Abit KT7A bios (kt7zt) unstable

[TeuffelHunden]

I currently have the kt7wz bios on my mobo. Tried to upgrade to the zt and my system became unstable. Radeon wouldn't work right and games locked up within minutes. What would cause this? Is the zt bios bad? For now I'm sticking with the wz...it seems to be working fine.

AMD Thunderbird 1gig@1gig
Abit KT7A
ATI Radeon 32ddr
SB Live 5.1xGamer
3com network card
Western Dig. 40 gig, 7200rpm
Sony CDrW 12x

 

[Hoot]

Joni, what revision bios did your KT7A come with? That is the best indicator of its age. My first one came with WW on it. It was from a time frame where people were reporting lots of issues surrounding bios revision and FSB limitations. I returned mine and got a replacement KT7A with YH on it. The FSB on it ran 150 Mhz effortlessly and it is rock solid up to 1524 Mhz, with my modest 1G/266 AXIA tbird.
There are some threads around containing anecdotal, but still useful methods that people used to get newer bios revisions to stabilize.

Hoot

 

[TeuffelHunden]

It came with the WW. How did you go about returning it? Did you go directly through abit?

 

[BSH]

hey, i got a kt7, originally with ul bios. after upgrading from wz to zt, the shutdown of win98se becam a few secs slower. and the "win shutting down" screen, appears, but it didn't appear with older bioses at all!!
some sudden freezes with all bioses on 900mhz.

 

[Hoot]

TeuffelHunden (Jun 16, 2001 12:51 p.m.):
It came with the WW. How did you go about returning it? Did you go directly through abit?

Abit will not consider the innability to run the FSB faster than 133 as grounds for an RMA. I was lucky in that I bought my first KT7A from NewEgg and they had a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. They happily replaced my original KT7A with another and all I was out, was the cost of shipping the original one back to them. I no longer recommend Abit motherboards to people seeking advice on which board to get. This is due solely to the fact that they don't behave the same from one unit to the next. A lot of people who have KT7A mobos and were lucky to get one that runs stable, swear by them and recommend them every chance they get. Others, who got a bad one on the first try, badmouth them and have moved to some other brand. Keeping everything in perspective, I can only say, when they work right, which is more often than not, they work very right. Hopefully, as the production run of units that are erratic, fall out of the supply chain, the KT7A will once again be worthy of my and other oc'ers recommendation. That day is approaching as I hear less and less problems, compared to three months ago.

Hoot

 

[TT120]

I agree with Hoot, I'm going to try an Iwill board next as I seem to be having some stability issues that I cant nessesarily pin on the motherboard but cant discount it either. I've got 3 of them with issues and I want to try another Mobo to see if they clear up.