MSI PRO2A Problems?

[Cosmo3]

It seem like this board is having lots of problems as of late as lots of Forums are indicating several problems and yet this board is still getting lots of recomendations. It seems like more problems are cropping up dailey and the board hasen't been out that long and I see that it is rated as one of the slowest boards out there also. I guess I will stick with my KT7RAID.

KY7Raid, 30 Meg IBM Ultra 100 Harddrive
256 meg of Kingmax PC 150 ram
ATI Radion DDR32 meg Toshiba 48X CD
Plexwritter 12X10X32 CDR love this drive
900 tbird running at 1030 with standard Voltage
I haven't tried higher yet but I am sure more is there
Soundblaster Live with Klipsch 4.1 speakers

 

[noxipoo]

slowest? who where? what?

 

[filmore crashcart]

Not by a far shot.... this undoubtedly is the best board I've ever had. Who have you been listening to?

 

[Cosmo3]

Tomshardware has benchmarks in a 5 motherboard shootout and the MSI didn't do very well. I know Toms isn't always the best but they were all tested the same. As far as problems I just took that from people on this forum and others as their seems to be a few showing up and people are always knocking Abit and they have about 1000 boards out to 1 for the new MSI. I was afraid of the Abit because of all the talk but have been very happy but I think lots of people don't know how to setup a system or they use cheap parts and that is where alot of the problems come from.

 

[micron]

I don't think Tom's Hardware is ever the best . Anandtech is!

 

[PCComp]

Most complaints are from people with little or no computer experience. I personally own MSI, Abit and Asus motherboards. I preffer MSI to the others.
Also, the reviews conducted by Tom are a joke. First, the boards are hand picked for performance and stability by the manufacturer (not from the shelves). Second, the reviews are conducted only once. Thus, future BIOS and driver updates have no effect on the review. Finally, Tom's reviews are bias (need I say *cough* Pentium 4).

 

[GT1999]

Tom used the oldest BIOS revision for the MSI board. The newest BIOS for the MSI K7T Pro2-A offers better DRAM timings and other fixes that Tom failed to mention in his review. This is why I always read Anandtech first.

Second, many people claim that the MSI K7T Pro2-A fails to offer UDMA/100 support in Windows 2000. Guess what? Win2000 does not support UDMA/100 as of right now, but VIA does have UDMA/100 drivers available already, which can be downloaded from Soltek's website (www.soltek.com.tw/drivers).

I highly recommend the MSI, because I have set up a system with it already, and it runs great. I will continue to recommend this board until I personally notice a problem. My board comes in Tuesday or Wednesday, and I'm sure it will work just as great, after it is set up, as the system I did today and yesterday. VIA chipsets just require the 4in1 drivers, and for Win2000, those Soltek drivers, and everything works wonderfully.

 

[shiner]

I used to read Tom's Hardware and trust what he said....then I opened my eyes and discovered Anand Tech!!

Honestly...Tom's reviews are a joke and are probably the most biased I have ever read.

 

[holdencommodore]

This has been the best board that I have ever had!
Any problems that I have had has not been the fault of the m/b. Either my own stupidity or the fault of software. Many people mention in their header that they have problems with their MSI K7T Pro2-A m/b. It is not often the case that it is the fault of the m/b itself - more likely another peripheral or software. I have great faith in MSI, with this being my first board from MSI, I am very impressed. I have had disarsterous boards in the past, and this is definetly not one of them.

 

[dcdomain]

Hey Geekish Thoughts,

Will the DRAM timing from the new bios revision benefit my rig much? It states on the MSi site not to update the bios if I'm not currently having problems (well I am, with Win2K that is), and I've heard a lot of horror stories from people who screwed up updating their bios. I've never done it before...

I think I have one of the newer boards of the Pro2a's since I don't even have that jumper for the Chinese or English System Available thing...

dc

by the way, Cosmo3: I think the reason so many problems are cropping up is because from all the recommendations, I think the owners of the MSi board now far out number the owners of the Abit or Asus board. (no real numbers, just an inference I made) So the number of incidents might be higher because of that... but damn I'm happy with this board.

 

[GT1999]

dc- I feel your pain. I remember seeing you in my "PIO mode" thread in General Hardware the other day. I hope you find a recovery disk soon.

To answer your question, you bought the right board if you're worried about BIOS updates. All you need to do is load the Flash utility on the MSI CD, and download the latest BIOS from MSI's website and you can flash your BIOS within windows, it's very easy. As far as I know the new BIOS should help out quite a bit, as most BIOS updates do. I already finished my first K7T Pro2-A system, and the guy picked up to today. I only got $20 for setting it up, LOL. Ah well, I needed the experience with the chipset and I can use it for my board, which was SUPPOSED to come today, but comes tomorrow because of weather delays down south. Anyway, don't be afraid of upgrading your BIOS, it's not that hard with the Live BIOS feature of our board. If you have any questions feel free to ask me via PM, but don't email me because I never check this email address.


G|T

 

[heng1028]

i can say that i love my Pro2-A very much!!

no lockups and blue screen for me start from the first time i fired my system

running SETI and RC5 24/7

i am happy with that