Tom Pabst was right about video performance with KT133A !!!!

[Chaca]

Every review that I've seen so far for the ASUS A7V133 mobo has been done with at least 133mhz FSB so as to hide the true performance compared to the A7V. I have two identical systems, one with A7V and the other with A7V133. Here are the results:

a) A7V + Duron 600 (6x100) = 36 FPS (Motocross Madness 2)
b) A7V133 + Duron 750 (7.5x100) = 27 FPS (Motocross Madness 2)

I have the latest drivers and BIOS for every piece of hardware and everything else is equal on both systems. I have tried all possible combinations of drivers, DX ver, BIOS, mem settings, VIA 4in1 and still the A7V beats the A7V133 by a WIDE margin!!! I am very frustrated at the fact that the A7V133 performs horribly unless you are willing to overclock your existing CPU or you don't mind throwing away the old one and buying a new one with 266 mhz FSB.

Has anybody else noticed this or even care about this?

 

[SaturnX]

I think I'm safe to say that at least 80% of people who own an A7V133 run their chips at 133. otherwise all you have is an A7V (in terms of features). Does this affect all KT133A board? like the Abit? Anyways, I frankly don't mind that, since I will running at 133Mhz when I get the board.

--Mark

 

[lifeguard1999]

Double/Triple/Quadruple check yourself. While I do not have an A7V(133), I did hae an unexplained dropoff in Quake3. It turned out that I had a program running in the background that caused the problem.

While that might not be the case for you, what may be happening is that you have an immature BIOS. Does the A7V have 4 way memory interleaving while the A7V133 does not? Use Sandra to check.

 

[Dulanic]

Not true for me, video performance in Q3 1024x768x32 is the same with the same video card on both my A7V and A7V133. So it for sure is not effecting my video perfomance... and my 640x480 scores went up quite a bit by going from 100 to 133FSB (Didnt check 100FSB on the A7V133 for 640x480).

Hell I know my A7V133 performs good... Ive got the #1 score in 3DMark 2001 with a GeForce DDR.. heck the guy below me is running at over 1400Mhz and doesnt beat me...

I can tell you what drivers and stuff I have...

BIOS 1004 (Byte Merge On, 7ns PC143 memory setting, Fast Writes On, System Performance set to Optimal, PCI to DRAM Prefetch On, everything else is default)
Promise Drivers 1.60 Build 33
VIA 4in1 4.29
DX8
Win2K

 

[Technonut]

<< Hell I know my A7V133 performs good... Ive got the #1 score in 3DMark 2001 with a GeForce DDR.. >>


I think the A7V133 video performance is good also. I currently have the 2nd highest 3DMark2000 score for a Radeon DDR at 1024x768 32bit at MadOnion. Comes in at 6118. I was #1 for awhile, but someone pulled a 6126

 

[Chaca]

I would have bought an A7V but nobody had them anymore so I was forced to buy an A7V133 but I don't overclock (stability is my middle name) so the only option for me would be to dump my 200 FSB Duron and get me a 266. If you think about it, it seems like all they did with the KT133A was to cripple the performance of the KT133 so as to make it run reliably at 133 and above. I have tried everything and am 99% sure about my conclusion.

-Frank

 

[RoboTECH]

yeah, you've definitely got somethign &quot;else&quot; going on

the Kt133 and KT133a are the same chipset, with a bit of tweekage to allow for stability @ 133 MHz FSB

 

[max105]

i thought the kt133a is supposed to haev better memory bandwidth too