ABIT KT7-A RAID your Views?

[narzy]

from what I hear they are good, I am going for the best of the best for a friends computer, what are you suggestions or am I going the right direction? I read the review I just want thou views

Thanks.

 

[DiseasedDonkey]

i got one in jan. granted, i am a hobbyist at best (i make a new system once a year for myself), but i found and still find this board very frustrating. it has taken me many many many countless hours to get it to where it is fairly stable. i spent more time on web sites here and there etc.

now, i am not saying it is a bad board in any way, i am just saying that it is more complex than anything else i have set up.

i know there are tons of guys out there who are hardware guys who are scoffing etc, but if you are not one of those said people you may have some very difficult times ahead for MANY months to come.

Take of this what you will

 

[tracerbullet]

Same here. Got blue screens with the RAID controller's drivers, couldn't use more than 3 PCI cards or no boot, and any USB objects plugged in made it freeze.

Set it back to just using the Non-RAID IDE ports only, and turned the controller off in the BIOS. Everything workked great. Conclusion - they have a lot of problems to work out. I sent mine back for an MSI, should be here tomorrow. (MSI uses Promise controller instead of Highpoint).

Supposedly new MSI BIOS will finish off full overclocking ability as well, so there should be nothing to keep me from enjoying it. Need to find that BIOS now...

 

[bonkers325]

i am proud owner for 3 of these mobos no probs

 

[alarcon]

same here
Abit KT7A-RAID , Athlon 1.0Ghz@1.2Ghz, Adaptec SCSI Controller, SBLive, Windows2000
and no problems yet

 

[narzy]

we wont be using the raid feature, just the board, you ask why raid then? well thats because we want the option, I am sure the drivers will improve if that is the issue. its sould 50% split here, I am going to reread the review thanks for the imput, if not this board what one should I go with?

 

[whalen]

Great board... haven't had any problems except for the ATA 100 in win2k, but the new beta via drivers fixed that. Never get any kind of lockups or crashes.

 

[whalen]

DP

 

[Mustanggt]

I like the KT7A but I think there better out there If you are not going to be overclocking I would go for something else. If you are going to be overclocking be warned that if the KT7A dosent like a overclock it sometimes takes 3 to 5 cold boots to get it back up.

 

[TeMpT]

I have had an KT7A and recently exchanged it for a A7V133 (ASUS). Don't misread this as KT7A being bad. On contrary, I really miss the tweakabiltiy of the KT7A. The problem with the KT7A (non-raid, at least) is that it has some issues with having SBLive and DVD/CDR drives on the second IDE channel. There were ways around the problem, but all of them requiring some sacrifice of sort (disable DMA/install Miniport=>higher CPU usage).

To refrain my my rambling, I think KT7A is an awesome board. Given a few more bios fixes, this will be a GREAT board if you are a tweak fan. The ASUS I have now is great, too. It has less tweaking options and seems to fall slightly short of my old KT7A. However, this board is stable has hell. I tried to reproduce the problem I had on the KT7A and still no problem. I think ASUS is targetting towards people who wants to do some tweaking and just want a box that runs. ABIT, on the other hand, has got to be a tweaker's dream come true.

 

[twong82]

I think it is the best mobo now. You should go for it.

 

[DavidJr]

I love my KT7A-RAID. It runs rock solid at with a 1.2ghz running at 133mhz FSB. I love it, and it was really easy to get it to 133FSB too, I was shocked at that. I havent had a lock up yet! KNOCK ON WOOD! Its great for me!

 

[Pederv]

It's taken almost 4 months of tweak and try to get my system solid. If you want to learn how your system and OS interact and about system resource allocation, the KT7 is your board. The only system I've had to play with as much as I have to with my KT7, is my first system (a 386DX-25MHz). But both systems I was trying to push as far as I could with what I had.
If you want to slap your system together and go, I'd suggest the ASUS. But it too can have problems. So you may not escape learning a little something either way.

 

[Joemonkey]

alarcon -

what voltage are you running to get 1.2ghz?

 

[dingdongdingdong]

I love the mobo. it can overclock my 1gig@1440mhz. but i choose to run 1gig@1380mhz for supper stab what i mean is can do every thing i want even muti heavy app run at the sametime still no crash. but the only down side of this mobo is hardrive score are wore. my IBM 45gig 7200rpm ATA100 score under window 2000 is only 1560 so that is very low so any one know what going on ?????

 

[WarCon]

I love mine, no problems and so many choices. Its letting me 4k page and 4x interleave generic memory at cas2 with no prob. Stable, I am impressed, only one problem with mine and i don't think its a board problem i think its acpi and nvidia driver issue, but no one with answer my thread.

 

[alarcon]

I´m running at 1.85V

 

[MCS]

TeMpT

I had the same problem as you. If you put your HDs on the HPT controller and put your CD-ROMs the VIA controller the problem is fixed.

Bit late now for you but I'd thought I'd mention it.