I lost faith in Abit

[AMD_Man]

Ok, so I have an Abit KT7A. I've been waiting for Abit to update the BIOS to support the Athlon XP. Now they say that the KT7A v1.2 and eariler have hardware limitations that don't allow them to work with the Athlon XP! Just GREAT! Thanks a lot Abit!!!! Now I'm forced to buy another board to upgrade to the Athlon XP. Since I'm going to be buying a new mobo now, there are a few things I want: A built-in Promise RAID controller, support for DDR RAM and a stable platform. I also want to try to stay away from VIA now that I have the chance. Motherboards that I'm currently looking into include the Gigabyte GA-7DXR with RAID and the Iwill KA266-R. I prefer not to get another Abit motherboard because I have lost trust in them.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Crashman]

I think they may be under constraint from AMD by an agreement with them. I would go ahead and try the processor it there, who cares if it's recognized as an XP as long as it works?

Back to you Tom...

 

[AMD_Man]

Who cares if it works if it's new features aren't recognized and used! An Athlon XP without SSE and even auto data-fetch is nothing more than a tweaked Athlon and not even worth the money.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[o1die]

I wouldn't rule out via just yet. My shuttle ak31 version 3.1 has sisoft sandra memory scores about 35-40% higher than my old fic adll. Same cpu, same memory. Games run much faster with the kt266a chipset.

 

[Take_Out]

Thanks for refering to your Shuttle board. I have been wanting to ask some one about this board. How do you like it and did you have any special probs when you configured it?
Thanks, Take-Out

God Bless New York

 

[AmdMELTDOWN]

AMD_Man, your disappointment is misdirected, look to AMD as the ones who are forcing kt### owners to buy new mainboards because they want to conceal the true clock speed of the cpu. mobo manufactures are facing severe sanctions if they reveal AXP's clock speed.

"<b>AMD/VIA!</b>...you are <i>still</i> the weakest link, good bye!"

 

[AMD_Man]

No, it has nothing to do with concealing true clock speeds. The Abit KT7A v.1.3 supports the Athlon XP but the more common v.1.2 or earlier of the Abit KT7A don't support it. According to Abit, this is a "hardware limitation". So that hardly related to concealing true clock speed.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Guest]

Did you get mad when their 386 boards didn't support P4?

(Just a thought)

 

[Shnak]

Who cares??? A SDRAM system simply doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to feed the Athlons faster than ~1.1-1.2GHz. That's what I read a few places and it makes total sense.

Time to upgrade.

Shnak

ECS K7S5A, TB 1.4GHz, 512MB Crucial DDR, Kyro2, IBM 75GXP, Samsung 950P, Audigy, WinXP

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

I have the gigabyte 7dxr... one thing you should know is that yes it supports the athlon xp and morgan... but it doesn't support the thermal diode feature. it's no big deal really since it didn't work anyway.

Minor detail though.. great board, if you get it, it's great. Super stable. had my computer on for days now and not a problem. PC2400 works with it also. I have corsair pc2400 and it works great. I also love the @bios feature. makes it soo easy to update your bios

but enough of my good experience lol. you can get it mwave.com for 137 and you get corsair ram at mwave also. I'm not sure if they athlon xp's yet though.



<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

correction they do have athlon xp's

AMD ATHLON XP 1700+ (RETAIL BOXED) W/COOLING FAN (3 YEARS WARRANTY) | Important Installation Info(NO STOCK - Estimate arrival on 10/15/2001) $203.00

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[AMD_Man]

Did you get mad when their 386 boards didn't support P4?

No, but I bought the KT7A only 4 months ago, and I expected more from a company like Abit. The KT7A came out about 7 months ago!

Who cares??? A SDRAM system simply doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to feed the Athlons faster than ~1.1-1.2GHz. That's what I read a few places and it makes total sense.

That's nonsense. The KT133A chipset performs within 5% of AMD760 in most tasks at virutally any clockspeed (I don't know about it with the Athlon XP, though). The Athlon (XP) has a lot of very efficient cache which greatly reduces the strain on main memory.



AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Guest]

AMD Man...I tend to agree with the others on this. I have a pre-1.3 KT7A-R and am in the same boat that you are. It's frustrating, yes, but I'm not angry at Abit, nor do I think they shafted the consumer by doing this. I'd imagine that there are plenty of other KT133A boards out there that won't be able to support Athlon XP's due to "hardware limitations" either.

 

[FatBurger]

SDRAM not providing enough bandwidth? That was probably for P4s, not Athlons. I run on a KT133a (SDRAM) with my 1.2@1.33, and I have all the memory badnwidth I could want. And yes, I have better memory benchmarks in Sandra than plenty of 761 owners. Care to explain that one?



<font color=green>I post so you don't have to!
9/11 - RIP</font color=green>

 

[Shnak]

uh, not what I heard.

oh well

Shnak

ECS K7S5A, TB 1.4GHz, 512MB Crucial DDR, Kyro2, IBM 75GXP, Samsung 950P, Audigy, WinXP

 

[AMD_Man]

Where did you hear that? Perhaps you were thinking about the KT133? It only supports the 200MHz FSB. The KT133A supports the 266MHz FSB with PC133 SDRAM. The Asus A7V133 and Abit KT7A are the fastest KT133A boards. They provide equivalent performance to many of the AMD760 and KT266 boards.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Guest]

Have a look here:

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=001731

You'll find hope! It works! I'm personnaly pretty sure XP is going to work on any KT7A - one day...

The worst that can happen is having make mods on the mobo with a soldering iron

 

[AMD_Man]

Maybe. One guy go it to work. But I'm worried about that microcode thing.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor