Got my A7V133

[Dulanic]

This board rocks Fully jumperless, although it also has DIP switches. You can turn off CPU ID so it doesnt even check the default clock speed, tho you still need to short the L1 of corse. Has Promise RAID. Ive hit 155FSB... I only took a SS at 152 tho... I run at 150 because my CPU doesnt like much higher then 1050... so I run 7x150.

WCPUID Screen Shot

 

[NforSa]

cool

I want one hehe

 

[Dulanic]

Well if I hadnt fried my A7V I wouldnt have gotten one But its a kick ass board so im glad I did.

 

[bluesky]

I never oced, and no plan yet.
This board will 133 fsb in default, or need any tweak.
I got 1 gig tbird and 133 rams.
Thanks.

 

[Dulanic]

Well to run 133 youll need to short your L1 bridges so that you can lower the multiplier and raise the FSB. Youd need to run 7.5x133... but without shorting the L1 bridges you cant change the multiplier. This is the same with any 133Mhz MB, if you didnt want to short the L1 bridges you would need to go buy a 266FSB 1Ghz.... same CPU except its default would be 7.5x133.

 

[bluesky]

So if I don't modify L1 bridge, there is no benefit getting 133a board, right?
Is there any good reads about this, modifying L1 bridge?
Or any basic OC info includes this? Manual of the board has this info?
Well, all new to me.
Thanks.

 

[Dulanic]

Basically yes. If you just pop your CPU in it will run at 200 FSB.

As for the L1 bridges im sure someone can link you to a site explaining it. I just took a mechanical pencil and drew dark marks on them to short them.

 

[Regalk]

You are a sucker for A7vs and family eh! Where did U pick it up - may get one also.

 

[Octoberblue]

bluesky:

I'm pretty sure you don't have to modify your L1 bridges to get your board to run at 133MHz FSB. But of course your 1GHz Athlon, which apparently has a 10X multiplier (10 X 100Mhz = 1GHz) would have to be able to overclock all the way up to 1.33GHz (10 X 133MHz = 1.33GHz).

BTW, if your CPU will go up that high I wouldn't change a thing.

Most people would rather lower that multiplier at least a little bit, down to 7.5 if you want to run in spec, and then maybe push your frontside bus & memory bus up a little above 133 to overclock your CPU if you wanted to then.

Anyway, all the information you need to do this is right here on this web site in the Anandtech Athlon/Duron Overclocking Guide. You can just use a led pencil (a very fine, sharp led pencil) like Dulanic said, but you may want to go for the even more reliable and permanent method described in the article. Good luck!

 

[bluesky]

Thanks for enlightening me.
I'll look into more.

 

[Dulanic]

Regalk I got mine from hardwarepro.com for $159 since they had it in stock.

 

[pillage2001]

Go check it out at Ajump

 

[Octoberblue]

Dulanic:

How was setup? Any problems? How about compatibility? Did you have to load any patches, etc?
This board definately has my attention. Give us an update!

How about that Promise controller? I had absolutely horrible problems with one of those on a PCI card, and the only consistent problem I've seen on the forums with the original A7V have had something to do with it. Asus has a history of taking problematic third-party hardware (such as my old AliV chipset) and making it run like a charm after a few in-house tweaks. Have they accomplished that with the Promise Controller yet? And what kinds of RAID does it have?

As you can tell I'm pretty pumped about this board. It sounds like it might be the board of choice for socket A, especially since a lot of folks are now saying that this generatio of processors won't be able to take full advantage of DDR.

Besides all that, I just trust Asus more than any of these other companies, regardless of their great reviews. Their tech support may be non-existent but my experience with Asus products has been absolutely spectacular.

Give us an update man. I'm salivating!

 

[bluesky]

Talking of tech support, is there any m/b manufacturer with decent support?

 

[Dulanic]

<< Dulanic:

How was setup? Any problems? How about compatibility? Did you have to load any patches, etc?
This board definately has my attention. Give us an update!

How about that Promise controller? I had absolutely horrible problems with one of those on a PCI card, and the only consistent problem I've seen on the forums with the original A7V have had something to do with it. Asus has a history of taking problematic third-party hardware (such as my old AliV chipset) and making it run like a charm after a few in-house tweaks. Have they accomplished that with the Promise Controller yet? And what kinds of RAID does it have?

As you can tell I'm pretty pumped about this board. It sounds like it might be the board of choice for socket A, especially since a lot of folks are now saying that this generatio of processors won't be able to take full advantage of DDR.

Besides all that, I just trust Asus more than any of these other companies, regardless of their great reviews. Their tech support may be non-existent but my experience with Asus products has been absolutely spectacular. >>



Did I have to load any patches? No because all I did was take out my A7V and toss in my A7V133 and it didnt require any real changes. The Promise controller works great, just dont put a sound card or 100mbps NIC in PCI2 which shares with the Promise Controller. It had RAID 0.... mainly because anyone who need redundancy like RAID 1 will buy a GOOD hardware RAID card from like adaptec.

Overall its an excellent board, Ive had not a single problem, I took out my dead A7V that I killed, put in the A7V133 and up and running I went.

 

[mywong23]

Dulanic,

what is your bios version?
what voltage are you using?
have you considered the voltage tweak
in Tom's Hardware?

 

[bluesky]

Dulanic.
How did you set your IDE drives up?
1 hdd on raid 0, another hdd on primary ide master and cdd on slave, cd burner on secondary master?
How about firewire card on pci 2?
Thanks.

 

[Dulanic]

BIOS version is what came with the board... I think 1001 something. There are no updates available.

Im using 1.85.... I fried my A7V with a voltage mod so im not so sure I want to try again.

IDE... I dont use RAID myself, I just wanted 4 controllers.

Primary IDE=CDRW, ZIP
Secondary IDE=Kenwood 72X, Creative 5X DVD
Primary Promise=Maxtor 30GB
Secondary Promise=WD 20GB

 

[DoctorBooze]

Today I nearly went and bought A7V-133. For once the UK shops have something when the US shops do. Anand, where's your review? Glad to hear it's fully jumperless, I was previously ignoring the A7V because the multiplier was DIP-switch only. I'm disappointed it doesn't do RAID 1 though, looks like I either stick with the idea of KT7A-RAID, or pick up the A7V-133 and put in an Abit Hotrod card. Don't know what to do. It's not that I need &quot;proper&quot; RAID, just that with huge drives so cheap (45G 75GXP for £105) I'd rather get the faster performance from mirroring rather than striping and have the peace of mind (and not really need to buy SCSI and a DAT for backup when another cheap disc can do it). On the other hand Asus have a much better reputation than Abit do.

Anyone out there using the HighPoint RAID controller (per Abit KT7A-RAID and HotRod) in RAID-1? Does it correctly distribute read requests across both discs thereby giving double performance on reads? What about RAID 0+1, does that give 4x read performance and 2x write performance, like industrial-strength RAID systems?

Cheers,

John.

 

[thai]

i notice that adding a little cooling device to the clock generator on the a7v133 improves my fsb a little bit.

this chip runs extremely hot.