, so I've got a lot more to squeeze out of it

I dont know if I'm imagining this or not, but it looks like the actual quality of the display has got better since upgrading from a K6III475 to my Duron 800!

[EchoWars]

So...does that mean you like it? I need to order one and junk this Abit.
Epox, why oh why did I ever forsake you?

[RichL]

The Jury is still out on this one, reason being, I've had stability probs and power probs that I'm not sure are software, CPU/Motherboard, power supply or me overclocking the thing.

Half-Life TFC tends to crash, which I put down to my first install of Windows 2000, but it crashed identically on Win98SE as well. I havent used either long enough yet to decide wether its the OS fault or not. It could be that my G400Max doesnt like running a high FSB/AGP clock.
I'm running Win98SE with Via4.32 drivers, 6.51 Matrox drivers and the latest HL patch. FSB tried at 110 to 114, 850-1036mh CPU speed. I dont think its CPU overheat as a Bios check immediately after crash&reboot gives a max of 44-45 degrees C. I'm using a Duron800 at 1.75Vcore, 110-114fsb with a standard Thermoengine and Artic Silver.

Worst is the ATX power. When the main power (ie the plug in the back) is turned off, the system will frequently sit there sulking for several minutes with me flicking switches etc before it decides to power on again. I'm not sure if I have a dodgy PSU, or its something to do with the ATX power on/off control via the motherboard.
I've got a Micron300w PSU in a Globalwin802 case.
(Edit - Removed the out of date Sigfile)

[The PIT]

At the moment note the momet my Abit is still running without crashing. To do this I got rid of acpi slowed the memory timings down and knocked the Bios voltage down. Now according to the via htm the cpu is running at 1.74v near enougth the default where if I set it to default values it runs at 1.80v. The i/o is at 3.3volts.
However I had it running for a month before without any problems so tomorrow I may turn on the pc and have no win2k partition again who knows.

[Nuno]

Here are my experiences with motherboards:

- Abit BX6: Worked great with my old celery 300@450, until the damn board burned, got my celery with it and a friend PIII500...

- Gigabyte 7IX: Slot A AMD 750 board, very fast, compatible and stable board. No overclocking.

- Lucky Star K7VAT: Avoid like the plague. Couldn´t get the G400 working in win2k. No bios update available for the past 9 months.

PcPartner KT133: Well, everything worked as it suposed to...

- Abit KT7-Raid: Couldn´t get my usb scanner working with it, no matter what I´ve tried. Not a single problem with the HPoint controller.

- Asus A7V-100: usb worked fine, fast board (faster than the Abit), never been able to run the G400 at AGP2x. Died a couple months ago, bios flash went bad??

- Lucky Star K7VAT+ : AAAAAARGGGHHHH! couldn´t get the Prophet 4500 working for more than 30 sec on 3d.

- Gigabyte 7-IXE4 (socket A AMD 750): Worked like a charm. Not a problem at all.

- Asus A7V133: The board I own now. Everything is working fine...


Forget about RAID. What´s cool is to be able to have 4 IDE master devices. RAID doesn´t really matter for the average user. In most cases you´re loosing performance, as you´re increasing the access times. Of course it´ll do wonders for your syntetic disk benchmarks.

So: The less troublesome boards I´ve had were Gigabyte ones. Abit gave me nothing but headaches. Abit KT series boards are fine if you do not have or you don´t plan to have usb devices. Mixed feelings about Asus too. A7V gave me some troubles also, but A7V133 seems to be doing very well. And you can run B Athlons at 133 Mhz while lowering the multiplier, that some boards seem to have trouble with.

[Wombat]

My MSI-6167 was an awesome performer. All AMD (751 and 756). If AMD had made 133MHz FSB support, I wouldn't have considered VIA.
My next board will probably be 760 based, unless I wait so long that the next generation comes out.