KX7-333 vs. GA-7VRXP = Abit Suxs?!?

[TimeCop]

I am planning on ordering a new MB. I am scared of getting another Abit though. I know they have made awesome boards in the past and I have owned 5 of them (BX6, BH6, VH6-II, VH6T, KX7-333) but I have gotten a bad apple I think with my latest, the KX7-333.

I bought this board (to make a long story short) to replace my Gigabyte GA-7VRXP v1.1 since it was not working with my GF4 about 8 months ago. (Turns out I just had to increase the volt. to the AGP which I later read on this site after it was too late.) And I never got around to selling the board so it sat in the closet, until just recently I bought a XP2100 T-Bred and decided to throw my old XP2000 PAL into it and make it my secondary system.

Now some things that have bothered me with this Abit KX7-333 board:

1. Very slow on boot up.
2. Overclocking was actually worse than the Gigabyte WTF?!? (Before I unlocked the CPU.)
3. Highest voltage only v1.85? WTF the Gigabyte went to v1.90
4. On all my previous boards (including the Gigabyte) if I set the FSB too high to get a post all I would have to do is turn off the machine, turn it back on while hitting “Insert” a few times and then it would reset the bios. Not on this KX7-333, for this board I have to turn it on and off 3-4 times before it will reset the bios, or pull the jumper which is a pain in the ***.

So now I have almost 2 idenical systems and for this test I set them up as follows just switching my recently purchased 9700 Pro card back and forth.

Abit KX7-333 Rev 1.1 (VIA-333) Latest Bios
(1)256MB DDR 2700C2 XMS Corsair 2-2-5-2-1T
Athlon XP 2100 @ 1900MHz (13x146)
Maxtor 40GB ATA133
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

Gigabyte GA-7VRXP Rev 1.1 (VIA-333) F6 Bios
(1)256MB DDR 2700C2 XMS Corsair 2-2-5-2-1T
Athlon XP 2000 @ 1825MHz (12.5x146)
WD 80GB ATA100 (NOT the 8MB cache one)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

(Instead of swapping processors I just set both at the same FSB even though the multi's are different.)

After performing a fresh install of WinXP Pro on both PC's I installed in this order on both:

1. WinXP SP1
2. VIA Hyperion 4in1 v4.45
3. ATI Catalyst 3.1 Drivers
4. Rage3D Tweak v3.8 (Did not overclock the vid card, just set to Optimal Performance)
5. 3DMark2001SE

Then I benched both machines:

I figured since the gigabyte was giving up 75MHz it would lose, but not by a big margin. Well as they say on NFL Prime time, "That is why they play the game."

Gigabyte GA-7VRXP:
14097 - 3DMark2001SE

Abit KX7-333:
13388 - 3DMark2001SE

709 Points differance. That seems HUGE especially like I just said the Gigabyte was handicapped by 75MHz.

So anyway now that I have watercooling I need more voltage but there is no sense in volt modding this POS KX7-333 board.

So I need to buy a new board, is the Abit NF7 a great board? I would be buying (2) 256MB Corsair 3500 chips to put in my new board. Does it have a problem with Corsair memory like the Epox 8RDA does? Any known problems with it? Or is there another board out there that I should be looking at instead?

Sorry for the long read… if anyone has any comments/suggestions please post.

 

[Gremlin255]

dont get gigabyte board their vcore setting uses a percentage rate. Get a nforce2 board they overclock the best.

 

[TimeCop]

I wouldn't get another Gigabyte, I am just amazed that my Abit KX7-333 board lost by so much even when it was 75MHz faster.

I would get an nforce2 board but I want one that boots fast, RUNS FAST (it better run faster than my gigabyte not just clock speed I mean true speed), great at overclocking, and can reset the bios by hitting insert on the first try.