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Compare and contrast: KT3 Ultra-ARU vs. KR7A-RAID

B

bastion

Senior member
Well . . . which mobo should I choose! Yea, bet you didn't see that one coming. Well much to your relief, probably, I have it narrowed down to the ABIT KR7A-RAID or the MSI KT3 ULTRA-ARU and am trying to decide which will be best for my system.

See my sig for the rest of my system info, except replace the 1 gig T-bird with a 1800+ XP (as I will be purchasing this to go on the new board).

I'm looking for decent stability with decent OCing potential and the possiblity for raid 0 if I ever get another HDD. From everything I have read, both of these boards offer all this and then some, but before I decide, I would like to hear from all of you as to what your experiences are with these boards.

And please, don't waste space by suggesting other boards, or try to be cute and say "buy a P4B266, tee hee," as I will administer a swift kick to the beansack to anyone who does. 😀 I am set on one of these two boards and am simply looking for some selling points to push me over the edge on one of them as right now I'm right in the middle of the road.

So please, tell me what good and/or bad experiences you have had with these boards. And please, no "Well, my friend's roommate's uncle JimBob had one and his goatse had s3x0rz with it." I would like info primarily from people who have had first hand experience with these boards. What about them makes you love them or hate them. Thanks guys, and have fun!



EDIT: Ok, after reading a few more things, I am now quite interested in the MSI K7T266 Pro2 as well, as this seems to be a better choice than the KT3 for my system. So please, throw the K7T in the mix too. So now we got a 3-way goin on, aww yea!


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AMD T-Bird 1.0 GHz / Asus A7A266 / 256 megs Mushkin PC 2100 DDR / 40 Gig 7200 RPM Western Digital HD / $129 VisionTek GF4 Ti4600. Thanks BestBuy! / SB Live! 5.1 / 3com PCI DSL modem / GameVoice, n50 Speedpad, Logitech Opti Mouse
 
MSI KT3 ULTRA-ARU is more feature-rich, and has the KT333 chipset. You may get better memroy performance, as you can run your RAM at PC166 and not even overclock your CPU. They both got onboard ATA133 RAID (Well, the KR7A-RAID is ATA100, there's an ATA133 version.) The MSI has 4 USB 2.0 ports, definitely sweet and a nice advantage to current MSI boards. Also, there's great 6.1 channel audio (None of that AC'97 crap) on the MSI board.

On the downside, I heard there's no 1/5 PCI divider, so OC'ing may not be too great since you'll have to jack up that PCI BUS. Eww! Oh well, I don't OC anyway on my Soyo Dragon Plus
 
Excellent info, thanks. Another question stemming from that 6.1 sound onboard, how does this compare with my SB Live! oem card? Would I be better off using the onboard sound (at least until I upgrade to an audagy at some point)?
 
Well, not sure as I've never heard it, but the C-media 6-channel onboard sound on my Soyo Dragon+ is excellent. The best part is, it frees up a PCI slot 🙂 Heck, I don't have a single PCI card in there.

I'd have to say that yes, the onboard audio will hold ya off until you upgrade. Maybe, even in an extreme case, you'll like it enough where you won't want the Audigy. That's the path I followed.
 
Excellent! That means I can throw my SB Live! 5.1 card into the upgrade system I'm selling to fund my new purchases. Basically, I'm selling some of my current stuff, along with a couple new things, in an upgrade package for my dad's friend, who has a really old comp (under 400mHz). Still waiting to find out if he is interested though. I hope he is, as I really don't want to pay for all this new stuff out of pocket if I dont have to 😀

Ok, back to the topic, anyone else got any info on these boards?
 
Hehe, that's the Anandtech way! If he's not interested, throw the system (or all the parts) up at the For Sale/Trade forum.
 
bumpity bump bump, bump bump! Come on guys, I need some info on this. I need to decide soon and I'd like to be as informed as possible. Thanks!

 
Which will work best with my current parts, the major benifits of each board over one another, and mainly, opinions of people who have used these boards. I know you're out there . . . so let me know what you think!
 
Ah ok. I can tell ya that your parts will work fine with any of the boards. I only have first-hand experience with the MSI K7T 266Pro2A and the Abit KR7A
 
I guess I torn between the nice bios and good OC abiltiy of the KR7A-RAID, and the many features and chipset of the KT3-ULTRA (main complaint I keep hearing about this board is no 1/5). Is this really that big of a factor in OCing? Or would someone like myself, who might OC a bit, but not to any extreme extents that would require anything beyond a decent HSF and some blowholes, not be too affected by this?

Also, how do these boards look in terms of future support of cpu's and components? Seems the KT3 would win out there due to the newer chipset and USB 2.0 support.
 
If you're a hardcore overclocker, you might want that higher PCI divider; otherwise, it's not much of a factor.

The KT333 and KT266 chipset are VERY smiliar. The main difference, is native ATA/133 support in the southbridge and support for 166MHz DDR RAM. They'll both handle hardware just as well; except the KT3 board can easily take beter RAM. In theory, anyway 🙂
 
Do you know if the capacitor problem with the Epox board and the GF4 Ti4600 vid cards has been fixed? Also, what would be the best RAM to use on the KT3 ULTRA? Any suggestions?
 


<< Do you know if the capacitor problem with the Epox board and the GF4 Ti4600 vid cards has been fixed? Also, what would be the best RAM to use on the KT3 ULTRA? Any suggestions? >>



Samsung PC2700.
 
ok, that's some good info. I had been steering away from samsung chips cause of all the previous problems with them.
 
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