New KT-133A??

[holdencommodore]

I have see this chipset in the new DFI motherboards. It supports the 266 MHz Bus. Is this board any good. I still want a MSI K7T-Pro2 but this DFI board might be better in future- upgrade wise. Any comments welcome....

 

[holdencommodore]

I have read that this chipset uses the new 266 MHz Bus, but you can also use Durons at the 200 MHz bus...
Are there any other boards that use this chipset??

 

[WetWilly]

All the KT133A is the KT133 with official 133MHz FSB support. No DDR SDRAM support. See this thread for some more discussion.

 

[holdencommodore]

So would the boards with the KT-133A be better for future upgrades??
And are they better in any other ways?
I hope MSI release a board with this chipset...

 

[WetWilly]

Only official differences between the KT133 and KT133A I've seen so far are the 133MHz bus support. Sight unseen at this point, yes the KT133A would be better for future upgrades. But IMHO I don't believe it's a worthwhile upgrade from a functional, well-featured KT133 (like the Abit KT7, Asus A7V, MSI K7T Pro2 or Epox 8KTA+/2) for many users. If you're getting a new system, I'd seriously consider waiting the month (or even less) for the KT133A, or possibly the DDR system boards. I'd also expect that fairly soon after its introduction, most all manufacturers will reintroduce/replace their KT133 products with KT133A boards.

OT, how do you like your Aztech/Philips Thunderbird sound card? I've been mulling over Philips' new Acoustic Edge sound card (to be released real soon) and the Seismic Edge (which is $39 after rebates this week at Circuit City). How's the sound quality and QSound?

 

[holdencommodore]

Thanks for the reply,
I think I will wait for the KT-133A to become more popular before I make up my mind.
To answer your question about the Philips ThunderBird Q3D...
The card I have is a Aztech PCI 368-DSP sound card. It has the VLSI/Qsound ThunderBird Q3D DSP. (VLSI was bought by Philips). This card was extreamly cheap at $30 AU.
As a replacement for my old Sound Blaster 64, it is a great improvement.
I have connected 4 speakers + subwoffer.
I find the quality of sound to be very good and when playing games in 4 speaker mode with EAX or A3D enabled, the game sounds truly great!
And when listening to Dolby Pro Logic encoded movies, the sound truly lights up with the Qsurround virtual 5.1 and QMSS, each sound seems to come from different points. (In my opinion it sounds better the SB Live!).
And because of the powerfull DSP it uses, it has even managed to speed up my old K6-2 in Direct Sound/DirectSound 3D games!
The only thing that I want is some new drivers. Aztech is slow at driver releases so I suspect that the Philips driver will be better and newer. (anyone know where I can download it from??)

The Philips Acoustic Edge is for 5.1 speakers and S/PDIF in and out, which I don't need. You might get better sound from the Acoustic Edge than the Seismic Edge, but it will be marginal (it also supports EAX 2.0 and I3DLevel2).

 

[WetWilly]

No prob. If I were buying I'd wait as well.

The driver thing seems to be an issue with Philips as well. None of the new Edge cards were listed on the Philips sites I could find. Which means no support pages with drivers either. BTW, what driver version are you running? In my search for Philips stuff I found a March 2000 driver v1.30 for the Aztech.

 

[holdencommodore]

You will be able to find the 3 Philips soundcards at
under the Acoustic Edge... www.philipsusa.com
I have got the 1.30 Aztech driver, but although released in March, the driver is quite a bit older - this is why I want to find out if the Seismic Edge soundcard has newer drivers. I am in the process of finding when Philips will finally get a driver page up...
Just for the record 3d Sound Surge is going to soon release their own review of the Philips