Author Topic: Asus A7V and A7V133 users (Read 579 times)

bloom25 · « **on:** February 21, 2001, 12:45:00 PM »

There is a new bios out that improves performance quite a bit. Now no other Kt133(a) board can beat the Asus.

The new bios for the a7v is 1006 and is available from the German ftp site.

The bios for the a7v133 is 1002a.

(REMEMBMER: When flashing a bios, make sure bite merge is disabled and also flash the bios at least 2 times to make sure the image is good.)

The only downside I've found with these 2 bioses are the temperatures *slightly* increase. This is to be expected with a 5 - 10 % performance boost to memory.

Here's a brand new article showing benchmarks comparing nearly all available kt133a boards. http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q1/010221/kt133a-12.html As you can see the Asus a7v133 comes out on top overall. Not only that but the differences are quite large. (As much as 13 fps in some games.)

Just thought some of you would be interested.

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

Animal · « **Reply #1 on:** February 22, 2001, 11:40:00 AM »

Thanks Bloom.
I'll wait a little while and see reports from people in the www.hardforums.com before installing these, but they seem to be good.

bloom25 · « **Reply #2 on:** February 22, 2001, 10:54:00 PM »

Ok, now there is a 1003 for the a7v133.

(I'm running 1006 on my a7v and it is the best bios yet.)

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

Animal · « **Reply #3 on:** February 24, 2001, 10:08:00 AM »

Hey bloom I cant find the 1006 bios anywhere, can you post a link?

bloom25 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 24, 2001, 09:47:00 PM »

Try navigating through www.asuscom.de and click the bios link. (Make sure you flash it twice for 1006.)

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

Animal · « **Reply #5 on:** February 26, 2001, 04:31:00 AM »

Thanks bud, if it doesnt work, I'll shoot ya down

bloom25 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 26, 2001, 08:54:00 PM »

I've heard that 1003 for the a7v133 has some bugs. If you have that board, stay with 1002a.

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

-lynx- · « **Reply #7 on:** February 27, 2001, 04:22:00 AM »

bloom (you Asus salesman you

) - what's the deal with on-board sound on these boards?

I've learnt a lesson once (very painful it was too) that anything "on-board" can, at best, be disabled? No ISA slots either... Hmmm...

I've read all stuff at Tom's but the reviewer was pushing lack of on-board sound as a shortcoming of Abit. Playing down the fact that some ASUS boards didn't even have the dip switches to change anything leave alone to use BIOS for all FSB/voltage adjustments.

Really not slagging it off - just trying to see it from a happy (obviously) user point of view why I would switch from extremely overclocking friendly Abit which looses out in some tests by just a few percent at a cost of fewer PCI slots, no ISA slot (what in hell is this audio modem riser anyway?) and 15-20% hike in cost (UK data)?

Rocket · « **Reply #8 on:** February 27, 2001, 07:40:00 AM »

ISA? what is ISA?

I converted this last purchase to a totally non ISA board (A7V). Don't miss the slots at all. I suggest always staying away from the built in sound a getting a real sound card. The modem riser and built in audio is set up for those that don't want to spend the cash on the real things.
The only thing I used to own ISA was a modem and net card. I went to a real modem (external) and a pci netcard. I saw a dramatic increase in stablility of both items. I avoided any pci modems due to them using system resources to work (winmodem). Running linux 70% of the time on this box and absolutely love my external modem

S!
Rocket

-lynx- · « **Reply #9 on:** February 27, 2001, 08:10:00 AM »

ISA is the slot I use for my Hayes Accura modem. It's not a softmodem so thank you very much, I have enough crap surrounding my 'puter to have yet another box sitting in the mess somewhere

.

So, the question still stands: 6 PCI slots vs 5 PCI slots, SoftMenu BIOS vs dip switches on the mobo, marginally slower vs. considerably more expensive - why?

Skuzzy · « **Reply #10 on:** February 27, 2001, 08:18:00 AM »

I have to laugh about the number of PCI slots. I had a heck of a time trying to get 3 PCI cards installed so they would have thier own interrupts.
Let's see;
PCI Slot 1 shares interrupt with AGP bus
PCI Slot 2 shares interrupt with PCI slot 5
PCI Slot 3 shares interrupt with USB bus
PCI Slot 4 is dedicated (woohoo!)
PCI Slot 5 shares interrupt with PCI slot 2

These are hardwired together, to get my 3 PCI cards to have thier own interrupts, I used Slot 4 for Sound card, Slot 2 for SCSI adapter, disabled USB and used slot 3 for my network card.
Of course, different motherboards have different hardware wiring of the PCI slots, but I have not found one that had more than 2 dedicated PCI slot interrupts.

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

-lynx- · « **Reply #11 on:** February 27, 2001, 08:26:00 AM »

Skuzzy - sorry for being a pain but what happens to ISA? Is it separate or sharing with something too? (Thanks for PCI info - I'll keep it in mind

)

Eagler · « **Reply #12 on:** February 27, 2001, 09:40:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy:
I have to laugh about the number of PCI slots. I had a heck of a time trying to get 3 PCI cards installed so they would have thier own interrupts.
Let's see;
PCI Slot 1 shares interrupt with AGP bus
PCI Slot 2 shares interrupt with PCI slot 5
PCI Slot 3 shares interrupt with USB bus
PCI Slot 4 is dedicated (woohoo!)
PCI Slot 5 shares interrupt with PCI slot 2

These are hardwired together, to get my 3 PCI cards to have thier own interrupts, I used Slot 4 for Sound card, Slot 2 for SCSI adapter, disabled USB and used slot 3 for my network card.
Of course, different motherboards have different hardware wiring of the PCI slots, but I have not found one that had more than 2 dedicated PCI slot interrupts.

Yep, isn't it lovely... I thought I was the only one. I've disabled both serial ports to get enough IRQ's. And my board shared one of the PCI slots with the ATA66 controller. A bunch of trial and error. They don't make it simple do they

Eagler

bloom25 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 28, 2001, 12:29:00 PM »

On-board sound = instant disable in the bios for me. The only thing good about onboard sound is that a gameport is usually built onto the MB then.

As for ISA slots, why do you think the Abit is slower?

The a7v133 can use jumpers or bios to set multiplier.

I have nothing against Abit Kt7 or kt7a, they are both great boards as well. The Asus is a bit faster and more stable though. In the US the price difference is not that large. Maybe in the UK it is different?

All newer MBs share interupts between PCI slots. The configuration for the a7v is: Pci 1: Shares with AGP Pro slot
Pci 2: Shares with Promise onboard ata100/raid controller
Pci 3: Shares with nothing
Pci 4: Shared with Pci 5
Pci 5: Shares with pci 4 and/or amr slot (useless btw)

My setup is as follows:

Agp slot: Video card
Pci 1: free (I have a fan in this slot)
Pci 2: network card (I disabled the promise controller, I don't use it.)
Pci 3: SB Live! value
Pci 4: modem
Pci 5: free (USB expansion card in this bay)

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS