Abit KT7 Vs MSI K7T Pro2a

[GT1999]

<< Why blame it on MSI when its VIA's fault? >>



The DMA problem is NOT MSI's fault, I never intended to blame that on MSI, but rather on the 686B southbridge. The MSI had poor benchmarks (especially memory), and the first board I went through had a bad floppy drive controller. Sure, the MSI had it's flaws - do does the Abit I have now, but I personally prefer the Abit. I don't think there's anything wrong with liking a board that is better in benchmarks and doesn't give a nice high pitched whine in the middle of games.

 

[jonnyGURU]

For the record I would like to state that I for one am not &quot;quick to RMA&quot; anything. MOST of what I get back from customers that customers &quot;assume&quot; is bad, ends up getting bounced right back to them.

The OT regulars know that this is the subject matter of 90% of the rants I do in the OT forum.

It's so bad that I am going to seriously consider charging both bench charges AND shipping on product I need to return to customers as &quot;tested good&quot;.

The numbers I have supplied are based on product that passes through ME (or the other tech here) FIRST.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Great, and thats one location... your location. Do you speak for all PC distributers? hehehehehe.

Geekish, you play CS? I am a hardcore CS player... too i am gonna go play on your server in a few mins... hopefully see ya there. MY name is (IIA) Arch Angel.

 

[ArchAngel777]

HEY geekish Is your server down? 204.248.52.19? BTW what is the port #?

 

[jonnyGURU]

No. I don't speak for &quot;all distributors&quot;, but I obtain my Abit boards from three different sources (based on availability) and MSI boards from 2 (based on availability) and sell about 100-200 of each per day, so I think I can take the liberty to lay down a pretty decent demographic.

What's your point?





PS: Geekish Thoughts: I bought my personal KT7 Pro 2A to REPLACE my KT7 RAID under recommendation of a coworker who is a Win 2000 user that had ALSO replaced a KT7 board. He has had no problems (if he had, he wouldn't have suggested the board) except for the regret that his memory benchmarks are lower. Can you be more specific as to what problems you were having?

 

[Dexion]

LXI, I think your overly protecting MSI and outright just &quot;bashing&quot; Abit's alternative. You seem like a a spokes person for MSI or something. I have no clue why your so persistant with MSI propaganda. I'm not saying your a troll, but your far more concerned about other people's Socket A choices than anyone on this board.

Granted that Abit KT7 is not as &quot;stable&quot; than the MSI under Anand's test. However, since anand's work and &quot;testing&quot; techniques are of hgh standard, could it be that these tests are far more extreme compared to regular consumer use? Anandtech is a great resource and over the years, their reviews on products have gradually improved; being far more descriptive in detail, more hardware intensive tests, and far more pin-point accurate. In other words, in my opinion, it just a small flaw in the board that may not affect anyone's computing experience using the product.

You may be right to &quot;Prove&quot; the MSI being the better board(and I don't disprove that). Just relax with this issue, and definately don't bash anyone for owning a Abit K7T. Its not as bad of a board you claim it to be.

 

[GT1999]

My Counterstrike server would be up, but I need a system at home. Unfortunatly, my P3-450 is still my home system until I get the Highpoint controller working on my KT7 board. The server was scheduled to be up and running today, but I'll probably be RMA'ing this Abit - which work great except for the Highpoint controller. Damn, I just love VIA chipsets. :Q I still prefer the Abit, it's given me less hastles.

Anyway yeah, I'm a hardcore CS player. My handle is tlarmon. Check back at that IP (port 27016) in a couple of weeks

 

[jonnyGURU]

<< The server was scheduled to be up and running today, but I'll probably be RMA'ing this Abit - which work great except for the Highpoint controller. Damn, I just love VIA chipsets. >>



What does the board having a VIA chipset have anything to do with whether or not the Highpoint works?

 

[BenSkywalker]

My experience is limited in this direct comparison to only the MSI board, and I have had both good and bad experiences to date.

