No longer a MSi fan...

[exx]

To start things off, I'm pretty peeved.

Approximately two years ago I purchased the MSi K7T Turbo KT133A motherboard along with a Duron 800mhz. After unlocking the chip 10+ times, I kept getting very strange results. It wasn't until a couple days later when somebody on this forum told me that the board had an issue with the bios and I had to flick the power supply switch off in the back after making changes to the multipliers. Not only that, but I was also not allowed to use the reset button because it actually cleared my cmos! #@^! lovely eh? So that was my first MSI experience, and it really ****ed me off. However, the board was stable so I didn't complain once all the bull was out of the way. MSi was still decent in my books due to the price.

7 Days ago I bought an MSI KT3 Ultra (NON-ARU) with an Athlon XP1600+ & 256MB PC2700 Samsung (all of the stuff is in my sig). As soon as I got it, I went to post the cpu and it didn't post, no beeps, nothing. Already I was worried but I reseated everything and tried again, still nothing. It wasn't until I reset the cmos that I got the initial post. Soon as I got into the bios, I checked the PC Health Status and was kinda dissapointed when there was a couple second delay between key presses and reaction (i originally thought my system locked). So in PC Health status, there was a couple second delay when I hit the up/down key. Great! But I didn't really care too much about that.

So everything worked fine, even though clearing the cmos was kind of unexpected. I then unlocked my XP and popped it in my system, all was fine. 9x196, working extremely well, not a problem. It was stable and awesome. A couple days later I rebooted the system and when it restarded it gave me an error about not being able to find an Operating System. Ok... I didn't change anything, I just rebooted. I went into the bios into the Standard Features, and there was no devices listed, nothing was detected. Again I got that feeling of "Oh ****, what now.. " and so I went to check the HD cable and it was plugged in properly at both ends, I then tried the secondary ide, and even tried a different cable with no luck. My last choice was to clear the cmos, fortunately it worked.

TODAY, I was benchmarking my ram speeds "someone in this section posted about sandra scores". I got a score of 2600MB/s, but remembered achieving 2700MB/s before. So I figured I'd go into the bios and tweak the ram timings. There really wasn't much to tweak though, my ram would only let me do CAS 2 2-5-3. I read up about the FAST mode setting in the manual and decided to give that a shot. ...... that would be the end of my overclocking fun with this board.

DEAD...

I saved the settings, I rebooted, I watched the monitor go off. I cleared the cmos (as I did several times during the cpu overclocking process). Pushed the power button, nothing, dead. And the feeling of "oh ****" is back.

I tried all sorts of things, removing all devices, trying to post, removing the battery, praying... Nothing helped. No post. I took the ram out and went to a buddies house to test it. It worked. Now I was pretty deep in **** because there were only 3 other options. Video card, Cpu, Motherboard.

Once I got home I put the ram back in and tried to boot, no post. Ok, so it's clearly not the ram. I didn't have a spare cpu to test, but a buddy came down with a PCI card to check if the AGP was dead. I tried the PCI, no luck. Ok, so it's not video, not ram. CPU or Motherboard.

After looking at the board and wondering where the diagnostic led's were, I remembered they came seperate. I hooked them up (The D-Led Bracket) and booted up.

Initial test (System Power ON) which states that the D-LED would hang if the CPU was damaged or not installed properly.
--*PASS*

Second test (Early Chipset Initialization)
--*PASS*

Third Test (Memory Detection test) states that the D-LED would hang if the memory was damaged.
--*PASS*

Fourth Test (skip?) Fifth test (skip?). I'm not entirely sure if the LED's go in order, but it appears that way. So it skipped the (decompressing BIOS Image to RAM) test, and the (Initializing Keyboard Controller) test. It immediately went to "TESTING VGA BIOS" at which point it hung. That was it, game-over. No matter what I tried, which video card, whether PCI OR AGP, it would hang at the VGA BIOS TEST.

I tested both the AGP & PCI video cards in my intel system, both worked.

So seeing as how it gets past the CPU test and skips the bios etc. I'm led to assume that the bios is FRIED.

The cpu had no reason to die, it wasn't getting hot, it had great cooling, it doesn't look damaged, doesn't smell.

Right now I'm baffled and quite peeved.

Fortunately I bought it from a friends shop so I shouldn't have any problems returning it and what not.

I need a beer

Last words... um... EPOX HERE I COME! Never again will I buy an MSi motherboard.

One last question (*just out of curiousity*), do any of you KT3 Ultra owners have that 'PC Health Status' lag, or the couple other things that occured?

