Listen up KD7 owners

Hi guys:)

My Abit contact just dropped me an email today. He's been quite busy prepping for Comdex,etc, and asked me for issues or information that has come up on the forums. What I'd like to compile is a shortlist of the current unresolved isues with the KT-400 boards, the AT7Max2 and KD7. I don't want to hear the 1/6th divisor doesn't work either..LOL ;) We know thats a KT-400 issue. My initial thoughts are:

1) HD corruption just over 200FSB whether native IDE or Highpoint controller. KX7 was not as prone to this, I've run mine up to 226Mhz with no corruption.

Ok..let em fly my friends....I'll email a list to Abit on Monday.
Thanks in advance:)

Randi:D

Temp sensors are Outrageously high. The mobo does get very hot though around the Caps, Mosfet, 4pin 12V conector Area.

How about fixxing the can't use reset button at 180 or higher problem.

Since we cant have the 1/6th divider, all I want is a 5-3-1 devider, not much to ask for:D

OPP

What's up Randy! Well on the KD7 it doesn't OC nearly as well as my KX7 did. First of all to get a decent OC out of it you have to run the FSB at 166 or close to it and if you use the 5:2:1 ratio then you can't set the DRAM Clock manually. It locks it in at 166. The board definately isn't as stable as the KX7 maybe its just me but you could OC the KX7 with just about any setting and it was very forgiving. With the KD7 it is a picky MOTHER F****R. Also what is up with using no heat transfer material/grease on the chipset and with using smaller/cheaper mosfets (refering to the heat problem). I also thought that the board was suppose to take advantage of the 8X feature. With the new bios unless I am missing something it isn't available anymore. These are just issues off the top of my head I have only been using the board for about 2 days and I am not impressed.
Thanks for taking the time and initiative for refering these issues to Abit for all of the Xtreme members.
Nathan

In addition to the areas OPP mention, I had to add HS to my SB. 1st one died after getting blistering hot.

undervolting of the +12v rail. (at least for me)

Me too- undervolting of the +12v rail. Abit fixed the low +5v problem, but added a low +12V rail problem.

I do not like the inability to swich AGP transfer rates in the bios. I have a Radeon 9700, what if I wanted to run it at 4X?

The relative unoverclockability of this board is a serious issue (especially with the AT7-MAX2).

The rest has already been mentioned.

Wide variation of performance. Most Australian/New Zealand users are having problems with the DDR speed being set to anything except 266 (it will default to this if set higher).

Hi guys!
This info is more about the KT400-chipset it self but witout saying to much I can tell you that both the ABIT KD7-RAID and AT7-MAX2 is invloved.. :)
I have been testing seven different KT400-boards the last two weeks for a big roundup that we are going to post this week on our website. I can tell you that the KT400-chipset is very strange.. at least that’s my conclusion. The boards I have tested are getting very different performance results and I mean big differences.. And that’s with DDR333 and max timings on all boards. As the roundup isn't public yet I’m not going out with any numbers but I will report back to you guys as soon it gets public. And the “FSB-bug” really looks like a KT400-problem as you have already mentioned. Of the seven boards tested three of them got up to 202Mhz FSB but anything over that corrupted the windows installation.
I will have more info for you soon.

Fella's:)

Could I have some numbers on each of your boards undervolting +12v Lines to have to present to them:)

Randi:D

Randi, with my Antec PP403X, the 12v rail havered around 11.1V, and that's with the pot being tweaked. Just got a new TTGI 550W PSU, and the +12v rails is still low- +11.5V as I type this, pot untweaked.

A couple of really annoying issues which I've been having with my KD7 which are really putting me off this board:

[list=1][*]I'm using the SPDIF (optical) out with a toslink cable which goes to an optical-coax convertor and then to my Boston BA5700G's. It works fine, but when I do things such as, open my computer, click the back or forward button on IE, click on a link, press play in Winamp etc. the speakers make a loud CRACKLE sound. This sound also happens when Windows loads. The volume of the crackle is independent of the volume of the speakers.

This doesn't appear to be a hardware issue.
I've tested headphones/speakers plugged into the analog outputs and it doesn't happen.

The reason I say it doesn't appear to be a hardware issue is that it doesn't happen *as* bad with some drivers as it does with others.

It is SHOCKING with the drivers available for download on ABit's webpage. Bad enough to make me turn off my speakers whenever I'm not playing games - According to device manager driver version is 5.10.0.4010
These drivers seem to have a lot of extra "stuff" (or "crap") which the pure VIA drivers dont have (see below) so perhaps this is where the problem lies.

The problem is considerably better with the drivers found on VIA Arena (http://downloads.viaarena.com/driver...io_a1u320b.zip) - According to device manager driver version is 5.12.01.3820
The crackle is not nearly as loud with these but it's still there.
[*]Using the same sound setup as above, when the "main" volume slider is adjusted in the windows "volume control", the volume of the sound doesn't change.
Only the "Wave" volume slider affects the volume of the sound.
This means that whenever I want to adjust the volume of the sound I have to double click on the speaker icon to change the wave slider, rather than just using the one which pops up.
[*]Finally. And this is a HUGE beef which I am *very* cross at ABit for :mad: :mad:
I'm using an Alpha 8045 heatsink, which uses the four mounting holes around the socket.
To my dismay, when I went to install the heatsink, I realised (thank god!) that ABit had thoughtfully placed components right up close (and I mean close!) to the mounting holes, in one case - a surface mount resistor or capacitor is sitting less than 1 or 2mm away from the hole.
This means that the mounting bolts and washers which sit in these holes would crush these components if I had not realised and found a solution to this problem.

