ISO: Good motherboard, little hastle.

[CorporateSPY]

Everyone here seems to know what they're talking about, so I thought I'd ask. My last experience with AMD processors was my old K6-2 400 on an EPOX(*shudder*) motherboard. I must say that I had SO MANY problems with it, I thought I would never go AMD again. But now I am back, willing to give it another try. So far I'v been hearing bouth verry good things and horror stories about the MSI k7 Pro2-A motherboards. Now, I'v been looking at bouth the ASUS A7V and Abit KT7. In all cases, the board+ a 1GHz thunderbird processor seem like they would cost about the same. I would be using it with a 300Watt power supply. I am simply looking for everyone's opinnion before I order and am tied into a board. I will most likely not be overclocking the board, stability before speed for me.
Thank you.

 

[AMD4ME2]

I am in much the same situation... Torn between MSI and ABIT..... but for sure going to get the 133mhz capable athlon 1ghz and the KT133a chipset.

 

[FoolGuy]

It's all about the features.. If you're looking for Raid capabilities, with the Abit KT7-Raid, if not then go save yourself some buckos with either the Asus A7V, or the KT7 w/no raid.. whichever is cheaper. If you can wait a couple o' weeks, get the boards with the KT133A chipset.
Can't go wrong with either board, in my opinion.

 

[CorporateSPY]

Yeah its true enough, One thing about the MSi board I do not like is the Chip Integrated audio. That always tends to suck resources regardless of it being active or not. Is it possible to get the motherboard without it?

 

[SilverBack]

Well here is my take on it.

I have been a system builder for 14 years now. I run the business from my home. I have had excellent opportunities to test many of the most popular motherboards made today.

I build 1 to 2 pc's a week, I built over 80 last year. 50 of those systems were using AMD cpu's.
Most of them were during the last half of the year using Duron and TBird processors.

I have 4 AMD systems of my own. I have a KT7 Abit, A7V Asus and a K7T Pro2-a from MSI.
The Athlon 700 is using a KA7 form ABit.

My first choice after having the time to use these motherboards is the MSI board. It's a great board that is stable and overclocks very well.

So far this year I have had to RMA 2 of the Abit boards that wouldn't boot straight from the factory. The KT7 seems to have a higher than normal failure rate. I do like the board however when it works.
The A7V that I have is the 1st revision and I have had nothing but problems with it. I understand that later revisions are more stable. I however will not buy another.

I'm running my 1.3GHz on the MSI board with zero problems.

I have the following installed in this system:
1.1 GHZ TBird ( oc'd )
CL GTS Ultra
256mb Muskin rev 2 PC133 CAS2 ( 2 sticks )
IBM 75XP 30gig ATA100 HD
SB Live Full
Realtek NIC

CPU speed - 1313 MHz
DirectX - not initialized
AGP revision - 2.00
VGA IRQ - IRQ10, not shared
AGP aperture - 128MB
System board AGP transfer support - 1x, 2x, 4x
Graphics card AGP transfer support - 1x, 2x, 4x
AGP traffic currently enabled - 4x
System board SBA - supported
Graphics card SBA - n/a
AGP sideband currently enabled - no
Pipelined transactions - supported, queue depth of 32
Fast write protocol - supported, currently n/a

Devices:
VIA CPU bridge (03051106h)
VIA PCI bridge (83051106h)
VIA ISA bridge (06861106h)
VIA IDE controller (05711106h)
VIA USB (30381106h) - IRQ5
VIA CPU bridge (30571106h)
Realtek Ethernet controller (813910ECh) - IRQ11
Creative Labs audio device (00021102h) - IRQ5
Creative Labs input controller (70021102h)
nVidia VGA controller (015210DEh) - IRQ10

The above is from PCIList

The above configuration is the most stable system I have owned in quite a while.
I'm using a F0P38 form GlobalWin to cool the cpu.

 

[CorporateSPY]

I verry much apreciate the input there, and seeing that the MSI is the most stable system you have run on in a long time is verry reassuring. Thank you for the input!
one point I would like to adress though... on the MSI boards, does the built in sound on it take away from the processor atall? I'v been hearing it could be cause for concern. Thank you.

 

[ZoSo]

If you disable the sound in the BIOS on the MSI board it does not use any resources, and it does not take away from the processor.

I was using the Abit KT7 Raid board, it was OK for awhile, then it started to get very unstable, eventually hosing my O/S. Bought the MSI K7T Pro2-A, and it's been running like a champ.
If you need a board now, get the MSI, if you plan on running a 266T-Bird, like FoolGuy said, wait until the next generation(kt133a chipset) boards come out, but you might want to wait for some reviews of those before laying out the cash for one.

 

[SilverBack]

I disabled it in the BIOS, but for a built in solution if you dont have another sound card it's a viable solution.
It doesn't do hardware accelleration as well as the more expensive cards but it's not to bad at all.

 

[pugh]

go with MSI....stable mobo

 

[CorporateSPY]

Alright, you sold me... going for the MSI. I could wait for the next generation of boards, and chipsets... sure, but like all new things there will be problems and bugs to work out. So, definately going with the MSI... thank you all!