Need help choosing new Socket A Motherboard!!!

[Marksels]

After a month of battleing with this A7V motherboard i bought i conlcuded that it was not worth it anymore. I went through 4 VideoCards till i fixed the problem of games and windows crashing, and then a new problem occurs. The games dont crash anymore, but now windows does and certain programs crash (Internet Explorer, Disk Defragmant, ect...) So i rebuilt my Cel 366@550 and every thing is running as it should and odd thing is that in Q3 with the Geforce2 MX i bought i got 50fps in 1024 with everything on high with the AMD and with my old Cel i get 54fps with everything on high. That also doesnt seem right. So now im on the look out for a new motherboard. It doesnt have to have anything special, just be stable and compatible with everything. Im thinking of the Abit KT7-RAID, but i also heard the cheaper brands liek MSI or Gigabyte are not bad and are very stable. Any suggestions will be welcomed, and thanks in advance.

 

[Mem]

The most stable board with the least problems SocketA wise is MSI K7T PRO board, I have one installed right now (had a LX intel chipset before)& am very impressed with the stability.

 

[Sid]

Another vote for the MSI K7T Pro. MIne is working great, no problems

 

[jonnyGURU]

First off, the MSI and Gigabyte brands are not "cheaper brands". They cost less because they don't have the ATA100.

Also, I'm not the biggest fan of the A7V, but why not get an RMA # and exchange it for another. I mean, you've come this far. If you get a different brand, you may be opening a whole new can of worms. How do you know your problems are the CPU or something else? You don't. A different brand/model board may react completely differently to whatever is causing the problem in the first place, so you'll end up just driving yourself up the wall.

Besides, assuming the board is bad. That only happens 1 or 2 out of 100 times with the A7V. If you have a bad board, odds are against you getting two. If you have the same problems with a SECOND board, I KNOW your problem is not the motherboard.

 

[Marksels]

Well considering this is my second A7V board i should be thinking it was something else, but alas i have already replaced everything on my system (replaced my soundcard and went through 4 video cards before getting one that worked) and i guess all my problems can be pointed to the powersurge that happen a few weeks ago wich my system wouldnt boot up for a day. Howerver after that day things were messed up. I guess i just got tired of this mother board and just want to try a different flavor like the Abit KT7 or MSI K7T. Basicaly im pretty sure the mother has to be messed up someplace; either since i got this one (first one was real messed up, lot phantom devices liek ps/2 mouse and gameport when i already had a usb mouse installed) or the powersurge could be to blame.

 

[Citadel]

Johnny, It most instances I would agree with you about ASUS MB's, but the A7V seems to be very trouble prone and not the fault of the people who get them. Even the second time around.

 

[Citadel]

Johnny, It most instances I would agree with you about ASUS MB's, but the A7V seems to be very trouble prone and not the fault of the people who get them. Even the second time around.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Video cards I've used on the A7V: Rage Fury, Voodoo 3, Voodoo 5.
Memory: Only Micron based. Even with generic PCB, seems to work GREAT.
Power Supplies: Enlight, Topower and Sparkle.

Citadel: I don't know man. I mean, people seem to be having problems with ALL of the Socket A boards just like we did when Slot As first came out, but I've yet to pinpoint anything on Asus specifically. For example; this guy RMA'd TWO Biostar boards today. He said they BOTH locked up as soon as it got into the BIOS. I get them and they both work fine with my equipment. And, a guy was in today with an Abit and a T-Bird 700 saying it didn't boot. The board worked SO WELL that one of the guys took it home with him! The CPU works fine too! Go figure.

 

[Citadel]

Yeah, I am really frustrated though. This being my fourth ASUS board I expected better. I never expected getting an ASUS board that was DOA. I know you may be used to that as a RMA technician, but I expected a quality board like the P3V4X, CUV4X, and K7V I have previously owned. I am very tempted to go with the MSI K7T Pro, let me know what you think if you deal with those.
Thanks.

 

[Citadel]

LOL, And I think I bought it from where you work!

 

[jonnyGURU]

LOL, And I think I bought it from where you work!

Now I know you're doing something wrong!

Why not let me test it with my stuff? If you're bitter, you can try the MSI K7TPro. The RMA rate is literally 1% on those. I'm cool with that, just make sure I know you're from Anandtech or I'll yell at you and hang up the phone on you and charge you a restocking fee!

StanFL @ work just picked one up and has been using it for about a week now. He had no problems and was actually impressed with the Duron 600 he got with it compared to his previous overclocked Celeron. He's using all of the parts from his Celeron rig. Just yesterday he switched out the MSI for an Abit that he had run all day in the tech room. Now he's got that 600 @ 850. He didn't like having to up the bus to overclock on the MSI. He got the non-RAID model. Didn't want any crap that could go wrong that wouldn't give a substantial performance upgrade. I tend to agree.

As far as personally, my first Socket A was the MSI. It sucked. I switched it out for a Biostar. That rocked for a while. After finding out that BIOS revisions addressed the problems I was having with the MSI, I switched back and it's been running good ever since. The only problem I have with the MSI is a flaky USB. It only likes to run for 2 hours or so. The Biostar never did that.

So you see, all and all experiences are typically good. Just every once in a while you get a lemon.

 

[Marksels]

Well ive decided to go with the MSI K7T Pro. Read alot of reveiws and searched msg boards and couldnt find one bad thing about it (unlike the A7V, seen one to many msg about it not working right) It sounds like a very stable and doesnt seem to be to picky with what you put into it, wich is what im wanting in a board. Also its little Fuzzy Logic(?) technology looks pretty cool, im that interested in oc'ing my Tbird anymore (had the stuff from the start but never tried and dont think i will) but how it can check the most stable FSB by testing each one sounds interesting IMO. Thanks for the help.

