The Asus A7V133 Thread

[djchemistry]

Hi people. I just setup my A7V133 and love it to death. The board made my transition from Intel to AMD effortless. And thanks to the affordable duron, I'm now in the gigahertz club.

So what kind of performance are all you getting out of this board as far as memory benchmarks and such? Should I get some quality ram and use the 4 way interleave feature? And what about raid, anyone using it?

 

[Dulanic]

Mike works perfectly.. here is some screen shots...

WCPUID
Sandra Memory Benchmark
The Sandra memory benchmark is at 150 FSB.

 

[djchemistry]

Holy $#%%! How do you get memory benchmarks like that? I barely pass 400 in each. What's your bios revision and settings?

 

[Dulanic]

1001D and the memory is set to the PC143 7ns setting which sets Cas2, But thats at 150FSB too, but you should be near 575-600 at 133 I believe.

 

[djchemistry]

You need atleast two sticks of ram to enable 4way interleave right?

 

[Technonut]

I have tested many Socket A mobos for my personal system, and have always gone back to the ABIT KT7 or recently the KT7AR. I built many systems with the ABIT, and have never had any issues with them.

I picked up an A7V133 along with a few other mobos a couple of weeks ago to test, and needless to say, the A7V133 has found a home in my primary system. I had an initial issue with running 2 256MB sticks of Infineon, or 3 128MB sticks of Mosel Vitelic not counting the RAM amount correctly, but solved the problem by installing 3 128MB sticks of Crucial single sided CAS2 PC133, while still using the BIOS that increases memory performance.

The A7V133 has been the fastest and most stable board that I have used to date. I am running the Crucial RAM @ CAS2 & FSB at 148, with my 1200 T-Bird @ 1405MHz, 1.80V. I use a SoundBlaster Live, and did not have to disable SB 16 Emulation, USB ports & my powered hub with 2 USB/1 serial/1 printer port works well, and other than an issue that I have while attempting to use my MS Optical Trackball USB mouse with the PS/2 adapter without going buggy, it works great. (I am back to using my non optical MS Trackball PS/2 mouse with no trouble, until I find a fix. )

A7V133 Sandra Scores

CPU....3957/1935
Memory...602/684
MM.....7885/9587
HD (RAID0)....36894

Content Creation Winstone 2000

A score of 49.4 (one of the highest I have seen)


Anyway, the A7V133 is a fantastic board, and is smooth as glass, whether performing my normal everyday business tasks, or hardcore gaming. I will be 100% satisfied when I can get my optical Trackball working correctly using the PS/2 adapter, or just giving it a try on a USB port alone (I have not tried this yet due to a busy schedule)

 

[djchemistry]

Technonut,

I know what you mean about sblive emulation. I've had to disable it on two earlier boards, but with the Asus A7V133 I didn't have any IRQ trouble. Not to mention that everything installed flawlessly my first try. Quite impressive with your scores. I think I will definitely need to upgrade to some higher quality ram.

 

[ogn]

I have the A7V, KT7R, and A7V133. All are great overclockers. The cold boot issue on the A7V133 is a problem though, as well as it's weak RAID support. The stability for me on all these boards is great along with overclocking. The KT7R is on 24/7 for a few months now with TBird 750@1.1Ghz. The A7V is my video editor with Radeon AIW and Duron 600@1Ghz. The A7V133 will be my new video editing station with another Duron 600@1Ghz (7.5x133). Each system has a SB Live in it and I've never had a problem with SB Live Emulation or USB ports. My KT7R had a printer, flash card reader, webcam, and keyboard/mouse hooked to it without problems.

My order on favorites is the KT7R, A7V133, A7V. I was really hard choosing between A7V133 and KT7AR.

Technonut

Do you have those drives RAID 0 in Win2k?

A7V133
Duron 600@1Ghz (7.5 x 133) @ 1.85V
Voodoo5 5500
512 MB PC133 Crucial 2-2-2
SB Live
3 Com 3C905B-TX
WD 18GB 7200
2 x Maxtor 20GB 5400 RAID 0
Iomega -> Plextor 12x10x32
50X CD-ROM

 

[Technonut]

The Crucial CT16M64S4D7E CAS2 128MB sticks are only $54.89 a stick, and I think Crucial is still offering free UPS 2nd Day Air shipping. You can see the RAM specs Here.
There is of course no guarantee that they will run 150MHz, but many people have run these sticks at 145-150 CAS2 easily. The price is right also

My 3 CT16M64S4D7E sticks will run flawlessly at 150MHz CAS2. It is just that my 1200 tops out with 100% stability at alittle over 1400MHz, and the RAM has to be at 148MHz to accomplish that.



ogn, that HD bench is in 98SE. I have not gotten around to the Partition Magic thing yet to go back to my usual dual boot setup. I also have not had the cold boot issue with this board. Works fine no matter when I fire it up/shut it down.

