I've been posting this last week about the horrible problems I've been having with two Epox 8KTA3 (KT133a) motherboards I bought. Neither of them would run at 133MHz with either my T-Bird 900 or 1.2GHz. I was also having problems with the four IDE devices I have installed in my computer when DMA is enabled. Just installing programs from from my CD-ROM or moving large files from one hard drive to another caused my computer to freeze or reset. I had to disable DMA in order to keep that from happening. I was extremely disapointed...especially after reading all the great reviews on the board.
I've always bought Abit boards in the past, but I couldn't get one of their KT133A boards, and that's why I went with an Epox board. Any way, I just got a Abit KT7A-Raid today, and I'm VERY happy right now! First off, the DMA problem doesn't happen on my Abit board, and best of all I can run at 133MHz bus! =) In fact I can run at 145MHz bus at CAS 2 and 150MHz at CAS 3. I can almost finish loading windows at 1,333MHz...I haven't done enough testing to find the sweet spot yet. However, I think it will run at 1.3GHz just fine. My Quake 3 Team Arena scores went up 20fps from when I was running the Epox board at 100MHz bus. I'm a happy camper now...thanks Abit! =)
I've always bought Abit boards in the past, but I couldn't get one of their KT133A boards, and that's why I went with an Epox board. Any way, I just got a Abit KT7A-Raid today, and I'm VERY happy right now! First off, the DMA problem doesn't happen on my Abit board, and best of all I can run at 133MHz bus! =) In fact I can run at 145MHz bus at CAS 2 and 150MHz at CAS 3. I can almost finish loading windows at 1,333MHz...I haven't done enough testing to find the sweet spot yet. However, I think it will run at 1.3GHz just fine. My Quake 3 Team Arena scores went up 20fps from when I was running the Epox board at 100MHz bus. I'm a happy camper now...thanks Abit! =)