If you read this entire rant, I admire you

 

[hellwolf]

that delay in keys in msi heathstatus is normal i also have it... as for frying your bios... lol kinda wierd?
i more or like thing that you had a hotspot in your case somewhere and some circuit on your mobo fryed (had that on my old abit kt7 once also didnt boot anymore and mobo was claimed dead)

as for the board itself i have no complaints yet

 

[repo man11]

I recently got one of these and an XP1800 for a friend, and it is working well so far. He isn't an overclocker, and he doesn't really need to be. It performs so much better than his Celeron 366 with onboard video and sound, I doubt he'll ever feel the need to try and push it. I might be a bad influence on him though, I'll have to watch it.

 

[lubetek]

hmmmm that sucks man. i for one do not have that delay problem in the BIOS. but i do have a few coments on this mobo. first off, the first KT3 i bought was fugged up so i had to return it and get another kt3. this one works great, though ive noticed a few things in the BIOS that arent quite right. i blame all the problems with this mobo on the BIOS. also....if you are not over clocking then this is a kick *** board, BUT if your a over clocker then there are way better options out there. i must admit that i regret buying this board. i could return it but id have to pay a 20% re-stocking fee, and i just dont want to do that. i had decided all along to build a new system around the AMD hammer chip when it releases, so ill just run the KT3 untill the hammer releases. for the most part this board is quite fast....and quite stable, but the BIOS version being used is not so good and i feel that if they had used a different BIOS none of us would have had these problems.

on a good note...this board IS fast. it boots in twenty seconds....(i like). i love all the tweaking options in the BIOS, and i have been able to hit high FSB's i know most of my problems stem from my Ram not able to keep up with the high speeds. im only using pc2100. so far my system over clocked has been really good. but i keep having problems with the BIOS when im overclocking, which worries me. with any luck they will release another BIOS update and one that actually does something good for the mobo.

p.s. oh yeah....ill never buy an MSI again. just thought id throw that out there. so far the only board that i have had that worked FLAWLESSly were the Shuttle AK31A and ABIT KG7-R ive had others. right now the best board is made by Epox.

 

[exx]

Looks like I'll be moving to the Epox section. Just picked myself up a 8K3A for $10 more than the MSI cost... why oh why didn't I get the epox in the first place ?!

 

[hellwolf]

yeah epox is also good... but i had a store that sell these mobo's bulk .. meaning i payed like 80bucks for it when it was yust released (think normaly around 120-140bucks in euro at that time)

prolly why i chose this one as for i had no prior usage of the MSI brand... if i dint get the discount i would have gotten me the epox as i heard it was good.

ah well atm no complaints at all on this mobo..but i did grow a hate for this ramband im using atm... ah well lifes a *****

 

[Skiing Squirrel]

Well, I got a kt3 and it works pretty good. Now tell me about these epoxs... Are they good or what? I never really heard about them.

 

[exx]

Well, I got a kt3 and it works pretty good. Now tell me about these epoxs... Are they good or what? I never really heard about them.

Well I replaced my MSI KT3 with an Epox 8K3A and overall it's tough to say which is better (the msi died after 8 days, how long will it take the epox.. hopefully I'll never find out).

The MSI let me get a higher bus with no problems. I was running it at 9x197FSB with ram settings at CAS2 2-3-5, any other changes made to ram resulted in no post. So 9x197 was my limit with the board, however it would post my cpu at ~1850mhz but wouldn't boot windows (lack of voltage perhaps).

This Epox board posts even at 220FSB. HOWEVER, it seems to be plagued by some sort of "AGP Tearing" issue that there is no fix for. So basically, I can post my cpu at 8x220, however, it boots with tons of video corruption on the post screen and the bios is almost unreadable. So right now I'm running at 9.5x189 (1.8ghz) without AGP tearing. If I put the bus up to 190+, it'll appear fine until I boot into windows, then if I run 3dmark and leave my video card at default speeds, there will be tearing in 3dmark as if my ram was grossly overclocked.

If there's one nice thing its that this board seems to boot at every setting you could think of. I've messed with it tons with ridiculous settings and haven't had to clear the CMOS once.

I also ran tests (sandra & 3dmark) at 9x189 and found the results to be quite a bit better. I'm sure that's because this board gives you a ton of options for ram, which i tweaked to all lowest settings.