 

[Mem]

Marksels, have not tried fuzzy logic yet,but have tried the Live Bios update which works great, does everything even auto reboot & keeps all your Bios settings the same,I`m very happy,& being I`m a gamer it takes a rock stable board to make me happy.Btw I to was going to buy the Asus A7V as well until I saw the problems people were having & am glad I went with MSI.

 

[pugh]

I have to agree with MEM, it is a nice board and i have not used it yet..lol,i have it too!!

 

[AMB]

I like the Abit KT7, it is very stable, works well with 900 T-Bird and GeForce DDR

 

[Marksels]

Just went out to a computer store to do some pricing and they had the K7T Pro for 159$. Is that right? I read that it was around 110-130$. Now i also thought that maybe this was the model that comes bundled with the Promise ATA-100 card. Also considering most places around here seems to sell it for 140-160$ aswell. So is that 159$ price tag there cause of the ATA-100 controller packaged in there? or is that just to much money.

 

[Mem]

Marksels,ask the dealer to have a look inside & see if you got a ATA-100 card with it ,if not yes this is too high,btw I brought mine here in the UK ,but know you can get the MSI K7T PRO for around $120 in USA.

 

[Citadel]

At this point I would stay away from the A7V. First time in a long while I received one DOA.

 

[pugh]

Just wandering , if i get the new hard drives with the ata 100 ability ,can i use it with the controller card that comes with the MSI K7T Pro MOBO?

 

[Citadel]

Should be able to. Any UDMA 33/66/100 Hard should work with the controller card but its best to check around the forums and see. For instance, not too long ago there was an issue with Western Digital Hard Drives and the BE6-II HPT-366 controller.

 

[Marksels]

Ya, at this point i would leave the A7V alone IMO, but thats just opinion. Unfortunately i lost my receit and im past the 30 day for a refund on my A7V So i gotta wait a little longer before i can buy another mother board. Anyways, im kinda considering a Abit KT7-RAID after talking with a friend and since i have a BH6 and he aswell had a couple Abit boards and we could only find good things about them. Anyways i just want to know if paying the extra money for the KT7 would make it a much better buy than the K7T. Also how many have had trouble with that motherboard, is there as many problems as people have found with the A7V or like the K7T in wich i have barely seen a bad thing said about it. I have probably a month to think of what i want and i guess i should use this time to make sure i get a good board this time.

 

[Marksels]

Well i thought to myself last night wether my A7V was realy bad or as JonnyGURU said it could be something else. Well it seems to have been something else. After reinstalling the board i saw all the problems i had before i took it out, i then thought that maybe i should go back to 1002 bios since so many people seem to fix theyre problems by doing just that. Well it seemed to have fixed everything. Diskdefragment doesnt hang anymore, windows has felt stable in the last two hours (not a good long test but thats better than it was before) Guess i dont have to worry about a new mother board for awhile now.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Cool! Like I said, I don't have nearly as many problems as everyone says they have w/ the board. They usually work!

Now... the Abit... THAT'S a board to stay away from.

I've always hated them for their $25 per warranty charge and their high RMA rate. BUT I figured I'd go ahead and try the KT7 RAID because I enjoyed four IBMs on the Promise card in an MSI K7T Pro at work.

How could I not consider such a feature packed board? Adjustable bus AND multiplier? ATA100 AND RAID???? Hell yeah!

Well, the Abit lived up to being a major disappointment. There was NO performance increase in going RAID on the Highpoint controller compared to just doing straight ATA100 with a 60 GB drive. If I wanted NO performance increase, I would just buy a freaking 60 GB hard drive! The Promise card in RAID was literally TWICE AS FAST than JUST ATA100 alone! I'm thinking it MUST be a defective controller because why would they BOTHER offering a RAID option when there is no performance increase!!

To top everything off, the PS/2 mouse port was bad! NO FREAKING MOUSE! I could only get a serial mouse to work. I tried three mice and NOTHING!

Aaaaaaargh! Abit!!

Guess I'll buy a Promise card and put it in my current PC.

 

[Marksels]

Something i cant figure out is that i decided to reflash back to 1004 after going back to 1002 just because i always like to make sure what works and what doesnt. And well the only difference i see now is that before i reflashed my mother board it was unstable and programs liek Windows Defragment would freeze after like 10% when i have it show details, but wont freeze while i have the detailed hidden (wich over all isnt a problem but just something that annoys me a little) Anways i then flashed to 1002 and it felt more stable and Disk Defragment didnt freeze after 10% with details shown. Now when i reflashed back to 1004 everything again seemed to have been fixed, the system feels much more stable (been able to do some heavy web browesing without any crashes for about 2 hours, wich caused freezes before, but Disk Defragment wouldnt crash after 10% with details shown instead it would crash after like 20-30%. Again it doesnt do this when i dont have it showing the Details. Now what i cant realy figure out is why does this happen? I mean, i dont care cause it still works just dont use that feature, but knowing me i just like to know why. Oh well i guess its one of those mysteries i probably wont ever know why. Just as long as my system is now running as should, fast and stable.

PS: If anyone suggest to re-format and reinstall 98. I tried that week ago when this first happen and didnt fix the problem either.

[EDIT] Bah forget that stupid 1004 bios, i just froze in Windows dammit. Oh well back to 1002. Im starting to think that 1004 bios is realy a messed up one. Has anyone else had problems with that bios?

 

[jonnyGURU]

Almost sounds like an AGP card driver issue!

If the results of the flashes are that random, wouldn't you think their might be something wrong with the BIOS chip? I mean, it is a memory chip. Memory can have bad bits. It just sounds so "random". Maybe it's just flaky BIOS programs, at which case we'll just have to see what develops.