What's the best KT133A board (no RAID) for STABILITY??

[UNCjigga]

I know there are dozens of kt133a threads, and I hate to be adding another one! I currently have a TBird 850 on a K7T Pro2A. Previously, all my boards have been Abit or Asus so I'm somewhat biased towards those manufacturers. The MSI board I have now offers decent performance, but I've had a few stability issues (I don't overclock.)

I wanted to get a KT133a board so I could take advantage of the 133MHz bus and conservatively o'clock my Tbird. I was wondering if those of you with KT133a boards have had any stability issues with a particular board and which board you would recommend (again-I'd rather not have RAID channels.) I'm mostly concerned with the A7V133 and the KT7A, but I'm curious about the Epox and Iwill boards too since these have been gettin pretty good reviews. As far as actual daily use goes, which is the best (fewest reboots if you know what I mean?)

 

[GT1999]

Anand liked the A7V133. It looks like a winner and thats the one I would personally go with.

However, the A7V266 is about to come out, and it comes with support for both SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM.

 

[Biggs]

Tom liked the Asus A7V133 as well.

 

[ErikaeanLogic]

if you're not going to use a 1.1 or 1.2GHz T-Bird, then get an EPoX 8KTA3; you'll save $30 and you'll have a totally awesome board. I've owned an A7V133 and two 8KTA3's and they're both great, but for your needs an A7V133 would be overkill. Just the usual $0.02

 

[drjefft]

The Asus is not quite up to current specs, to wit:

1. Uses a software based audio Codec not an onboard audio CHIP. Iwill KK266 uses an onboard CHIP!
2. Will not handle the upcoming Palomino CPU due to voltage/amperage issues.
See overclockers.com article here. The Iwill KK266 (with a BIOS update) and Abit KT7A can handle the Palomino CPU. The Epox 8KTA3 is said to be up to the task as well... read the referenced article.
3. Uses the initial/original A0 stepping of the KT133a chipset which is reported to have problems with 133/266 FSB abilities... that is to say the A0 stepping has problems, not necessarily the Asus AV7-133 board. Abit KT7A uses the A0 stepping as well. Iwill uses the A1 stepping - don't know about the Epox board.

Abit is reported to be under extreme finanacial trouble at present and may not see the end of the business year - if so, say goodbye to BIOS updates for their MBs.

Generally the KT133a boards are more stable than their younger KT133 brothers. Iwill completely redesigned their KT133a board - Good. Abit did little redesign in there KT7a upgrade - weak.

If you have occasional stability problems, be sure to check your Power Supply with the AMD site (Since you said you wanted to overclock your CPU I linked to the AMD 1.0GHz Power Supply recommendations)and your Win OS (sans Win 2k which is very stable) as no motherboard, regardless of its rock solid stability, can overcome the problems these two entities can create.

 

[tpetre4322]

no body uses the onboard sound anyway except oems,and as far as this palamino crap is concerned we will all be in new mainboards buy then anyway, and the a7v133 goes down in vcore so it may work, look the abit has the nasty highpoint controller many problems, and all the rest of the pack including the iwill are haveing multiplyer bios related problems do you want a good board now that can run any chip at high fsb or do you want to piss and moan. get the asus. yes it has raid, but its jumpered so you can use as just ata100.and if you decide to go raid promise is the best mobo chip, and it can be changed to full raid.

 

[btac]

drjefft, you had some interesting comments. I liked the stuff you had to say about the IWILL KK266 - just ordered one before I read this thread. Hope I get it to work with a 1.2 tbird. The observation about Abit going under comes out of the blue. Where did you hear about that? Not that it can't happen - they probably got overloaded with RMA's.

 

[Instigator]

uncJIGGA,
I'd wait for the A7V266. The KT266 will be an awesome chipset. If your set on the KT133a
I like the Asus board the best, then the Abit.

 

[Dulanic]

<< 1. Uses a software based audio Codec not an onboard audio CHIP. Iwill KK266 uses an onboard CHIP!
2. Will not handle the upcoming Palomino CPU due to voltage/amperage issues.
See overclockers.com article here. The Iwill KK266 (with a BIOS update) and Abit KT7A can handle the Palomino CPU. The Epox 8KTA3 is said to be up to the task as well... read the referenced article.
3. Uses the initial/original A0 stepping of the KT133a chipset which is reported to have problems with 133/266 FSB abilities... that is to say the A0 stepping has problems, not necessarily the Asus AV7-133 board. Abit KT7A uses the A0 stepping as well. Iwill uses the A1 stepping - don't know about the Epox board. >>



#1 True it is AC97, its not the best Onboard Audio... but 99% of people here have a sound card Im guessing.
#2 False, I will have an article up on TweakMax soon on this issue.
#3 False, The A0 has no problems, the only difference is A1 seems to OC a tad better then A1, A0 usually has no problem hitting 150-153 FSB, some have hit higher.

 

[SammyBoy]

any word on when the A7V266 with the kt266 chipset will be coming out???

 

[PieDerro]

Other than the minor problem with my motherboard not always booting up first time due to an incompatibility with my GF2 card, my Abit KT7A is extremely stable. I have never had a non-heat related crash (touch wood) since I first built my system several weeks ago, and I am running a 1.2GHz@1.35GHz with the most aggressive memory timings, and a standard HEC 300W power supply.

KT7A all the way!!

BTW, I'm running Win98SE so I couldn't comment on 2000.