Notes on A7S333

I've just gotten my system up & running solid and figured I'd share a few thoughts:

- Don't even THINK about using lower-rate RAM with this board. I tried thanks to misrepresented system. Found a stick of SpecTek in there. Could NOT load XP without bluescreens & such. Replacement with 'recommended' Samsung 2700 runs rock stable at 166 on the memory.

- There's no voltage adjustment or PCI dividers, so if you wanna go over about 140 or so on the FSB, you're done. If you're gonna go with this board, spend the money you save on a good TBred CPU.

- The built-in sound is garbage. Next step is to disable it and stick my Fortissimo 2 back in there. Much cleaner. The analog outs are really garbage (as heard on my Klipsch ProMedia set). Can't speak for the SPDIF. My opinion is the Cmedia is a waste of MB space & backpanel where you could put a fan. It would sound about the same. Can't seem to get 4 speakers to work properly...

- No built-in LAN. No USB2, no FireWire, no Raid. Why did I get this board again? Oh yeah, it's cheap.

Overall, it's not so bad. This is my first AMD. Been overclocking Celerons on Abits for years (BX6R2, BE6-2). All I've got to say is wow, that XP-2200+ is real fast!!

Hope this helps someone. If I had it to do over again (there's always Ebay), I'd go with an Epox or even an A7V I think. Not having voltage adjustment or dividers is pretty limiting.

Ah well, what was that bridge trick?

Ahhh, disabled the CMedia, popped the Hercules Fortissimo 2 back in, now back in MP3 heaven...

That CMedia deal is really pretty marginal. I was surprised at that.

i think i'll but this mobo...

i want
1600+ @ 2ghz (hi-eng air or water cooled)
(samsung 2700 2cl)

so, is it possible? what's your idea?

Hey I just bought the a7s333 like two days ago! (i didn't have enough cash to upgrade the cpu) threw in my anthlon thunderbird 1g. And I was very HAPPY of course cause i also got a nice geforce 4 mx440 from palitdatona on the same day So i threw that in, installed the ram, plugged it in and i was getting these wierd IDE problems at first. Well on my old system i had the cd player plugged into the secondary IDE and the hard drive plugged into the first. It wouldn't detect my CD player unless i let it share the first ide slot with the hard drive, well it was still detecting something, but it called it like INT network device or something . Anybody know anything bout that??? Anyways, it works great like this, i got the processor overclocked to 1.1G for my first overclocking activity ever. Next step is to "unlock" the processor so I can change the multiplier lower, as to get the fsb to its full speed before i go any higher. This is awsome cause I was like into computers but, well not hardware before. I used to have a compaq with amd k6 in it and I then started trying to overclock; however, it didn't even work on that computer... so I bought a new motherboard and a case and processor and used my other old stuff, tried everything to overclock the thing and it was impossible! If you've ever seen or heard of a motherboard company called BCM, (it stands for Buy Crud Motherboards) Anyways i couldn't over clock anything but the video card, and i didn't even have a AGP slot (even though the specifications say there is). And it had an sis730 chipset, so i'm playing quake3 with like 20 friggen fps on my sis730 agp chip integrated. I get this new stuff and vrooooooooooooooom! thanks everyone for helpin me learn what good hardware really is! I can't wait to get a good late model anthlon XP. I did notice that my system had trouble with plug and play on in bios, so i went without it and set the stuff up. I had slight IDE troubles, and I also had to use a sound card, the c-media was only playing sound out ONE speaker. Besides that graphics are great and fast! plenty of mem bandwidth! geforce 4mx 440 is great for cost/performance ratio

Maybe theres a program that will be out simular to CPU cool you can use to keep the PCI divider in check???? I saw some reviews of the board with the bus clocked way over 150! One board was a modification of the a7s333 with a big heat sink on the mosfets, i dunno about differences on the pci divider though. But they had the fsb goin 168. You might be able to mod the bios or in future bios that will be supported I have no idea. Anyways! first actual good board i've ever had! *gets excited over high frame rates and fast loading!*

a7s333
anthlon thunderbird 1g @1.1G (first ever overclock!) Throws party
fsb @110(not fer long)
memory @ 266
geforce 4 mx440 @ 330core,450memory
duel 20 inch power turbine box fans (quiet hum w/both on low)
Board 25C, CPU 39C

I got this board. Ran it stock for awhile, it seemed decent. Nothing really lagging. I don't use all the extras like USB2 and Raid, so i wasn't missing anything.

Then i started overclocking it. Well, for a 30 dollard CAD heatsink fan (Volcano 6cu), and a little help of outside cold air(ducted), I've got this thing to 160FSB, about 46-48C under load. Got my 2100+ from 1733 to 2080. Only thing stopping me from going over 166 is the divider. It blue screens because of the 42MHz PCI.