 

[Oxy]

Technonut, I am thinking of building a simular system. What do you need to think about. Do you still need to do the pencil trick on the cpu?

 

[djchemistry]

What cold boot problem are you having ogn? I haven't had any boot problems whatsoever.

 

[Technonut]

Oxy, a quality power supply (I personally like Enermax), RAM, components, and cooling (both processor and case) pretty much covers it. As for the question regarding having to unlock the processor, (I assume that you mean a 1200) mine arrived factory unlocked. I see from other posts that many are, but some are not. Your best bet would be to find a shop or computer show, and personally look at the 1200 before you purchase it. From what I gather week 1-3's have a good overclocking potential as well as a good chance of being factory unlocked. I have a week 1. There is supposed to be a AMD price cut on March 5th, so I would hold off to see what the prices drop to.

 

[Oxy]

Thanks, though how can you tell by looking on a cpu of its Factory unlocked?

 

[Technonut]

Just look closely at the L1's on the T-Bird. If it is locked, there will be a fine line cutting the L1's in half. If it is unlocked, the bridges will be connected together.

 

[djchemistry]

I thought all the 1.2ghz T-birds come factory unlocked. All the ones compuwiz1 sells are.

 

[Dulanic]

<< The cold boot issue on the A7V133 is a problem though >>



No its not, just use the Vcore jumpers. It overrides the BIOS and you can still use jumperfree for the rest.

 

[djchemistry]

That's what I do too. I have the vcore jumpers set and still use jumperless settings in the bios for the fsb and multiplier.

 

[nealh]

Technonut did you find you could o/c higher with non mosel ram on the Asus A7V133...I have some infineon ram but it tops out I think near 140 cas333...
I have 1.2@1386 or 9.5 146 on bios 1.001D at pc143....mosel ram

My 1.2 will give registry errors if I got 1390 (sometimes) 1400 (if cold boot seems ok...if I reboot it will give win registry errors)...so I think my Jan week 3...is stuck at 1386

 

[RoCo]

Hi guys,

any known multiplier problems with A7V133 for 1+GHz Tbirds???

Please let's us know if all multipliers are working fine for non-133FSB Tbirds @ >1GHz!


Big thanks!

 

[Technonut]

nealh, as I stated above, I had issues with multiple sticks of both Mosel, and Infineon counting the correct RAM amount, so I really did not test them on the A7V133. I know that they all would run at 150MHz on my KT7, and KT7AR.

I usually use Crucial RAM for my customer builds, (I participate in Crucial's VAR program) and I had a few 128MB sticks of the CT16M64S4D7E CAS2 PC133. All 3 will run at 150MHz CAS2 perfectly. Like I said, my 1200 does not OC much past 1400MHz. I can run at a 150 FSB/memory speed, but it is not 100% stable because of the processor limitation, not the RAM. You could try the Crucial, but if you want to put out the extra cash, get the Mushkin Rev. 3 that is guaranteed to OC to 150MHz.

 

[nealh]

My 1.2 is 100fsb tbird...it has no problems except it will not go higher than 1386...

 

[Technonut]

Well, 1386MHz is not bad at all It is all &quot;luck of the draw&quot; Another forum member ordered a 1200 from the same place that I did, on the same day I think, and his runs at 1500MHz on an A7V133. I tried to tell him that he must have gotten my 1200 by mistake

 

[ogn]

I did end up using the Vcore jumpers to set the voltage and the multiplier setting in the bios.

technonut
The only reason I mention RAID 0 in Win2K is that from all the articles I've found, Promise says that the RAID 0 cannot be used as a boot device. I've tried installing Win2K on a RAID 0 drive and I get the inaccessable boot device error. Whistler does just as bad.

 

[4speed]

For 3 weeks I've tried to break the 1304 mark but can't. Then things become unstable but it's still sweet UT, CS, etc.
I see posted 1.2gig @ 1.4gig or 1.2 @ 1.5 wow! Can't image how nice that is!
Bought this 1.2 blue core with &quot;paw&quot; in the serial #, and was told this was a great chip to overclock to at least 1.4 with the A7V133 mobo but no luck yet.
Nice to see somebody else is irish!
Mark 2000 stays around 9450. I'm happy with this system!

1.2 @1.3 tbird
A7v133 Fop38 1.80 core v. 9x145 fsb
2x 256 kingmax 150 cas2
Ibm deskstar 7200rpm
Hercules GTS2 Ultra

 

[Tako]

Yep, I can vouch for it's consistency and performance of this board as well. Love it, just like the original A7V.

I also had the KT7A, and worked fine as well. Tweaking is a bit more extensive, but if you know what parameter does what in the BIOS, you're in good shape. There were some trouble initially with my SCSI card detection (some workaround needed), but that was about it. Had a similar issue with the original KT7 before I migrated to A7V. Interestingly, yesterday I see a report about the KT7 being knocked off the AMD recommended motherboard list. I wonder what part of the spec Abit did not follow?

Tako_chu