Gigabyte's latest GA-7VRXP KT333 Refurb $66 Shipped @ Newegg

[moonfish]

Not a hot deal at all. Colder than a fat girl after prom.




Why IT sucks. Besides the known issues with geforce 4's etc etc.




I bought one at a local store and took it back. this board is not cheap for the features it has at all. what really killed me though was the fact that my board reset the FSB when it was powered down. getting it back up to speed takes about 3 boots.

Other people have the same problem in the forums at amdmb.com. and it is on rev 1.2 boards! It is completely not tolerable! It just plain sucks, folks.

ps. the refurb kx7 was $61 now i have one of those with raid for less money. And don't flame refurb stuff, it can work just fine.

If you really don't believe me check out the forums at amdmb.com under the GIGABYTE section and see all the dissatisfied customers they have. DON'T GET STUCK WITH ONE!

 

[RAQemUP]

I bought one of these long time ago for full retail price on newegg for something like $132 shipped (I have version 1.1 of the board). I use it with a 420 watt Turbolink PSU, 1700xp, MSI Geforce 4 Ti 4400, 512 mushkin pc2700, audigy card, etc. Not one problem with it. Liked it so much I bought 2 more when they went on refurb at newegg for $66 shipped each. Both came with everything. Have 1 running on a 420 watt Turbolink PSU, 1600 xp, MSI Geforce 3 TI 500, 512 SAmsung 2100, turtle beach, etc and the other runs on 350 watt Antec PSU, 1600xp, MSI OEM (Compaq) GEforce 3, Santa Cruz, 2 sticks 256 meg of PNY pc2100 (one with infineon and other with samsung).....they both work flawlessly and both are version 1.1 of the board. Alot of people who use the newer version 2.0 say that alot of the 1.1 problems were nonexistant on the version 2.0. Also at amdmb.com there is proof that there is a 1/5 pci divider for overclocking, but you do have to basically do a little dance to get it to kick in. The people who got it to kick in have it running at 166 fsb mainly.

All in all great board and if this is a version 2.0, I think I would jump on it in a sec if I had any reason to have a new comp.

Only thing to worry about is if you have enough PSU watt to send to everything.

 

[DEFIANT1]

Originally posted by: zodder
Can anyone please tell me why I shouldn't snag one of these?!

How about 4 reasons? My partner and I bought 4 of these boards for resale machines, and not a damned one of them worked! One of them even had the traces on the backside of the AGP slot burnt so badly that they were peeling off the PCB.

This makes 6 boards tried from Newegg refurb, and all returned. I'm losing my shirt on shipping costs and still have idle machines to build....grrrrr. Never again!

Incidentally, any of you that are sending bad refurb to Newegg for RMA.....Please write on the back of the part in PERMANENT MARKER what's wrong with them, so that the Newegg people can't say they "didn't know".

 

[Oakenfold]

DEFIANT1

It doesn't matter if you write on the board with a marker, I dont' think they check the products. If they do however they are not going to refund your money for writing on the PCB of a mainboard.

I've bought at least 5 or more of these boards from newegg, all of them worked, they just take quite a bit of getting used to in setting them up right.
Guess I got lucky.
As always remember YMMV with newegg refurbs, look at what Defiant said, he's had tons of trouble with them.
It's a crapshoot folks, be prepared to eat the shipping.

I like your idea though Defiant.

Now don't get me started on the 4600's and the EPOX mainboards I've gotten from them,
that's where my horror stories come from..

 

[topdog]

purchased the board back in august, refub.... the built on nic doesn't work
@ $66.00 i thru a spare card in.