In the end I had to make custom nylon washers (by filing normal washers with a nail file) which would lift the mounting bolts clear of these components.

This of course meant that the heatsink was a few mm higher than it should of been, and wasn't making contact with the core of the CPU!
This then meant that I had to take to the bolts with a file, and take a few mm off the top to compensate for the added height of the washers in order to make the HSF make contact with the CPU.

What a nightmare.

If they are going to put these holes in, they can at least go to the effort of ensuring that they are usable!! :mad:
I can't believe how such a thing could have been overlooked.
I don't see why they couldn't leave at least a few mm around these holes, and even put a nice metal washer type coating like they do with the rest of the mounting holes on the board.

Similarily, on the back side of the board there is not a gap for the nuts, there are tracks running right up next to the holes.
This means that when the nuts are tightened on the back of the bolts, they end up scraping the tracks, coming *dangerously* close to destroying the board. I have no bloody idea how this motherboard survived the installation of this HSF :/
[*]As other people have noted, I too have 12v rail undervoltage. Never been higher than 11.80 and goes as low as 11.63.[/list=1]

That's about it.
I'm not going to get into speed and what not because that's not nessisarily ABits fault, I thought I'd focus on things which are up to ABit etc.

Randi, With my TTGI 520w +5 is 5.27 +12 is 11.86. The sensor problem is another thing, in my Q Pwr with pelts Sensor 1 is reading 57c while the chip is reading 32c.

The 166/200 mem settings in the BIOS are bullöööö. I emailed Abit and their response was -

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Re: Abit KD7 KT400

Im yet to establish any memory bus speeds this board is ¡¦capable¡¦ of running (333,400) in windows besides 266mhz? I can only get 266mhz speeds with any memory bus setting (133:166:200). Performance in SiSoft Sandra memory test is also only 266mhz equivalent as well (2000/1950 default speed 133fsb:200mem).

Even though the bios states the memory is running at 200mhz in the settings, and the POST screen states DDR400, no where inside Windows will it agree. I have used the following programs to help verify this -

Wcpuid v3.1
Cpu_Z 1.14
SiSoft Sandra Professional 2002 SP1

If you could let me know which modes these higher memory speed dividers are enabled I''d be extremely happy. Also could you provide me with a way to verify inside windows that the memory is actually running at the selected BIOS frequency (333/400).

Faithfully
Brad Johnson

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Quote:

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Dear Sir,

Thank you for your mail.

We deemed this is limited on chipset, this board high performance status is on 166(FSB 133MHz)/166(DDR 333), we just provided users can use DDR400 on this board, but KT400 datasheet don''t support DDR400.

Best regards,


If you need further assistance, please reply with history to this email.

ABIT FAE, Taiwan
ABIT Computer Co ., LTD

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They wouldnt even provide a program that I could verify the memory speed with at 166. Every program so far says the same thing on any setting (133/166/200) - 266mhz.

RaD

Don't reley on 3rd party programs. They may not be compatible with the KT400 chipset. Every program I've used to verify I am running at AGP 8X states I am running at AGP 2X- even ATI's own driver control panel. I was finally able to verify AGP 8X through H. Oda'a most recent revision of WCPUID. The revision before the latest even stated AGP 2X. Are you using the LATEST revision of WCPUID? It's v. 3.1

edit- o.k., I see you are already using 3.1 Is it a beta or final version? Check just to make sure, here is H. Oda's link: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002.../download.html

Quote:

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Originally posted by emtp563
Don't reley on 3rd party programs. They may not be compatible with the KT400 chipset. Every program I've used to verify I am running at AGP 8X states I am running at AGP 2X- even ATI's own driver control panel. I was finally able to verify AGP 8X through H. Oda'a most recent revision of WCPUID. The revision before the latest even stated AGP 2X. Are you using the LATEST revision of WCPUID? It's v. 3.1

edit- o.k., I see you are already using 3.1 Is it a beta or final version? Check just to make sure, here is H. Oda's link: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002.../download.html

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to make sure I d/l'd it again, no difference. This is with 512mb XMS3500 Corsair -

http://home.iprimus.com.au/rad_dj/pics/cpuid.jpg

but are you saying that yours displays 333mhz when your at default and engage the 166 divider?

RaD

Let me clarify this:

You are running at 12x133Mhz FSB. WCPUID shows your FSB speed, not your memory speed. Until I get my hands on this board this coming week I can't comment further. It seems something very simple is going on. Look at guys running this board such as OPPAINTER and mdzcpa, they aren't exhibiting this problem in their testing and evaluations. I'll keep youposted and try to assist you when I get the board and install it this week my friend. :)

Randi:D

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Originally posted by MrIcee
Let me clarify this:

You are running at 12x133Mhz FSB. WCPUID shows your FSB speed, not your memory speed. Until I get my hands on this board this coming week I can't comment further. It seems something very simple is going on. Look at guys running this board such as OPPAINTER and mdzcpa, they aren't exhibiting this problem in their testing and evaluations. I'll keep youposted and try to assist you when I get the board and install it this week my friend. :)

Randi:D

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Yes I understnd that bit, but on the far right hand side which shows I have the extended info displayed, the mhz of the memory is greyed out. This is either the same or just not listed in all other programs. I realise when we first got the ability of running async with the KT333 chipset we also couldnt get it displayed until the software makers revised their programs.

