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MSI Pro2a : review : this is one cranky motherboard

A

austonia

Senior member
MSI K7T Pro2A.

recently put together a mid-range duron system to replace an old celeron one. i wanted duron because of its value vs. celeron 2. excellent value. most durons can hit 800, and with a GeForce2 GTS, will give almost exactley same performace in Quake3 as a gig+ Tbird at 768x1024x32. I have put together several systems in the past and this one was very problematic, due to the motherboard being flakey. I read mixed reviews about before i got mine but it seemed like the better choice over asus because of the jumperless adjustment capability. TO SUM IT UP SO FAR : THIS MOBO IS VERY DISAPPOINTING.

it is buggy. by this i mean, when i make an adjustment in the BIOS, it may cause the Motherboard to malfunction. it can take several power cycles to fix this problem. meanwhile, it can be tense to see if damage has occured. this has been a consistant problem and can make it very tense at moments. This can happen when adjusting the FSB, adding PCI components, etc. I was about to flip when it kept failing to load bios after I flashed the BIOS!! Then, after some jiggling and patience with the power cycling, it seems to "calm down" and get stable. I am using a brand new Enermax 330W power supply by the way. All components are name brand.

the manual is insufficiant. the motherboard even has a series of LEDs on it to help diagnose problems but the manual is so brief about them it is practiacally useless. also it does not explain how i can run the FSB at 133 since i have a duron without the multiplier locked. the "clock by slight adjust option" maxes out at 132.

The Super Orb b a r e l y fits on this mobo. Have to be very carefull around those capaciters as they don't feel like they are soldered too strongly, and you are forced to slightly, slightly adjust them to fit the orb on. i was >extremely< carefull. but if i want to swap processer? that'll be a damn pain.

My biggest gripe is again how inconsistant the mobo acts when adjusted. this is just untolerable and i will not buy MSI again. I have owned ABIT and ASUS in the past and they never acted &quot;cranky&quot; like this. Anyone else have a similiar experience?
 
I've got to say that your experience is the complete opposite of mine. I've got a T-Bird 900 running on one at home, and it's rock solid. At least after I cleared up the issues with my 75GXPs (with thanks to others on this board I might add). Is there any chance you could return the motherboard for a new one?
 
if the board isn't working until u shake it, something's wrong' w/ your installation of the baord into the case...perhaps it's shorting...somehwere...

run it outside of the case...not touching any metal. (i.e. on your stomach).

run it w/ only the video card and hdd installed...remove sound, ndc, dvd, floppy, cd, cdrw, decoder cards, your sister's head, etc. and diagnose it component at a time.
 
Indeed, it is a cranky motherboard. When you get one that works, especially with SB Live! boards, then it's great, but otherwise it isn't much fun, especially the intial hardware setup. I've built a system for a friend off the Pro2-A and it worked great, but my personal experiences with the motherboard are not the best, I went through (2).
 
the system seems to run stable after it finally &quot;turns over&quot;. but i dread making changes to the bios, i never know how or if it is going to work correctly afterwords. i eventually got it working well with a duron 700 @ 805 w 115mhz FSB. StabilityTest.exe ran 3 hours no problems. do you know how to make the FSB 133+?

nortex : i don't shake it, perhaps the jiggling helped only in my head. multiple, multiple power cycles (1 to 6) has been a consistant &quot;fix&quot;.
 
Just one other thing. The EV6 bus isn't known for tolerating massive increases in FSB speed. You may find similar experiences with ASUS...
 
Austonia,your board does not sound like a typical MSI motherboard,I should know my own MSI K7T Pro works great with SBlive &amp; with no changes needed,I`ve also tweaked the Bios with no problems infact it`s so rock stable I now find it boring.

🙂
 
thats not a 133 mhz rated chipset, i doubt it will run that fast even if you could get higher FSB settings. maybe 110 is about all you will get.
 
mem : haha, wanna trade me your boring one for this &quot;exciting&quot; and &quot;adventurous&quot; one?? LOL

the other guy : uh.. damn it i thought the KT133 chipset was for 133mhz????? damn it i need to read more carefully, the 133 tricked me. are you sure?
 
Ive built over 30 systems using MSI Pro2A... Never had an issue that was caused by me. And about the Super Orb not fitting.... who cares Orbs suck... a FOP 32 will beat a Super Orb.
 
You can only run your ram at 133mhz, if you want 133mhz FSB go &amp; buy a KT133A board not KT133 ok.

