Asus A7V or ABiT KT7?

[toph99]

i have read through the posts, and i find it's always a tie. i am thinking instead of getting a Celeron and CUSL2 combo, to try out gettin a Duron. are there any disadvantages to any of them(non raid for the abit) capacitors, excess heat etc?

also, i notice the asus only has 3 master PCI's, and the ABIT has 4. what are the IRQ assignments/which slots are shared with these two boards? what cards can be put into shared slots?

 

[CraigRT]

I'd say get the A7V cause i've always been an Asus fan and never had problems! - also a friend has one and he likes it!
but others would say Abit. they both good according to reviews!
But as for the what goes in what slot i am not sure as i've never built an A7V system myself.
U should give it a try, if you don't have tons of periphs it won't be too hard figuring it out.

 

[pen^2]

kt7 no doubt. go search for my post in the hot deals forum. besides what i posted there, kt7 has more options in the bios and are reportedly more stable.

 

[blammo22]

I have an A7V, which runs great, but I kinda wish I'd waited for the KT7 - being able to overclock easily within the BIOS is very attractive (versus opening up the case and flipping DIP switches/ changing jumpers). I also had a lot of problems initially with my board (incompatible with my SBLive, random freezes, etc.) - I finally got all the problems fixed (except the SBLive - I now have a Yamaha sound card), but it took like 1-2 weeks of playing around with it, and reinstalling Win2K and Win98SE more than I'd want to admit. Also, the fan on the KT7 chipset may help a bit with overclocking - it just seems like a better designed board, IMHO (granted, I've only used the A7V personally, though).

I think all the PCI slots on both the A7V and KT7 support busmastering. The A7V has 5 slots, although the Promise controller kind of takes the place of the 6th slot. I've heard bad things about the HPT370 ATA100 controller on the KT7-RAID, whereas I've had good experiences with Promise controllers (both the PCI Ultra66, and the Ultra100 built-into the A7V). Personally I'd recommend the KT7 non-RAID, and get an Ultra100 if you want ATA100 support.

Just my opinion, anyways.

 

[xyyz]

i've had experience with both... that A7V blew... gave me nothing but problems... now I have the KT7-RAID and i'm not having any problems (w/exception of a win2k setup problem that might not be the board's fault)

i've used 3 abit boards and they all were wonderful products... for what it's worth i'd stick with the Abit and keep away from the problematic Asus board.

 

[StickHead]

I have a KT7 and I'm pretty happy with it so far. SoftMenu3 is great when tweaking!

 

[VisionsUCI]

I have an A7V, and I've had no problems. I haven't overclocked my processor yet (800mhz Tbird) because I think its fast enough, but perhaps I will in the future. I think maybe I should have gotten the Abit, but I don't think that there is much of a difference. You can't go wrong with either of them.

 

[RISman]

I have the Asus A7V, I had one issue with the SBLive sound card and ever since I got that resolved, it's been running for over a week without incident. I have it topped off with a Duron 700 running at 800MHZ. I have 128MB PC100 RAM and a TNT2 Video card...nothing special...So far a very stable board..

 

[rominl]

if you can get a good KT7 (ABIT's products vary a lot in quality), it should be a better choice since it has more settings and the softmeu III, plus its raid function