But my current point is this, this isnt a new chipset, but yet a revised KT333, and Im still unable to confirm it is able to be run asynchronous. True if we are overclocking then this ability is useless as it becomes synchronous at 166 fsb. Even on the Epox8K3A I believe we got a minor boost in bandwidth due to the async mode at default, where-as currently Im only recieving pc2100 speeds with ram rated beyond pc2700. In my present situation though Im waiting on a cpu that is worth overclocking (2400+ / 2600+ etc). Also the fact that I should have this feature period as it was paid for.

I appreciate everyone's help on this as Im just one of those tight-ass's that likes to get what he paid for....whther its to be used or not. If Im mislead by any of my beliefs, feel free to set me straight :)

RaD

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Originally posted by emtp563
Randi, with my Antec PP403X, the 12v rail havered around 11.1V, and that's with the pot being tweaked. Just got a new TTGI 550W PSU, and the +12v rails is still low- +11.5V as I type this, pot untweaked.

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mine reports 11.5v with my raidmax 400w blue aluminum PSU. In my epox 8k3a i got 11.89v full load...so its not my PSU.

I believe everything has been mentioned. Temps, corruption, ect.... But What about adjustments for the IO voltage? My devices like around 3.6v

Just had to add another confirmation of the board temp readings. I get....

SYSTEM: 48-52 C
CPU SURFACE: 46-49 C
CPU CORE: 58 C (or so, haven't been keeping as close an eye on this)

Another thing I should note is that I'm using a Thermaltake Volcano 9 with the heat sensitive option, with the sensor placed right underneath the cpu core. The fan never gets near full RPM's and it is supposed to blow full haul at 55 C, which the core seems to top at idle. Another confirmation that the temps are wrong?

My system is air cooled, but cooled very well and I have spent hours configing my system and switching/adding fans to try to get these temps down but nothing works. This is even on a replacement board. I've even noticed that there is no compound on the via chipset fan... making the fan pretty much cosmetic? What's goin on over at abit labs???

These temps are all with no overclocking, and 1 Gig of Ram at DEFAULT PC 2100 speeds.

Anyway, I was directed here from another board and am just looking for any info on this board I can find. I spent 2 hours on hold to talk to an abit tech who told me "yes, those temps do seem out of my comfort range, but they are in te safe zone". Most everything works fine, I freeze up in 3dmark when I set my vid card to speediest timings... heat issue or new vid card issue, I'm not sure. Also freezes in one map in UT2k3 with max bots played very aggressivley.

Oh yea, was too lazy to include system specs in board sig but...

Athalon XP 2000+
Abit KD7
ATI Radeon 9700
Maxtor 40 & 60 Gig HD's

Played with this board at a friend of mine.

Found folowing:
- when overclocking system temp goes skyhigh (65/70 C). Capacitors near systemtemp sensor get really, REALLY hot (like burn your fingers hot)
- fsbmax=189 @ 5:2:1 (B8 bios) 190 = datacorruption
- AGP cannot be set with AGP3.0 cards (Like Radeon 9700Pro). This is said in the manual btw. So the Radeon runs @ 8x (according to Sandra)
- above 166Mhz only sychronous fsb/mem is possible
- board is not consistant. Sometimes boots @ like 170Mhz 5:2:1, sometimes does not.
- 200Mhz is out of the question and that pisses me off.

Specs:
-KD7
-Corsair PC3200 C2
-XP2400+
-Radeon 9700Pro
-Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm
-everything watercooled

KD7-E is coming. Same board but with KT333 chipset. I wonder why????

Edit:
KD7-E Link

Edit: I didn't see that OPPAINTER already posted stuff about the KD7-E :D

I too would like the board temp thing addressed, agp settings in the bios etc as everyone else already said, but how bout the agp slot with a little more clearance from the first dimm slot? In a nutshell I think we're approaching the ceiling of how fast this round of AMD/Via hardware as a whole is going to take us. On another note if this helps anyone. It appears with the limited testing I've been able to do that if you set both the fsb and memory manually to 133 and move the fsb setting up after that that the memory continues to run synchronously with the bus past 166 and the divider remains at 1/5. At least the bios continues to report 1/5 and Sandra memory scores continue to increase.
Tiribulus:D

Well someone needs to get a kd7-e and test it. i bet Abit fixed alot of things. seems like they sell there motherboards w/o fully testing them. i wish there was a company that had gigabytes colors/layouts/support and abits features.

KD7-E is a KT333 like the KX7 but it has the VT8235 rather than the VT8233A. Epox has had the same setup for a while.

The only difference in the two southbridges is USB2, support for onboard sound / NIC and a 8 x V-Link (the link between the North and South bridge - which I believe makes no difference in speed at present).

My discoveries are as follows... note, all these figures are synchronous between CPU & RAM. The below FSB / HDD Corruption issues occur NO MATTER WHAT MULTIPLIER IS SET and NO MATTER WHAT CAS SETTINGS are set.

133FSB - OK
166FSB - OK
180FSB - OK
185FSB - HDD CORRUPT
190FSB - OK
195FSB - HDD CORRUPT
200FSB - OK
205FSB - OK
210FSB - HDD CORRUPT

Enermax 465 Whisper (431w PSU) gives me following voltages, at ALL TIMES. They are Rock Solid, other than the CPU Core which fluctuates +/- 0.07v tops.