Bad- It won't adjust multipliers for me. I have an unlocked Duron, I have redone the bridges half a dozen times now, it simply won't work. Looking into the problem more it seems that there is a number of MSI K7TPro2As with this problem, so much so that MSI is currently working on the problem. I can't attest to the rate of boards that have this problem, and it does seem to be a rather small percentage, but it is there and there in enough quantities to warrant MSI trying to find a fix for it.

Good- Stability. I'm not talking about handling all of the regular day to day stuff, that should be expected. My previous main system used an Asus K7M and I would see 30 days plus up time running Win98 on a regular basis as long as I didn't install any new hardware or applications that required me to reboot.

I have picked up Giants and was trying to play through it and was constantly crashing to the desktop and having an all around pain in the @ss with keeping the game running for more then a few hours on a good day(sometimes it would be a matter of minutes). The games has bugs, and lots of them. Planet Moon is working on fixing these, they are well documented. After I got the K7T installed I reinstalled the game started over and not a single problem after playing almost half way through the game. No more crashing, no locks, and greatly increased performance, in the range of 100% boost in FPS(despite only moving from a 550 Athlon to a 650 Duron).

Not crashing or hard locking your computer should be a given, I don't consider that to be the sign of a high quality motherboard. The K7T has provided me a stable platform for a title that is full of bugs, that I consider impressive.

 

[Mem]

<< MSI offers a better product because they angle that northbridge chip diagnol-like. It impresses the women when I show them my extra large capacitor. >>



If you read any decent review you will find that the reason for this is to reduce signal traces(length) so you get a cleaner signal,looks like the MSi engineers were wide awake
The large capacitors are to ensure maximum stability &amp; to make sure the Processor has enough power(especially the faster models).

 

[LXi]

Dexion:

Im not saying Abit is a bad board, I said they're second best earlier in the thread. Im just being really tired of people like ArchAngle777 who have absolutley no idea what they're talking about, of course, they would never admit that they're wrong.

 

[PCResources]

This discussion is over, the people who really work with MSI and Abit boards recommends the MSI over the Abit, all of them...

If your Abit board is running fine, that's just great, but for those of us who have had soo many of these boards to try out, we can see that the MSI is better, in fact, when it comes to RMA/DOA rates right now, they are the best.

Don't take it as a personal insult of your system, it was never intended that way.

Some of you enjoy bashing LXi, even though he never said that the Abit board was bad, i'm the guy who is saying that, Abit boards are not even close to the quality offered by MSI.

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources

 

[Buddabudda]

I was totally joking about the angled chip and capacitor size =). Capacitor size has nothing to do with quality, but the MSI capacitors seem to regulate voltage extremely well, hence the stability. As far as the tracer shortening, I'll just have to take the engineers word on that, it's way beyond my ablility to verify or anyone elses besides the engineers at MSI I would guess, unless they release the spec maps for their printed circut boards to the public. Even then I'm not electrical engineer.

 

[office boy]

Holy MSI zealots in here. :Q

 

[CQuinn]

PCResources, It comes across as unreasonably arrogant to call a dicussion,
even if the major points have been covered; when there are still minor
issues that are worthy of discourse.

Don't take this personally, but I have a hard time believing you speak for
*all* the people who work with Abit and MSI boards. Most of the time I
assume you are speaking from a well reasoned point of view, but you tend
to imply that your opinion, experienced or not, has the force of Gospel to
us, the unwashed masses. That I find mildy irratating, not enough to
stop valuing your posts, but enough to question the reasoned credibility
of your statements.

There are posters here who take Anandtech's reviews the same way, a product
that was once considered number one is overshadowed by a new review, and
so suddenly it becomes a piece of crap? No, it is still a valid alternative,
and certainly not much worse than the other boards from that review - the
ones that nobody bothers to mention?

For the record, this is not meant as a flame at you Patrick; if I may quote you:

&quot;Don't take it as a personal insult of your system, it was never intended that way.&quot;

That was one of the most reasoned statements in this whole thread. And to
put it back on topic. I bought a KT7-RAID because it offered a combination
of features that better suited my needs/wants than the K7T Pro. I was a
bit concerned about the RMA issues, but so far it has worked as expected, plus
it seems to be a newer revision than that reviewed so there may be somewhat
more quality in the latest design. Would I be just as happy/happier with
the MSI? Perhaps, but I also didn't feel like fighting with the rest
of Anandtech to find the best deal. If someone were to ask me for
a recommendation, I'd probably point them to the reviews and thread discussions
to give them enough data to make their own decision. If they don't want
to think about it that much, then I'd probably go the same route that PCResources
provides as a quality service to his customers.

