High End High Perfromance
Written: Nov 02 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Fast, Expandable, Stable
Cons: What Cons?
|
|
|
| VagabondSteve's Full Review: Abit Slot A KA7-100 Motherboard |
I have years of applications, data and labor tied up in my PC, so any upgrade has to be important because it is a lot of effort. I work in the business and have VB source, object, correspondence, contacts, billing and accounting records and other "I'D DIE IF I LOST IT" data on my system. I have to have 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives, Zip 100 and CDR/RW to do my work and deliver my jobs. I publish web sites via a cable modem, and have my in-house network on another NIC as well. I have, and need, a color inkjet and a laser printer/copier as well. MS Office2000 Pro, VB 3, 4, 5 and 6 as well as various graphics and publishing packages, MS Access 2 and 97 and 2000, Norton Anti-Virus, Personal Firewall, Easy CD / Direct CD, Internet Connection Sharing and too many other apps to list. All in all, quite a mess to reload. (Plus a couple of games!)
I had recently switched from an Intel @ 450 to an AMD Athlon @ 750 at the urging of a friend. The 750 was on an ASUS K7M, and except for an annoying lack of sound sometimes from the on-board audio, it worked well.
The switch was accomplished without reformatting and reinstalling everything, so it was a long and "exciting" job. I learned alot. More on this later. (PS: never do something that someone tells you they "learned alot" from!)
But, I wanted more. I wanted ATA100 speed from my new Maxtor, and I wanted PC133 RAM. I could (and did) buy a PCI ATA100 controller, but I couldn't do anything about the memory speed with the K7M. More Power! Ugh! Ugh! (Think "Tim Allen" in "Home Improvement" here.)
After researching the motherboard market I decided the next time I upgraded it would be to the KA7-100 because it offers the ATA100 on-board, can use the PC133 RAM and offers lots of room to grow. USB up to 4 ports, 4 SDRAM slots to 512MB each, AGP to 4X, six PCI and ISA as well. The 4 ATA66 and 4 ATA 100 hard drive limit was the real closer on this board. Almost immediately, a chance came up to buy the Abit at a good price, AND sell the ASUS and PC100 memory for a fair price. I couldn't resist.
I was not going to re-install my Win98SE on a formatted drive. I planned it this way:
1. GHOST the 13GB Maxtor (C:) drive to the 30GB Maxtor in my old system.
2. Swap out the motherboard, make the 30GB drive my "C:"
3. Safe mode boot, use Device Manager to remove ALL devices listed.
4. Boot from the Win98SE OEM diskette/CD and re-install Windows.
(Notice I saved my original C: and the MB until I was done. I may be brave but not stupid!)
Having done this before, with the ASUS, I was able to make the move in a whole lot less time than re-installing all my applications and moving all my data etc. I was so confident it would work flawlessly that I kept the original MB and disk drive nearby in case I had to retreat! But it did work OK. And it was a whole lot faster the second time around. Just keep children out of earshot while doing this!
After the change
The board is great. The fast memory (PC133), fast disk (ATA66/100),and fast AGP (4X) combine with the 750 MHz Athlon to give very impressive performance on my code generator and Visual Basic compiles. The code generator ("Visual Adept") really reveals changes to system speed, and now it screams. Making a VB "exe" file is at least 20% faster than the ASUS based setup was. Games are smoother at higher resolutions. Stability is better than my last 3 system versions, including the last Intel. The VIA HM Hardware Monitor and Reporting is easy to use to track temp's in the box and see what's going on there, but I would prefer a different interface on the monitor program. I have used the ATI 128 Pro and the Hercules AGP cards without a hitch.
On The Downside
If you ignore the price of the card, and look at it as a motherboard and an additional disk controller (pricewise), there isn't a lot bad about this card. I saw reviews elsewhere that complained bitterly about installing the card, but I had far more trouble with an EPOX and the ASUS than the ABIT.
I had some problems running the RAM at 133 initially, but it turned out that it wasn't the RAM or Motherboard but software conflicts. The VIA 4N1 update is mandatory, as is loading the HPT driver. Check your CD drives for the "Enable DMA" check box or your CD's will really slow down (8X?).
There are rare freezes and one repetitive problem where the USB NIC can't be accessed after Norton scans the drives for viruses. A reboot cures it, but I don't know what causes it.
The final system is (there's a reason I have to list it all!)
750 MHz Athlon on Abit KA7-100
256 MB PC133 SDRAM (2X128)
3.5" and 5.25" FDD
Plextor 12/10/32 CDRW as IDE1 master
50X (max) Afree CD-ROM as IDE2 master
Zip 100 ATAPI as IDE2 slave
Maxtor 30GB 7200rpm as IDE3 master (ATA100)
Maxtor 13GB 7200rpm as IDE4 master (ATA66)
KTI 10/100 PCI NIC (to home network)
SMC 10BT USB NIC (to Cable Modem: Toshiba PCX1100 Cable Modem)
Hercules Prophet II Mx 32MB GeForce2 4X AGP
Sound Blaster Live! Sound and Gameport
AOpen V.90 Int. Modem
Acer 99sl 19" Monitor
Parallel Port Scanner
Parallel Port E-Stamp Key
Parallel Port Epson Color Stylus Printer
USB Xerox XE88 Copier/Scanner/Printer
Altec Lansing Sub/Satellite speakers
SunCom F15E Talon Joystick
SUMMARY:
To appreciate just how good this card is, look again at all the stuff on this system. I have never had a more pleasant conversion with better results. The fact that there is only ONE occurence of instability that repeats is terrific! The have been very few "hangs" or "freezes" with this combination of hardware (except as mentioned). I couldn't be more pleased, unless it were free of course!
I didn't even mention the overclockers' dream that this motherboard has called the "Soft Menu III". That's another "pro" in favor of the board, and those who dare can control the FSB/PCI clock to increase the base speed and the CPU FSB Plus setting to increase the CPU clock accordingly. I can't explain all the in's and out of it, but I have played with it and it's effective at pumping it up. I did have to look in the book to see what to do when you get it too far up, and for those of you that do this, it's power on while holding down the Insert key! I decided against overclocking at this time, but I did crank it to 825 MHz for a quick benchmark with Wintune. Wow. Gotta get that 1 GHz CPU now!
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
VagabondSteve
|
|
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.