5v = 5.29
12v = 12.19
3.3v = 3.38
Core @ 2v = 2.06v
Core @ 1.9v = 1.98v

SO, mine overvolts, rather than undervolts.

Southbridge on my board does get fairly warm to touch... not particularly excessive as other users have experienced, but still warmer than any other board I've used.

System Temps - vary from 35 deg at power on to 52 deg after 5 mins. EVERY other mobo I've owned has read these as anywhere from 19 degrees to 30 degrees. Bear in mind that the physical ambient temperature of the room is actually COLDER than when I had my previous boards, as it's now winter and I can see my breath when I'm in the basement! SO, in theory, my system temps SHOULD be in the region of 16 to 26 degrees. Read with an independant thermistor, I read my ACTUAL ambient temps to be 24 degrees. (Taken 4mm above surface of mobo between the silver caps)

The Reset after 180FSB issue is an ass pain, plain and simple.... GET RID OF IT. If I hit the reset button, I want it to reset. I DON'T want to have to leg it down to the basement to power off and power on the machine. My extension Reset switch should do the job just fine, and always did up until this board. Now my feet hurt, and it's your fault Abit... I don't need extra exercise runnin up n down stairs, so give us back our reset facility please!

Heatsink / Waterblock mounting... yup, same issue... resistors in silly places near the 4-socket mounting holes. I too had to custom-make my own washers to go on either side to prevent accidental damage to the baord. Also the big caps below the socket have had to be bent slightly to allow me to fit my Swiftech block...

Perhaps some in depth detail regarding the Memory and CPU bandwidth figures could be weedled out of em as well Randi?? Would sure be nice to know whether Opp's suspicions of Normal Decode on this board being equiv of Fast Decode on KX7 is correct... it appears to be so in bench scores...

All in all, I'm getting exactly the same performance as I got with my KX7-333... chip overclocks to exactly the same levels as I could get with the KX7, all be it the KD7 requires slightly higher voltages than the KX7 to achieve this. HOWEVER, the KX7 could succesfully boot upto 223 FSB without corrupting the HDD.

And yes, they should include some TIM on the NB as default in my opinion.

Think that's all the issues I have with the board...

I'm very glad I'm hanging on my KX7 after reading that post!

Quote:

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Originally posted by Marci
The Reset after 180FSB issue is an ass pain, plain and simple.... GET RID OF IT. If I hit the reset button, I want it to reset. I DON'T want to have to leg it down to the basement to power off and power on the machine. My extension Reset switch should do the job just fine, and always did up until this board. Now my feet hurt, and it's your fault Abit... I don't need extra exercise runnin up n down stairs, so give us back our reset facility please!

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cant they maybe make a BIOS update that will allow you to have a setting in BIOS to turn this "feature" on or off?

the reset button for me doesn't work sometimes for me even at 177MHz :mad:

Also changing some of the simple settings say vdimm from 2.65 to 2.75 or vice versa system just hangs ..similar affect like the 'reset button'

Pull the Plug. :)

Mine actually rebooted during playing BF1942 last night and since then it wont auto restart when selected leaving Windows.

I know we all hear problems people have with systems that will just random reboot, but I dont get those......until now. This board kinda has me worried, where Im used to enjoying my Abit boards.

And now with a few comparisons Ive seen between the 2.4B and the 2600+, Im thinking of switching back to Intel again for another run.

One of our local stores just posted availability of the 2600+ for $371 US and it gets beat by the Intel 2.4b which is only $221 US. So much for AMD being the powerful, cheap alternative.

RaD

Aha!!! Thank you that man!!

Quote:

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Mine actually rebooted during playing BF1942 last night and since then it wont auto restart when selected leaving Windows

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I was at a LAN this weekend, and installed BF1942... surprise surpise my machine crashed half way thru playing and now won't reset from Windows when told to... still haven't found a fix yet... I just wiped and reinstalled Windows...

I thank all of you for your input so far on this thread:)

Late last night our Abit contact called and he and I went over this entire thread, all info was noted and it will be relayed back to the engineers. Those of you who gave me detailed info and numbers, that was greatly appreciated also. He was unaware ,from his seat, of the heat and undervoltage problems...so this info in its detail was very beneficial. Your continued feedback on the KD7 and AT7Max 2, and for that matter, any of the performance boards members use is always welcome.

BTW....you guys running undervolted memory IT7's, that issue was passed along too.:)

Randi:D

After much testing here's the short list:

HD corruption at higher FSB speeds (seems to be right around 200mhz for most of the KD7 boards I've used).

Overstated system temps...no big deal really.

No reset over 180mhz is a real nuisance.

Sound crackling occurs on some games. Even when using a non creative card like my trusty TBSC. This indicates some PCI bus troubles. Note that the PCI Delay Transaction is Enabled by default in the BIOS. As setting enabling PCI Delay Transaction in the BIOS is the common way to cure sound crackles and HD corruption, it seems Abit is already aware of the issue.


Other issues...(which are really KT400 issues):

Only synchronous memory support when running the 5:2:1 divisor. Memory speed setting locks out at 166mhz when the 5:2:1 is slected. Some users are confused beleiving this means only synchronous memory support at FSB 166mhz or above. However, if you choose to overclock the AGP and PCI bus at 166mhz (or above) by choosing a 4:2:1 divisor you can then select the memory speed of 200mhz.

Very poor DDR400 performance when run asynchronously. Between the relaxed settings needed to keep the DDR400 stable and the latency penalties involved, asynchronous DDR400 is useless IMOHO.