Buddabudda, it's not the size of your capacitor, its how much of a charge you
can handle with it.

 

[GT1999]

Jonny- What problems have I had? Way too many to list. I'm back on my ol' Abit BF6/ P3-450 again, something I've had to do about 4 times now because crappy VIA KT133 based boards just don't seem to work for me. I would ditch this entire setup (motherboard + cpu), but I bought a retail 1.1GHz Thunderbird, and I am unable to return this to the place I bought it from. Currently, I'm on the phone with Multiwave Direct to get yet another replacement motherboard to work with this CPU. The amount of funds I've put into getting this system running unsuccesfully could not be added up to around $150 not including actually buying something; that is, I've spent that much on shipping and misc costs.

I hope this next motherboard isn't a &quot;lemon&quot;.

G|T

 

[rmd2001]

I have Abit KT7-RAID and it works great. Can't comment on MSI but probably good board too. And don't forget that any board can give you a problem.

Good luck.

 

[rmd2001]

I have Abit KT7-RAID and it works great. Can't comment on MSI but probably good board too. And don't forget that any board can give you a problem.

Good luck.

 

[A2KLAU]

I have not used any of them but by the looks of things the MSI sounds liek it should be my next mobo!

Albert. (SKY)

 

[grygrx]

People get so heated in defense of products they own and/or endorse. I just purchased a new motherboard for my wife, and the Abit KT7 and the MSI K7T Pro2a came quickly to the top as contenders for the crown. Based on Anand's review and the ATA100 support I went with the K7T Pro2a, it was easy to setup and install (Windows 2000) and has been totally stable. The only problem I found were some 3D lockups that where occuring when benchmarking w/3dMark2000 or playing UT. I found the largePageMinimum reg fix http://support.microsoft.com/suppor...=1&amp;src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&amp;SPR=WIN2000 and that was then end of it. It has been solid as a rock for two weeks now.

Adam

 

[Budman]

AGP Program May Hang When Using Page Size Extension on Athlon Processor Fix linkafied.

 

[Wiplash]

WoW :Q heated debate
All I can add is that there is a lot of reviews that gave the MSI K7T series good ratings. Also Alienware uses the MSI boards and they only use top notch stuff that has been tested. Also overclockers.com said the Abit was a bad experience. Now I don't own either (getting msi soon) but I will save my jugment till I get the MSI.

 

[MassMhz]

Trot on over to overclockers UK and Tell GIBBO205 all this crap,he has the fastest and highest clocked 1 GIG AMD set up in the world to date,And guess what board it is useing........ABIT.You guys post some scores/screen shots on 3D mark,Sis soft,and complete SETI work unit times on any system up to my 1200mhz limit and Abit will show you how poor MSI performs and i guarantee it won't crash doing it.I'll post mine after i get some response.If you have above 1200mhz go to these bench mark statistic sites or to OCUK and check GIBBO205 and a few others,you guys pale in comparison to thier overclocking and they use ABIT.I would like an explanation of the &quot;better components&quot; use in MSI,could you be more specific,which parts and why are they better?Doesn't faster speed/scores mean better throughput?Why do low end parts on Abit perform better than MSI's high end parts?
MSI has a great board but it is still SECOND BEST or maybe third,as i don't have an ASUS to shoot with.Never the less AMD ROCKS and PIII SOCKS!
For the record,my Abit has the rotated Northbridge.Any one else have this?

You can make any system crash but you can't make any system perform!
3DMark Results Overclockers UK

 

[Budman]

The only problem i have with Abit is consistency,some users find they have great boards &amp; love them while others are just plain horrible.

They need to improve their quality control A BIT more.

 

[JoPalm]

Some people here talk about &quot;RMA&quot;...what is it?! (i know..newbie question)