🙂
 


<< 133 refers to the mem bus. the 133a runs fsbs at 133 as well. its via being tricky. >>



Those via people are sneaky 🙂
 
yeah, they named a processor the cyrix 3 even though its like the tenth cyrix then named another one the cyrix 3 when they could have named it cyrix 4 and kept up with intel's numbering.
 
<<when i make an adjustment in the BIOS, it may cause the Motherboard to malfunction. it can take several power cycles to fix this problem. meanwhile>>

You have been making crazy FSB adjustments, the KT133 was designed to run at 100FSB, the KT133a is for 133FSB. Many people cant get the KT133 stable at 110FSB.

If the motherboard cant boot because of the FSB then the BIOS may reset itself.

If your chip is unlocked then adjust to multiplyer only not the FSB.

Dont rule this board out yet while you have been making huge stuffups.

 
Ut oh, this guy mentioned the Orb. Don't let Mikewarrior see this.

What everyone else here said is true about your MSI experience btw. If you got a stable system with a 115 FSB overclock you got yourself a good board.
 
I've had my Pro2a/Duron 800 running with FSB @ 106. I think that if I get some new ram (I'm still using some old PC100. I could run at ~111-112 as I could get ther for about three or four hours but the stability sucked.

I think the board is pretty good, but I did experience a little of the flakiness when I really pushed it (i.e. Vcore @ 1.8, FSB @ 113). I don't think that should be unexpected. It's quite a bit o' stress on the vaccuum tubes er..

On a side note, did you ever try to use their &quot;fuzzy logic&quot; software. It's fuzzy all right, fuzzy like my ass. I am not particularly impressed with its stability and it seems to do weird things to my ram.

Overall...nice board...great price...cool northbridge :Q
 
ok, i think i see the confusion i had. I bought the MSI K7T Pro2a thinking it could do 100 <OR> 133FSB. I didn't differentiate between KT133 and KT133a. Musta got the &quot;a&quot; at the end of the mobo name confused the &quot;a&quot; at the end of the chipset. damn them to hell, tricky bastards. well i am not so happy now. i was going to reduce the multiplier and crank up the FSB to 133+. i thought the KT133a was only going to add an cheap on-board video like intel 810/815.
 
The A at the end signifies ATA100, not KT133A. Obviously you thought KT133 can do 133MHz FSB which is not true, not even Abit and Asus can achieve that speed because its a chipset limitation. If you ever read Anand's SocketA roundup you'll know that all KT133s max out at 110~115MHz, I dont see how MSI is at fault here.
 
Got me a MSI pro 2A aswell. Fine board, looks like you're yellin' at MSI while they're not to blame here. Read the specs, read articals and don't push it well over the limit and then start complaining... KT133 is a VIA chipset NOT a MSI product its been around for months now and common knowledge that the 133 refers to the memory bus. You come on quite agressive and accusing while its been your own ignorance that got you in trouble.
 
I`ve been well pleased so far. I had a system set up with a Celeron 500/BX mobo/MX300 souncard. Removed that board/cpu and installed the said MSI with Duron 750 and rebooted. After Win98SE loaded a few drivers, I`ve had no problems. And this is with the 235 watt ps that came in my InWin case.
 
regardless of that misunderstanding, which really isn't that big of a deal, the main gripe i had/have is the inconsistant performance of the motherboard. funny i read one review before purchasing where the reviewer had similiar problems but i thought it was probably a fluke since there were many good reviews too. and then i ended up with the same deal. if i come across that review (i found it from a link in a thread here) i'll post it so i don't look so unreasonable for yappin' 🙂 anyway thanks for the input guys
 
Most 'issues' with the PRO 2A seem to be related to overclocking through the BIOS. Some PRO 2A simply mess up and MSI knows of the situation and has done nothing. One possible solution is to connect all the L7 bridges, so the cpu inializes at a higher default voltage. Setting the BIOS voltage higher does not do the same thing as the cpu begins to initialize at the lower default voltage. Give it a try if your up for it.
 
&quot;One possible solution is to connect all the L7 bridges, so the cpu inializes at a higher default voltage.&quot;

Sadly, I doubt this will work. I have one of the &quot;bum&quot; K7TPros and have connected the L7 bridges, it didn't do anything, still defaults to 1.65. No multiplier adjustments that I have been albe to figure out anyway.

Oh well, running my Duron at 1.425V rock stable(not to mention pretty d@mn cool), 1.3V wasn't completely stable and unforunately there is nothing in between.
 
&quot;On a side note, did you ever try to use their &quot;fuzzy logic&quot; software. It's fuzzy all right, fuzzy like my ass.&quot;

HAHAHAH 😀🙂

Thanks, that was pretty funny..🙂
 
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