Other comments:

Although I found one of the mounting holes to be close to some resistors (the north/right hole), I did not have to modify anything to fit Swiftech mounting hardware onto any of the mobos that have come through the lab. I'm wondering if this indicates manufacturing variances.

Mosfets do get hot. They have not caused any problems for me thus far. All KD7 systems have been able to Prime95 and loop 3DMark2001SE for at least 24 hours in a highly overvolted and overclocked stated (at or near 200mhz FSB with Core voltages at or well above 1.95v). However, there might be long term stability issues with such high temps.

12v rail voltages vary from board to board...again no stability issues. I think it has more to do with voltage sensor calibration than actual voltage variation.

Final comment, run with FSB and memory synchronous, this is a great mobo. Between the onboard sound and LAN, better voltage options, USB 2.0, AGP x8, and it's price...it is a good value. After getting the KD7 tweaked I have yet to have any unhappy customers. Only extreme overclockers looking for FSB speeds above 200mhz are those who will have issues.

Damn...I type too slow:(

lol yup :)

Still a lot of twiddling left to do, but overall I'm happy with mine. It let me overclock my 2400+ to 23 and change with relative ease, gave me 16789 in 3dmark (a 1500 point improvement so far), another 500 megs a second or so worth of memory bandwidth over my KR7 (shoot boys, twernt that long ago when 500 megs a second period was damn good) and besides all that the onboard lan and sound doesn't suck! especially the sound was a real eye opener to me. 1 million times better than I would have ever imagined. Haven't gotten sky high bus speeds, but could be something other than the board, like the 9700 Pro or half a dozen other things. I really think we've gotten spoiled to the point where if we can't accidentally get 250 fsb and a 400mhz oc on air with temps under 40 we feel cheated. That's not to say that I wouldn't always like more or that I have no complaints about the board, but maybe I just wasn't expecting as much as other people were. I do have to say that this and the AT7 Max I just put in my wife's machine really slurp up the juice. Lowest rails I've seen yet. Same parts different board, way lower.
Tiribulus:D

Hey guys been fighting the data corruption with my AT7 max2 also. After getting the corruption at 200 with my Xtremeddr PC3200 I decided to give my PC3500 a try. I'm now running at 202 stable and haven't tried higher, yet.

I did though format a seagate barracuda drive to for testing. I left it on the raid controller as a single drive. Only installed 40.71 drivers and directx 8.1. Running very stable at 205 without the corruption. Rebooted atleast 20 times and even played alittle N2002 without hiccups.

Thing I noticed is I needed 1.825v to get my XP1600 to run at 9x205(1840) where as I only 1.750 to run at 9.5x195(1862). I know I the higher the fsb the more voltage a chip needs to be stable but I thought this was kinda high.

Anyways here's a taste..........

http://home.attbi.com/~phippy1/205.bmp

This thread has been a good read.
Ive found few problems with this board it seems to be extremley stable, In fact I havent experienced a single crash. I have yet to attempt any overclocking however.

There are only two issues that I have with this board one fairly unimportant and the other something I feel is more of an issue but should be fixable with a bios update.

1. They real choose a bad place for the System temp thermistor it makes the readings from it somewhat less usefull, but I can live with that no big deal, I guess you can use it to keep an eye on that particullarly hot area which may turn out to be more usefull than not.

2. Bus Parking/PCI issue, as per the previous post Ive found very ocassional sound crackling issues. I dont know if anyone reads the TecChannel(In German) http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1053/index.html
But basically the VT8235 now supports Bus Parking if enabled in the bios(perhaps a patch could do this) it should both improve pci performance and compatability, and quite possibly eliminate all remaining Via pci issues.

Id love to know if Abit plans to release an updated bios with this feature i really hope so.
Other than that Im extremely happy with this motherboard.

Thank you so much for this thread Randi, really appreciated.
Just want to let you guys know that I have already summerized and forwarded this thread to our FAE in Taiwan and they are looking into the heat issue right now. :)
Dang I can't wait to upgrade mine too!

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks so much for your concern and your help. Very impressive that Abit cares about and listens to, customers! When it's all said and done, that's what matters the most.:D

Thank you for the warm Welcome TheDude. :)
Small update:
Just heard from my buddy over at OCZ regarding the data corruption issues. I sent him a couple KD7 for memory validation and he tested with their PC3200 and the 3500 and can not seem to reproduce the same problem.

I should have the results back from Cosairs as well by tomorrow. Gonna keep you guys updated :)

wow its really nice to see a company that cares.:) ABIT does own and u dont how much this means to so many of us overclockers.

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I sent him a couple KD7 for memory validation and he tested with their PC3200 and the 3500 and can not seem to reproduce the same problem.

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At what FSBs did they run the test, and with what OS?

Welcome to XS Forums d00d!

So that's... official Abit representation, official Chip-con representation... what other big companies can be pulled in to boost the shared knowledge of our `iccle collective o' clockers?!

Apparently I am now an Official Innovatek Representation (according to Innovatek, anyways! Was news to me, but apparently I have been Innovatek UK as far as they're concerned since the day we started selling it ... lol... they could've told me sooner!)

Hey guys just received another KD7 raid ver.1.1. I have to say looks like I got a yummy piece of hardware.


http://home.attbi.com/~phippy1/KD7_210.bmp

Scores are low cause I didn't reformat, out the with AT7 max2 in with the KD7. Gonna go for 215. Be right back

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Originally posted by RacerX1
Hey guys just received another KD7 raid ver.1.1. I have to say looks like I got a yummy piece of hardware.

