zx said:
Why is :
SiS735 + ECS (cheap crappy shit) = good board
KT266 + MSI (mi-range?) = crappy board
KT133A + Abit(variable quality?) = crappy board
Tannin, have you tried other Socket A chipsets?
Also, if you can't notice that the KT133A's ATA controller is bad when you do not burn CD's or copy CD's. With hard drives, it's only slower than other ATA controllers. With CD's the system is unresponsive.
Whoever said the pox-ridden ECS SiS thing was a good board? It wasn't me, that is for 110% certain! OK, I tried just a single pair of them, but both were horribly unstable and unsalable, and in neither case was the manufacturer prepared to provide warranty service. I got rid of the second one after having it in stock, unsalable, for nearly a year just a week or so ago: by the simple method of selling it to an optimist for 20% of what I'd paid for it, on the strict understanding that I would provide no warranty or service whatsoever. I have written at length on these theiving scoundrels before.
MSI KT-266. I think we sold a few, maybe 6 or 8. No problems that I remember. But MSI boards are always a lottery. Some models are great, some models are pox. I guess they do maybe 4 models out of five that go OK, then a dud, then three more good ones, another dud, and so on. With MSI, unless you know the exact model already, you pays your money and you takes your chance.
Woops! That's the KT-133A I'm thinking of. Never sold an MSI KT-266, can't comment, except to say "see the MSI good
ox ratio above".
Abit. I had a box of 10 Abit KT-133s once. They worked just fine. No failures, all still in service, so far as I remember. Don't think I ever tried an Abit KT-133A. Not to rememmber, anyway. But from what the guys tell me, they are like MSI, only the good board.pox ratio is more like 50/50.
Socket A chipsets I have tried. Well, all of them, I think. Or pretty close.
KT-133: Excellent results with Soltek, FIC and Epox in large quantities (>100 of each). No particular problems that I remember with the odds and ends of other brands we used: ASUS, Abit, A-Open, some others too I think.
KT-133A: Superb chipset: fast, fuss-free, easy as faling off a log. We sold masses of Solteks, quite a lot of Epox ones too, plus various other things No problems to report at all, bar those dreadful MSI ones I already mentioned.
KT-266: Don't think I've ever used one. They weren't around for very long, and there was no point in buying a KT-266 when you could get the same performance out of a KT-133A at half the price, or spend just a little more and get an AMD-760.
KT-266A: Another no-brain best-of-breed chipset, like the 133A. Sold them in similar quantities, still sellling them now. Mostly Soltek & Epox (100s of each), MSI and Gigabyte (maybe 20-odd of each), probably some other ones I forget. Utterly fuss-free, except for some RAM compatibility from the MSIs - but that's what you expect with MSI - and two or three mysterious in-service failures with the 20 Jetways we sold (which, seeing as Jetway is another name for ECS, serves me right).
KT-333: Ho-hum. Sold 30 or 40, mostly Epox and Soltek. Struggled to work out why we were paying the extra as compared to a 266A actually.
KT-400: More ho-hum, unless you are running a 166MHz front-side Athlon, which nobody is yet. Our standard higher-end chipset right now: cheap, simple, practical, no problems that I know about. Not sold that many: 30-odd, nearly all Epox, but a few others in ones and twos.
AMD 750: Sold quite a lot of Gigabyte ones, maybe 200, plus (I think) some others as well. (FIC? Was the AZ-11 one of FIC's hybrid AMD/VIA boards? Or am I thinking of the SD-11?) Apart from having to remember to load different drivers (because it wasn't a VIA chipset but an AMD one) these worked well for us. We put a lot of Durons into Gigabyth AMD 750s.
AMD 760: A small number back when they were the best thing since sliced bread and DDR was like gold bricks only dearer: MSI, Gigabyte, possibly ASUS. A hell of a lot since Gigabyte started specialing them out at a price that just can't be beat, over 100 easily now. Just as stable as a KT-266a or KT-133A, maybe even better, but can sometimes have compatibility problems with particular games or video cards. Not very often though. May be a particular Gigabyte model problem rather than a chipset one, as we didn't get it back in the old days, but then we didn't have today's monster games and video cards either. In either case, pretty rare. Nice chipset.
ALI IforgetwhattheycalleditbuteveryonesaiditwasprettyordinaryandIagree: Sold a tiny number of ASUS boards chith this chipset. Regretted it. But it was probably nothing to do with Ali and everything to do with ASUS - seeing as their KT-133 boards were just as bad. Never failed, just took
forever to sort out their plug & pray problems.
SiS 735: About 15 or 20 altogether: those two hopeless slabs of ECS pox, and some Leadtek ones. One box of the Leadteks had about 8 duds in it but that seems to have just been a manufacturing glitch as all the others and the (very prompt) repacements have all worked without a hitch.
Nvidia Nforce 1: Didn't try these bar just one to look at until, believe it or not, about 2 weeks ago. Not because I didn't trust them, but because they were rather scarce (not many board makers had one) and didn't fit into our model line-up anywhere. Too dear for a cheap board, too integrated for a quality board. Who'd buy one? We put them on the price list for a while, but after about three months gave up and took them off again with the sales total standing at zero. But now we are using the ASUS one as an entry-level board. Early days for it, but seems OK so far bar the fact that Kristi says the integrated all-in-one driver flat-out fails to work and she has to fiddle about loading everything by hand, one at a time. But that is probably the ASUS touch. I won't blame Nvidia for it.
Nvidia Nforce 2: Just one, or maybe 2. Kristi hasn't complained, so they must be OK. Not much demand at present. They have to get a bit more serious about their pring if they want anyone to buy one. Right now, unless you happen to want the Firewire or the built-in sound, you can have an Nforce 2 with a Duron 1300 or a KT-400 with an XP 2100. Same price. If you already have a good soundcard, that's a no-brainer.
Also, if you can't notice that the KT133A's ATA controller is bad when you do not burn CD's or copy CD's. With hard drives, it's only slower than other ATA controllers. With CD's the system is unresponsive.
You have a bad board, ZX. We have sold
hundreds of KT-133As, and probably 50% or more either shipped with a burner or have had one fitted since. We don't do anything fancy, just bolt the drive in, tick DMA, and go on to the next job. They work. Simple as that. Or you can load the 4-in-1s if you prefer. Lately we have started doing it that way. Doesn't make any difference, they still just work. People come back, buy more blank discs, that's it.
