Advice Please Fella's

[DB4]

I have the system currently listed in my sig.
I have to say that I am a bit peeved with this system and as I don't really play many games I want my Dual Head back.

I really made a mistake replacing my G400 DH with a Kyro II.

I have considered mutliple cards or other dual head cards but so far I am not impressed.

Basically on an 1Ghz Athlon with Win2k running on a KT7A am I likely to have a trouble free experience with a G550 Dual head, or are there any known issues. I think a while ago I read on this forum that bus mastering is disabled on Athlons. I am not sure how much of a dif this makes but hey.

Initially I will be running two differmt size crts at different res'. I think Matrox actually addressed this though. I will eventaully have two equal monitors.

As I have said it is purley for my work (3D Programme, PSP and Dreamweaver) so game issues are not a concern.

Yours hopefully and if anyone has a similar system can you let me know how things are going.

[Haig]

Hi DB,

I think a while ago I read on this forum that bus mastering is disabled on Athlons.

This is only and still is the case with our G450 pci cards on non intel chipsets.

There are also no issues using 2 different spec'd monitors on both outs.

We're currently having various issues with our G550 dual dvi card but most are allready addressed with an internal bios.

Haig

[DB4]

Cheers.

Exactley what I wanted to hear.
Back to Matrox then.

[Wombat]

I'm not trying to slam you, but you're likely to have any kind of problem with a KT7A. Maaaybe you have a good one, maaaybe you got a troublemaker. Abit's known for that. If you haven't checked out the KT7 FAQ, you should bookmark it.

[The PIT]

Kt7133a what a board. I've got one on top my wardrobe that I daren't sell becuase it will come striaght back as soon as they tinker with the bios.

[Ant]

I currently have two systems up and running:

1.
Abit KT7A
Athlon 1.4GHz CPU
640MB RAM
G450 eTV
G400 PCI
Win XP/Linux.

I have had issues with this board but not Matrox related, unless I had certain cards in certain slots the system would not boot with the 1.4 CPU in place although have a feeling this is a power issue.

2.
ABit KT7A RAID
Athlon 1.0 GHz CPU
512MB RAM
G400 MAX
Win 2K.

No problems at all.

I have had the G550 running in both of these systems without a problem.

[WayneHu]

If you need stability and a less troublesome Athlon system, Abit KG7-RAID is a better one than KT7A. It is not only the compatibility concern, but also AGP, Memory, I/O performance difference provided by AMD760 + DDRSDRAM. Unfortunately, AMD is going to stop the production of AMD760 chipset recently due to the chipset cost and less competition ability.

I have a system like the following description to do some background mirror and processing jobs. It is also a NAT router and Proxy server for the other computers at home. I often reboot the system every 7 ~ 14 days depending on Windows 2000 status.

CPU: Athlon 1G AXIA 0109 @1.41v 1000 MHz
MB: KG7-R
RAM: Crucial PC2100 DDR 256MB * 4 @2.51v
AGP: Matrox Millennium G400DH 32MB
PCI1: IEEE-1394 OCHI controller (Ti chipset)
PCI2: Advansys 3940UA
PCI3: Intel Pro100+ (i82559)
PCI4: i82557
PCI5: Promise Fasttrak 66
PCI6: SB Live! value

CD-ROM: Plextor Plex40
CD-RW: Plextor W-1210TS

Case: Antec SX-1030
Power: Antec PP-303XP (+3.3v & +5v combined 180w, ATX 12v)

For each IDE controller, I only attach one HDD on it. Thus each of FT66, HPT370a, VIA 686B only controls 1 HDD. For CD-ROM and CD-RW, I use the SCSI CD drive to avoid any possible conflict problem on VIA 686B controller and its sucky & poor performance driver.

This system was tested with many jobs of many concurrent disk i/o from different HDDs and heavy CPU load. For example, a news post grabber to use more than 100 MB memory to index more than 150000 news indices, a FTP client for downloading files, Prime 95, Burning CD with 12x, Netscape Messager, ICQ 2001b, several IE windows, and watch Divx movie on TV at the same time. Although the result is not perfect, I am satisfied with it. At least Buffer underrun never happens!

Before KG7-R is used, it is impossible for my previous system with ASUS P3B-F to do so many jobs with a lot of concurrent disk i/o and 100% cpu load at the same time.


If you want to use Athlon MP system with South Bridge AMD766 to avoid VIA 686B issue, you are probably disappointed. According to my friend working for VIA, AMD766 was based on VIA 686B's design. Thus it probably inherits 686B's electric signal characteristics if AMD didn't do full tests on it and change it to avoid those possible incompaibilities.

[KeiFront]

Haven't had a single problem with my KT7A. Altough I'm very disappointed that Abit only supports Athlon XP on revission > v1.3 boards. I only got a v1.0 board.

[DB4]

A bit either way then now.

I may go the way you suggest Wayne and replace my board. I have had noting but problems with the dam thing anyway. Not detecting drives, detecting, lonking up etc. I do appreciate that any probelms are not likely to be Matrox ones but from the general opinion here the KT7A is crap, and I definately agree.

It got so many good review though

More then I wanted to spend but hey.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[WayneHu]

Originally posted by KeiFront
Haven't had a single problem with my KT7A. Altough I'm very disappointed that Abit only supports Athlon XP on revission > v1.3 boards. I only got a v1.0 board.

Here is a off-topic speaking...

According to Abit FAE, Abit KT7A Rev < 1.3 + Duron 1GHz needs to press RESET to let KT133a North Bridge receives the correct FID signal from CPU for every Power ON. For AthlonXP, it does not seem to work.

You should blame AMD instead of Abit for this. AMD changes the FID timing of Athlon Model 6 (Palomino) and Duron Model 7 (Morgan). How can Abit know the new Athlon and Duron change the CPU signal's characteristics?

The same thing also applies to Intel Tualatin core processor. The signal voltage level of Tualatin is totally different from the original AGTL+ design. Thus, even the not so old chipsets like i815E, i815EP cannot communicate with it, either. Neither can't BX chipset, of course.

But some companies have the workaround solution to provide the voltage and signal level regulation bridge between Tualatin and 82443BX North Bridge if the original design of the MB has much more signal timing tolerance. The regulator module is located on the Sloket. So it is a Slot-1 MB only solution.