Scores are low cause I didn't reformat, out the with AT7 max2 in with the KD7. Gonna go for 215. Be right back

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Test all the question listed above, and see if they fixed anything.
heat, fsb currputions, temps etc..


edit:
i just bought a kx7-333, but if this mobo is fixed then i might look into it. ill probly upgrade to a 2600+ in dec so if this board unlocks multis then i might have to get it :)

Abit Marketing:)

You are very welcome my friend:)
Glad to see you back and chatting with our members. This means very much to Xtreme and it's members to have your ear in these issues that have cropped up and any in the future....a company who listens to it's customers is a company who will thrive from the ground up. We all appreciate your participation:)

Thanks for the update also, we look foward to hearing if Abit can possibly resolve some of these other issues:)

Randi:D

Ok, I getting lots of IE errors at 215fsb and if I try to launch Sandra I get errors. My voltages seem alittle higher than my first KD7. My system temps seem to be the same.

I have gone through 2 AT7 Max2's and 2 KD7's. This is what I have come up with. Someone once mentioned here that ECS was making some of these higher end boards. This might hold true.

2 boards with the Yang. AN YA-4 lettering on the back get data corrupiton at 215fsb

2 boards with the Tean TN2 94v-0 lettering get corruption around 200fsb.

I'm getting more stable voltages with the Yang boards. Also both my KD7's were ver.1.1 and AT7 max2 ver.1.0

The Yang boards seem to handle the higher fsb better. Meaning the onboard lan atleast to me seems alittle faster.

One more note if you order a AT7 max2 you might not get the black PCB. They have gone to the yellow/gold color like the KD7's. I know of one individual that has the 1.1 and was quite upset. I'm going through the process of trading my AT7 max2 for his. Hope to have it by next week.

later.

So what does this mean for us who got a rev 1.0 in the last 2 weeks?
Tiribulus:confused:

I for one have just recieved a rev 1.1 but this board is a non-raid.
RacerX1, is your board raid??

Yup, raid. Check the back of the board which board do you have, Yang or Tean?

RacerX1:)

A quick question...this has to do with the capacitors above the AGP slot and near the power regulation under the cpu socket:

Are there any differences in the physical size and type of caps between the Yang and Tean boards?? For instance on the KX7 there was a difference in some having the big silver Nichicon and others the blue/black Rubycons. The nichicon boards were far and beyond better boards with excellent 5 and 12v rails.Keep in mind that both type of caps carry the same specifications but perform notably different.

This is an area worth exploring.

Randi:D

Yo, seems I have a Yang. Whats with that??

1 more thing Racer1X: Your IE errors....are you using max voltage on the memory at 215Mhz?? What you are experiencing is more a need for higher voltage on the ram from my experience. When you start getting up in that range I've always needed 3.30v and more...right now I run 3.39v to keep the ram happy and error free, of course that necessitates a voltage mod:)

Randi:D

PS. For FSB/MEM experimentation purposes to see how high the board will go stably...minimize your mem timings, CPU decode to normal and max mem voltage.

MrIcee,

3.39V? :O

Yo Randi:toast:

Nice to finally speak wity ya.

My errors at 215 was with 3.05v. I only have Xtremeddr modules to work with. The PC3200 is ok until 207ish where as the PC3500(TCC4 chips) run much better. I wish I had something with Winbond chips. I might have to dig deep in my pockets once again.:(

I can only compare my AT7 Max2(Tean) and KD7(Yang) at the moment. But I do recall my first AT7 Max2 was a Yang and ran very similar to my KD7 that I have now. A few weeks ago I had another KD7 Tean that had the corruption at 200. So again my experience has been more positive with the Yang boards whether a AT7 max2 or my current KD7.

I see nothing different with the caps that I can see, same size and color. I'm going to take some pics of both boards and post. This will be my first time with my digital camera so be gentle.

peace:D

Yes, 3.39v:)

No matter what the ram manufacturers say...if you want to run tight timings as high as possible...it takes voltage. I see so many disappointed enthusiasts who fail at attaining a certain level of ram performance, and most times it failed only because the ram needed more voltage, in many cases more than the board allows.
Thats how I got to 226Mhz on the KX7 with the Corsair and OCZ PC3200 sticks, along with running max timings at 201Mhz w/fast cpu decode in 3Dmark benching.:)

Randi:D

Racer1X:)

I would definitely try more voltage, my Samsung original PC2700 thrives on 3.22v to produce it's highest results. Try upping a little at a time...3.1, 3.15,3.2 etc....to see if it allows you to scale any higher.:)

Randi:D

Randi, I have noticed something on the silver caps.

KD7 Yang board the caps reads as follows

HD S2
1200
V16

AT7 Max2 Tean

HD S4
1200
V16

I will try more juice.:eek:

I dunno where my problems are coming from....

I upgraded quite a few things all at once. I was running my 1800+ on an A7V266-E with 512 Crucial PC2100 with a Radeon 8500. The processor won't see it's upgrade until I can get my grubby hands on a 2700 or 2800... but I went with the KD7-RAID along with 512 Corsair XMS2700@CAS2 and a Radeon 9700 PRO. I didn't really have any problems until I got UT2K3 and started to really test it. The most demanding thing I'd used before that since my upgrade was Photoshop. When running UT or 3DMark2K1, I get random reboots. I've been through 3 reinstalls of XP in the same time frame, the last two with SP1. I've tried three different Rady drivers each time. The 6143's on the disc, the 6166's, and the 6178'. I tried the 6193's the second time, but they seemed to cause more problems then the others did. I also get a few reboots at other times. I uploaded a new 3DM score and as the submit page showed it rebooted. I also get different freezes/lockups and crash-to-desktop in games. Not sure if that's an issue with the card, or a combo of the card and board.

