LTJLover

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I am looking to upgrade my smoking K63-400. I have 2 options I am looking at, but can't decide. Let me know what you think...especially if you have experience with these parts. I would like to hear about the A7M266 from those who have used it.

Abit KT7A RAID
2 IBM 45gigs
TBIRD 1.1gig
384meg PC133

OR

Asus A7M266
TBIRD 850
256meg PC2100 DDR
1 IBM 45gig

The prices are similar. The Asus allows for future CPU upgrades and is top of the line, but with the Abit I can get the faster CPU and 2 IBM's to RAID. I might be bale to get a TBIRD 900 or so with the Asus for a similar price, not sure.


Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"
 

JOJO

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Hey, I was in the same situation just a month ago.
I was so close to getting the a7m266, and then, I was informed that they took off their multiplier dipswitches from their board from a request by AMD.

So that killed my idea of running my tb 800 'B' on it at the 133 cpu bus, and using 2100 ddr ram. (although i could've bought it and run it at 1600 and wait for a cpu upgrade)

So i bought the kt7a-raid and it kick ass. I'm running at 7.0x133 (modest I know) and I get awesome benchmark results.

Plus, sdram is sooo cheap right now, at least here in Canada.
256 pc133 micron is 110, where as 256 pc2100 micron is 400

Just my 2 cents worth though.

(from what i remember, you had the kt7 raid, so you know how good abit is....)
 
G

Guest

Guest
It depends on weather you're gonna up the 850 to 133MHz bus, I dunno, but can the A7M266 even take a 100MHz bus? I'd do nither I'd wait for the A7V266 with VIA's KT266 chipset, but do the 2nd. combination with DDR.
 

JOJO

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(or maybe it was a friend of yours....)

Anyway, yeah the a7m266 will run the 100 fsb fine, but to run it at 133, you'll need the new "c" processors.

Like mentioned in the previous post, the a7v266 (via kt266) would be a good choice, although i still don't know if it'll have the multiplier dips, which would suck.

I couldn't wait anyway, and I like this abit. :)
 

LTJLover

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where did you hear this rumor? Their webpage boasts the jumperfree mode and dip swithces. Would that not be false advertising?

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"
 

Tempus

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Dip switches aren't the end of the world. You can still oc using jumperless mode right? (I don't own this board so I am not sure if you can oc in the bios).

- I don't write Tom's Hardware Guide, I just preach it"
 

JOJO

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um, i don't think it's a rumor, their web page shows rev1.02 which did have the dips, but after that they took them off...

I don't remember which site i saw the review on, but i'm most good reviews will tell you. From the info i gathered i was pretty sure that you also couldn't adjust it in the bios either, but i could never get a straight answer to that. Maybe call whoever you are going to buy from and see if they can confirm more of this for you.

I also saw an article on how you could add dipswitches for the multiplier with some soldering b/c they still have the contacts on the board. All you would have to do is buy the dips from an electronics store...

hope some of that helps
 

stable

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You want to avoid the A7M266 at all costs. This board is ANYTHING but stable, has RAM problems, video problems, timing problems, stepping problems,... Just way too many problems to go into here. Read the other posts and you'll see what I mean.

While we are an authorized Asus Dealer, we won't sell this board.

Consider the MSI K7Master series, very fast, very stable, very well built.

Steve Benoit

Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'