KT7 upgrade to KT7A

[TELeast]

Hey Dudes,

I just bought me-self a KT7A-Raid last night (computer shops open till 9:30pm in Hong Kong) and I will be upgrading my current system with the KT7-Raid.

I currently have a RAID-0 config setup.

Question: will it all work if I just unplug everything, swap the mobos and plug everything back in? No need to reinstall any drivers for the new chipset? No effects on the RAID config?

I am too lazy to read up on previous articles and find out driver's versions...besides, I am too bored at work so I decided to post on the forums

Thanks for the help guys

PS. I also bought a Plextor 16x burner last night..gonna seriously play with that tonight too

 

[Davegod75]

do the boards use the same raid controller. if so it might work.

 

[Biggs]

It might though it's better to do everything again from scratch to be on the safe side.

 

[dougjnn]

I've read people say it will work. In fact I've read that you don't even have to go into the Highpoint bios and conform it to your old setup (e.g. block size), and indeed that its better not to. Supposedly the bios/driver will simply read what you have, and conform itself.

I would definitely try it to see how it will work. Actually the via and highpoint drivers are identical for both boards. Backup data first of course.

 

[TELeast]

I done it last night...till very late (and at work at 9am now...I feel like a zombie drinking coffee...

anyway...I swapped the mobos and it worked no problemo. Except it deteced new VIA chipsets stuff on the way in and I thought I just press cancel until Windows fully load. And Windows loaded.

Since there were a few items that may require new chipset drivers, I thought I might just start deleting some in system properties, reboot and have Win98 detect everything for me and install the new chipset drivers from disc. I was wrong! It failed to detect some (or maybe I deleted the wrong one) and It was a mess. I ended up re-installing Win98SE over the existing version just to have the setup detect my chipset from scratch. It works now. I also upgraded the CPU from Duron700 to T-Bird-850.

Question: I used to oc D-700 to 910 with 101FSB. I did a whole bunch of SiSoft Sandra, then I got the new mobo and clocked my T-Bird to 910 at 101FSB again. I saw very little difference in the benchmarks. For a moment, I thought I had a remark CPU.

I then oc it to 1Ghz and it's running fine. I forgot what FSB as it was 5am in the morning. But also, I think the highest FSB I could get to was around 124Mhz. When I use the 133FSB (eg. 6.5x133 or 7x133)...it POSTs ok but then it fails to detect my RAID-0 config and hangs there when the HP-370 driver is trying to find my hard disks. It finds the first HD being a RAID-0 component, but only can find the second hard disk to be a IBMxxxx disk and cannot see it as a RAID-0 component. I dropped the FSB to below 124Mhz and it works ok. But Windows sometimes seems to be unstable at the limits.

Why?

 

[TELeast]

oh...I just re-read the review of the board on AnandTech and found out that for multiplier less than 7.5x, 133Mhz FSB does not work and the whole thing falls back being like the KT133 chipset without the "a".

so the minimum CPU speed for 133Mhz FSB is 1Ghz. I don't remember trying this last night as I was unsure of the oc capabilities of the CPU itself. but since I have been able to run at 105x9.5 = 998Mhz no problem, I think the CPU can take on the 1Ghz no problemo. I will try to confirm the oc limits of the CPU, and then change the FSB to as near as 133 as possible and also the CPU speed as high as possible.

Any comments?

 

[inwoosac]

weird...cuz i've ran 150x6 before .... no problems ....
latest bios of course....but...i donno. its a duron 800, pencil unlocked

 

[jimmypop]

i'm running a duron 750 at 152x6.5 right now. seems to work. so do 5, 5.5, 6, 7, and 7.5. funny that.