So overall I'm dissapointed that I can't use a disgustingly high FSB, but I think it could also be my video card that isn't as tolerable with this board. Some people don't get the AGP tearing till around 210+. I'll try my buddies GF3 at some point and see if it changes at all.

 

[Skiing Squirrel]

Did your kt3 blow becuase you overclocked to much?

 

[exx]

Its honestly tough to say. Why would the motherboard (of all things) cook because I'm using it to overclock other parts?

I had the CPU at 1.85v and the ram at 2.7v. Nothing was grossly overdone. The northbridge was cool at around 28-30'C. Nothing on the board was hot, I checked the clock generator and it was also cool.

In my opinion, the bios corrupted. Why do I say that? Well, the bios still made beep sounds up until the VGA detection sequence. It also skipped the extraction to ram. I used a postcard on it (since those d-led's aren't always accurate) and it gave me the same error. Even using a PCI card, it would still die at the vga bios stage.

The thing I changed that apparently fried it was changing the FAST MODE setting to TURBO. I don't think that option killed it though because I tried it before. I just figure the board was half-way dead when I got it. There were too many weird things with the bios. For example, you could go into the RAM controls, and if you hit enter on the HCLCK setting (when your bus is at 166 fsb) it would not let you change anything. However, if you hit page up/page down, it'd start scrolling through the boot devices in the system... how weird is that ?!

That about sums it up, I'm gonna get the rma'd one back and sell it.

 

[lubetek]

keep in mind guys, (im sure most of u know this) but when ever u over clock the FSB alot it can and in most cases corrupt windows files and programs. what i do is if i make a big adjustment to the FSB ill then reformat my HDD. ive found that i have WAY less headaches when doing this. course most peops dont want to format everytime they O/C. i wouldnt do it if i was going from 133MHz to 150MHz....but when i go up to 166MHz and higher i reformat. defragging helps also, if u dont reformat that is...and re installing some programs will do the trick too.

 

[hellwolf]

that fast mode is the ram setting? or cpu one? (still dunno bios by hart)

anyways i run all tweaks on at... did have to go 2.8V on ram and cpu though now im at 145fsb but my darn chip still isnt unlocked

 

[exx]

that fast mode is the ram setting? or cpu one? (still dunno bios by hart)

I'm not too sure exactly what it does. It's in the Ram section in bios, but in the manual it said that it sped up CPU operations.. kinda like a 486 turbo button ?!

 

[Mr. $T$]

I got a kt3 on the way. It was a tough desion to make epox-MSI
I chose MSI because it was red[/red] no no j/k. No I chose it because the insanely high FSB that people were getting. If I have problems I will act pized and get my money back. and then get a epox or wait for the N-forse 2 or kt400. Lets see how it goes

 

[Tamasha_Strife]

I'm not too sure exactly what it does. It's in the Ram section in bios, but in the manual it said that it sped up CPU operations.. kinda like a 486 turbo button ?!

I bet all the 486 turbo button does is change the number written on that little screen

 

[Tiger]

I have just RMA'd my second KT3 mobo after 6 weeks. I am sure there is a design problem with the voltage regulation to the cpu. I have had similar problems as above with the vga detection sequence. But the variation of the vcore voltage is way too big in my opinion. I see variations of 0.05V with mine. Compare this to the K7T Turbo R which has variations of 0.01V. I was able to get 1650 out of the K7T at 1.96V and barely made 1630 at 2.05V with the KT3. IMHO they should have used the extra mosfets which were allowed for on this mobo (see the empty spaces) together with bigger caps. I am not too impressed and seriously thinking of switching to Abit myself.

 

[james.miller]

ive notice that the voltage to my chip fluctuates by as much as .4volts +/- . i hate this board.im taking it back.
its epox for me i think

 

[XgladiatorX]

yeah guys you maybe right

I'm having trouble with mine also I'm getting the BSOD for no reason I upped the fsb to 133 and it crashed .then I got windows\system32\config\system error message had to reinstall Xp grrr

anyone know of a website telling us how to use the Xp repair
seems like it don't repair anything . you just reinstall,
I tried to fixMBR no luck

I found the repair for this error

Q307545

 

[Takovr]

I like the board but no "high'' fsb

I just bought this board at comp u.s.a. with a 1 year return policy, it cost me 20 bucks extra for it but if I have any problems they will replace it. The only problem I have with it is I can't go over 133 fsb without the compter locking up. I think it is my memory though, I have 2 sticks of crucial 256 2100 ddr ram cas 2.5.

Gene

 

[djb23]

Crucial that won't Overclock? Are you serious?