I've tried different things in the BIOS settings to fix it, but nothing's worked. Used the RAM at 133 instead of 166, and/or less aggressive timings. Disabled all the fancy AGP settings. About the only thing I can think of that might fix it is upping the AGP Voltage, but it's greyed out.

I've also tried the 4in1's on the disc, along with the 4.41 and 4.43 sets. The BIOS on the board is updated.

Anybody know of something I can tweak to fix this? Or am I kinda FUBAR with this whole thing?

I can't say I experience any of the heating problems, but I just did (and I mean JUST) a fresh reinstall, and haven't put the hardware monitor in yet. I think the board is usually under 40C though, perhaps 45 tops. I can't even up my FSB to 137 or higher though. If it even boots it's not stable at all. My CPU isn't unlocked, but I could at least get 141 easy on the A7V I had. I don't remember my volts either, but I'll post back after I get everything back on here.

Oh... and uh, sorry for the lengthy post. lol

Let me just suggest one thing right off the bat: the northbridge heatsink fan in almost every case has little or no thermal compound on it from the factory. I'd advise removing it and seeing what you have, then cleaning things up and reinstalling it with a thin coat of Arctic Silver 3. I cannot guarantee this will help but it can only improve the northbridge cooling.

You didn't mention what voltage you're running your ram at. This is an area that will also cause random reboots, crashes back to the desktop etc.....as will not enough CPU voltage during intensive tasks cause freezes and blue screens. Trying upping each of these individually and elvaluate the changes by running the programs that are affected until you see an improvement, if any.Don't be afraid to run 3.0volts or higher on the ram if necessary.

Make sure the divider is set to 4:2:1 for FSB 133-166Mhz and 5:2:1 for 166Mhz FSB and higher.

Randi:D

I hadn't adjusted my voltage much, as I'm a total newb to it and don't wanna fry anything. Pocket book is kinda thin now and don't wanna lose something I can't replace.

However, after puttin in that hardware doctor from the CD, here's my temps and Volts as of right now.

Vcore: 1.76
Vio: 3.26
+12: 12.17
RAM: 2.59

I don't think I'll mess with anything tonight, but tomorrow I think I'll take the RAM up to 2.7 or higher.... but as I've never tweaked that, I'll ask if that's two high/low for PC2700.

Board is at 40C, and it's reporting the CPU at 37.5, but so far to my experience that's more the surface temp than the core temp, which is probably no more than 55C.

I didn't even see that option in the SoftMenu to change my RAM volts until the last reboot, and I thought it might help, but wasn't sure. Thanks for the idea Randi :)

Hi folks..

I'm also running an KD7raid ver 1.1 and have quite simmilar troubles and requests...

The Reset switch not working really sux.

I also had troubles runnung FSB (sync) at 200mhz with my CorsairPC3200cl2 although i ran memtest to verify that the memory isn't the problem - i had it at nearly fastest settings and 2.8volt.
The Problem is that my raid1 broke serveral times and i had to rebuild ist.. also sometimes the controller wouldn't recognize my two ibm 120gxp 80gig every time..
Running the two disks in non raid mode showed not as much trouble..

I'm now running at 190mhz without any troubles.
Another issue is that whenever i try to set 'cpu command decode' to fast the mobo refuses to boot until i reset cmos, i tried 2 different cpu's and 2 different ramsticks, it is always the same.

System temperature is too high like mentioned before and the caps really get damn hot....
And there was nothing beneath the NB heatsink either.
+12V seems a bit low too, but i measured the PS with my multimeter and it seems to be ok (~11.89v) so i guess this is just a misreading of the sensor.

I'd really like to see a new bios with some fixes and better compatibility..

greetings from Austria,
Roman

My specs are
KD7R 1.1
Corsair 3200cl2 512mb
AXP 2200+
gf4ti4200
2xibm 120gxp 80gig raid1
Watercooled
400w Leadman PS

Hausmeister, Welcome to Xtreme.:)

LordOdin:)

After seeing your ram voltage, I would definitely take it up to 2.8v or higher if necessary. As long as there is adequate airflow in your case there should be no worry of frying anything my friend. Abit uses much more aggressive register timings than other manufacturers and it is not uncommon to have to run more voltage to remain stable during intensive tasks.


Hausmeister:)

It has been determined by several members here after evaluating bandwidth numbers, that on the KD7, CPU decode set to normal equates the same performance as Fast on the KX7, and Fast is equivilant to the previous Ultra setting on the KX7. So being set to normal will give you the equivilant bandwidth up through 200Mhz that the KX7 enjoyed.