 

[Buddha Bart]

I've had this board for a while, and despite trying 3 different OS's, the usb1 and usb2 slots, and two different card readers, I cannot get any form of usb-storage to work.

bart

 

[alyosha]

I am back with more info on the board:
Turns out that my unlocking job was not reliable and with changing the board and reinserting the CPU it came undone. After redoing it I had no problem overclocking with either mulptiplier (dip switch) or FSB (in Bios). I use Kingston value ram 2100 form the other thread (OM), however the biggest limit to overclocking is the RAID setup. The RAID drivers would not load and windows would come to halt at FSB higher than 145MHz, so I trimmed it down to 12.5x142. Raid is a little limited with Promise, particularly the limitation of only one 2-0 stripe setup, I used to run 2 of those in one computer with highpoint, however one was outdated, so I disabled it without much regret.
As for drivers, via chipset, usb - all worked well from the begining and I must say the experience was much better than with Abit. I did get everything working with all my Abit mobos before, just with a little more time, updates, flashes, reboots and such.
So - there is a full version of Promise bios out there - which can be used to set up any stripe, than keep that setting when bios is flashed to the latest one. There is a latest version of Bios with more tweak options unlocked, didnt try that, but plan in the future.
discussion boards- lots of info, smart guys:
www.amdmb.com
www.viaarena.com
By the way- USB, LAN, Sound - all have to be enabled in BIOS to use them, that could have explained some of the problems people reported - I have Zio smartmedia card reader connected and external USB hard drive for backup (to keep my data, during raid setup). I also would not recommend using easytune3 - that thing crashed RAID big time, thank you , but no thank you.

 

[tedinde1]

this board sucks. Yes it's a 333 board. and yes there's fsb overclocking. bad news is only a 1/4 divider. WTF.. I bought one refurbed from newegg 2 months ago. Yeah it has everything lan,usb 2.0. But anything above 152fsb cracks up on this board.

Must be the only kt333 board without a 1/5 divider.

save your money. Get a epox 333 board instead.

 

[SHoddyCOmp]

I got this board retail a while ago RMA'd it cause it fried everything connected to it, got another one from newegg and it overheats my cpu's to no end, NOW, i have to deal with Gigabyte themselves which is going to suck.

For the record, im using an EPoX 8k5a3+ and i am very happy with its performance.

 

[lsman]

I RMA this refurb a week ago. Newegg ship the board only with 2 fedex box (one inside another) and invoice. nothing else.
The board just can not POST, fans moving but simply no video output.

 

[DEFIANT1]

Originally posted by: Oakenfold

DEFIANT1

It doesn't matter if you write on the board with a marker, I dont' think they check the products. If they do however they are not going to refund your money for writing on the PCB of a mainboard.

Hmmm....never thought about not getting the money back. Hasn't been a problem so far. My partner got off the phone w/them Friday, and managed to get ALL the reverse-shipping credited back to him too! He then got a Fedex box with free goodies after lunch today...

I like your idea though Defiant.

Thanks! I still think it has merit, though....At least that way, the next guy would KNOW he's getting screwed in advance, without having to go thru the hassle of hooking it up.

 

[Oakenfold]

My partner got off the phone w/them Friday, and managed to get ALL the reverse-shipping credited back to him too!

Jeez, I've been going soft on them then!
I actually paid to ship an epox board back that someone had taken a friggin pen and drawn all over the socket!
Now that I think about it I don't think I've ever gotten a credit for return shipping.
For damaged goods yes but never shipping charges..guess I need to get tough on'em!

 

[HillbillyHab]

I set up a new system with this refurb mobo about 3 weeks ago to replace my aging Iwill KK266R. So far, I have nothing but praise for this board, but then I am not a serious overclocker. I have a 1600+ running at 1800+ with a locked cpu at 150 fsb. Temperatures run @45C under stress with a cheap heat sink and fan. Everything works and I am quite satisfied with my $66 board. I am sorry to hear that so many people are having trouble.

 

[stevejst]

Any newegg refurbished board is a high risk. It better be a great deal. $66 is just mildly warm. I have about 2/3 quality rate from newegg refurbished. The worst experience is with their cases, then power supplies then motherboard. Only video cards were no problem so far, I got 5 for 5. You better have good nerves dealing with them. These are not *refurbished* but rejected merchandise and in some cases damaged and rejected.

 

[Evadman]

Well, out of all the motherboards I have bought from newegg's refurb section, I have only had 2 be DOA. One was a K7SEM the other was a K7S5A.

I am well over 90% with them. And I saved a good 50% or so. Sweet deal in my book.