Abit KG7 vs KT7-A

Thrasher

Hi all,

I've read through the other posts on the board,
and I've picked up some useful links 'n tips,
thanks!


I'm about to build my first machine from scratch,
as it's about time I upgraded. One question:
Has anyone used the Abit KG7 boards - what is
the major advantage of these over the KT7-As
which many seem to have.

Also - is anyone familiar with the MSI K7T266 Pro 2 DDR 266MHz socket A VIA chipset? Although fairly new, it's had some great reviews as an all-round DDR board, but also one or two damning reviews.... but it looks great!

I'm going for stability over 'tweakability'

Thanks!

astrofool

get the KR7A-Raid, best of the 3, same or cheaper than the KG7 also, the KT7 uses SDRAM, and is looking dated now, the KG7 uses DDR ram, but doesn't have the same performance as the KR7

Typedef

I use a KT7-A which has bios flash to allow for a t-bird 1.4ghz athy, it's ok I guess, but if I were buying one now I'd buy one that supports an anthy xp, and compromise on the speed of the cpu for the price difference, so as I could upgrade the cpu later down the road. For the kt7-a 1.4ghz is as fast as you will go, though it does have alot of pci slots and lots of room for ram if you are into that sort of thing?

Lemming

Originally posted by Typedef
I use a KT7-A which has bios flash to allow for a t-bird 1.4ghz athy, it's ok I guess, but if I were buying one now I'd buy one that supports an anthy xp,

I'm running a KG7, and so far so good. There's a bios flash for athlon XP chips (assuming the BIOS is an older version) that's readily available from the Abit website

lots of room on it PCI slot wise and there's 4 DDR dimm slots. Only gripe is that there's two IDE connections on the board. Bar that, everything is hunky-dorey. Even comes with a pci slot thingy for 2 additional USB connectors. The documentation is pretty good, and there's additional H/w tweaking software, etc with the board.

Gerry

The KG7 uses the amd 761 chipset, and offers DDR ram support. This is its main advantage over the kt7a. Apart from that they are very similar boards. Because of the significant performance increase provided by ddr ram, it is advisable to buy a ddr board. However the KG7 has been superceded by the KR7A, which uses a via chipset with a better memory controller. Hence its worth getting the KR7A to get the most out of your ddr ram, especially considering how expensive ddr in particular has suddenly gotten.

Typedef, there are bios updates available for the kt7a to support the athlon xp, at first they were only available for the kt7a version 1.3, but there is a bios available for the earlier 1.0/1.1 boards which has been reported to work fine with the XP, you will just have to hunt around for it if you need it.

Typedef

Originally posted by Gerry

Typedef, there are bios updates available for the kt7a to support the athlon xp, at first they were only available for the kt7a version 1.3, but there is a bios available for the earlier 1.0/1.1 boards which has been reported to work fine with the XP, you will just have to hunt around for it if you need it.

There are? I checked about December or slightly before December for that specific purpose and there was no joy at the time, so finally abit came out with a bios that will support an xp cpu, on a kt7a, cool. This means that I will only have to get a new cpu when I want to go faster, not a new mobo, which is sweet and saves typedef a few hundred quid.

Lemming

Originally posted by Typedef

so finally abit came out with a bios that will support an xp cpu, on a kt7a, cool. This means that I will only have to get a new cpu when I want to go faster, not a new mobo, which is sweet and saves typedef a few hundred quid.

just pray ye don't fry the mobo whilst flashing it or a few hundred quid might be the least of your worries

I'm a little nervous about flashing my kg7 to recognise my xp1600, so I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Typedef

When I bought the kt7a it only supported t-birds to 1200mhz and the flash allowed me run a t-bird 1.4 @ 133x2 fsb, which is cool. Don't be too scared of flashing a new checksum, just be very,very,very sure your fairly sure you know what your doing, is all I'd say. I might do it in one thing, dispatch my aged voodoo 3 3500 and get a voodoo 5 and a new cpu or an ati radeon, something well supported in X-Windows and something that I can get a framebuffer console on in Linux, what the hey?

Gerry

bios flashing goes wrong (and it has gone wrong on me) if you:

1. Have a power failure
2. Force the wrong bios onto the machine
3. Stupidly use crappy flashing software under windows

2 and 3 have happened to me, bottom line is use the correct bios for your motherboard, and boot into does. You can get a nice clean bootdisk creator from www.bootdisk.com (file is called drdflash). Copy the bios .bin file, the batch file and awdflash.exe onto the disk, boot up and type runme or whatever the batch file is called. You can do it without the batch file, but the batch file will clear the cmos for you, which is required sometimes to avoid problems on your next boot.


Typedef, right now I can only see an official bios for the kt7a 1.3 to support the XP,

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/bios/kt7s.htm

I did see a forum with an unofficial bios for the earlier revisions of the kt7a, just can't find it right now. Hopefully anyway your board is a rev 1.3, it will be printed on the board.

Thrasher

Thanks guys... loads of info there.

Anybody any experience with the MSI K7T266 Pro 2 DDR 266MHz socket A VIA..... a bright red motherboard?

JustHalf

Originally posted by Gerry
bios flashing goes wrong (and it has gone wrong on me) if you:

1. Have a power failure
2. Force the wrong bios onto the machine
3. Stupidly use crappy flashing software under windows

2 and 3 have happened to me

Ha! Idiot!

Gerry

Thrasher, I believe that MSI board has the kt266A chipset (sorry, MSI's naming scheme doesn't stick in my head), if so its quite a decent board. Its stable, which is of huge importance, and offers decent performance. If its cheap, go for it.