Randi:D

@Mr Icee

Thx.. i just worried a bit about it, but this is the least thing that really worries me.. For now i managed to be stable at 200fsb.. :banana: but anything beyond gives me just a blown Windows (lucky me has Nothon ghost ;) ) And i still have some troubles with HD detection - sometimes it workes sometimes not (tried different Cables and swiched drives, seems to be a controller issue)

cy
:toast:

I have this problem with my mobo voltage readings in Sisoft Sandra (latest vesion) with this board shown in the picture below...my readings of the -5v and -12v are way too high in the Sisoft. Anybody having this issue? or isit normal?
Any helps will be appreciated.
http://homex.coolconnect.com/member4...es/problem.JPG

Welcome Hausmeister!
Good to see another Austrian here @ XTreme! :D
XTreme is really THE PLACE TO BE! I love it! :)

"There are no Kangaroo's in Austr....." ;) ;) ;)

sry for offtopic.

Is that a 200 meg jpg or something?:eek:
Takes like months to load. Just lettin ya know. You might want to edit that down a bit to make it load faster. Not telling you what to do, just a suggestion.
Tiribulus:toast:

oh if u guys cant load up the pics that fast coz its actually hosted in a webby in Singapore...I'll type the voltage out...
my current voltage readings are
-5v : 0.78v
-12v: -7.01v
Is this ok or is Sisoft Sandra giving me wrong readings here?

Hi

just a silly question, but where to find the rev. on the mobo / box ??

The revision # is on one of the 2 white tags stuck on the back of the motherboard.

Randi:D

I get stupid readings on the -12 & -5 rails... I just ignore em...

One thing no-one suggested... for LordOdin's problems...
Looks suspiciously like a power supply problem to me... ie: u upgraded everything other than your PSU... the combination of hardware you're running should warrant a 400w or above... if you're still using a 250/300/350w that may account for some of your strange experiences.

hmp dont want to put out the motherboard now :/ just want to have my radeon >175FSB ://

Quote:

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Originally posted by xtreme
hmp dont want to put out the motherboard now :/ just want to have my radeon >175FSB ://

---

I decided to start a thread dedicated to this topic.
check it out here

Mr:Iceee
I got a KD7-R 1.1 rev. I cannot get it to boot correctly of I plug my Plextor 40x cdrw into the ide controller. I thought that the Plextor was bad. I put my KX7-R back in and it boots with the Plextor connected no problem. I can hook up my dvd to the primary IDE controller and 2 hds on the HPT372 controller. As soon as I hook up the Plextor on the primary or secondary ide controller I get a no boot status from the board. I am at a loss to why this is happening.

I'll bet.
Tiribulus:D

i have a KD7 myself, everything works fine except:
mainboard temp is getting kinda high... usually like 2-3 degrees below the cpu temp....
i'm not sure about my voltages, something seems wrong here. MBM _probably_ gives me wrong voltages on these lines:
-12v = 6.93v
-5v = 0.69v

That doesn't look right does it? well i'm not having any stability problems or so @ 150fsb, so i guess that it's maybe time for an update or so?? ow well

Is there going to be any recalls on this?

I just bought this about 3 weeks ago, and now frankly, I'm quite scared of even messing with anything.

When I got it, I had some problems updating the bios, like i'd have to reset it everytime, that was fixed by flashing the bios and updating it.

But, now, I'm afraid to use a higher FSBS, mine is currently at 200 with my AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1ghz. Yesterday I ordered an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ processor and it will set it at 266mhz FSBS, this will probably make my hard drive corrupt.

What am I to do? I don't want this motherboard anymore if it's just going to ruin my computer like this. I can't ship it back to newegg.com, because I will be losing money on this...

Someone help?

Hi Mistical,

I use a KD7 with an Athlon XP2100+ and it works just fine. I think the problems only occur when you start trying to overclock the FSB. If you run at stock speed then evrything should be fine.

Hey you guys, when you say HD corruption at 200Mhz FSB, do you mean like 2x 100mhz (as mine is at 2x133Mhz) or is it 2x200MHz (overclocked) giving a 400Mhz total.

Thanks!

By 200FSB they mean that in soft menu the are setting the CPU's FSB to 200 which gives you at DDR of 400mhz.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by mbrock
By 200FSB they mean that in soft menu the are setting the CPU's FSB to 200 which gives you at DDR of 400mhz.

---

Yes

Quote:

---

Originally posted by JestersTear1
Hi Mistical,

I use a KD7 with an Athlon XP2100+ and it works just fine. I think the problems only occur when you start trying to overclock the FSB. If you run at stock speed then evrything should be fine.

Hey you guys, when you say HD corruption at 200Mhz FSB, do you mean like 2x 100mhz (as mine is at 2x133Mhz) or is it 2x200MHz (overclocked) giving a 400Mhz total.

Thanks!

---

So when I get my processor tomorrow, the XP 2100+, I should hook it up and be okay? I don't want my hard drive to be corrupt. And I never overclock. I don't mess with that stuff, or care too.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by mistical
So when I get my processor tomorrow, the XP 2100+, I should hook it up and be okay? I don't want my hard drive to be corrupt. And I never overclock. I don't mess with that stuff, or care too.

---

"Hey you guys, when you say HD corruption at 200Mhz FSB, do you mean like 2x 100mhz (as mine is at 2x133Mhz) or is it 2x200MHz (overclocked) giving a 400Mhz total."

In that context 200 means 200x2 ie 400ddr. You should beable to get your bus to run at 143 or so x 2 ie 286 with no problem on just about any decent air cooler around. Unless you're running really cheap memory. You probably wouldn't even have to touch the voltage and yes that will give you a noticable performance increase. You won't have any issues with drive corruption until your're way up there, 190-200 range or more and even then it usually means "ntoskrnl.dll" won't load or something which is usually fixed by rebooting at a slightly lower speed. You're welcome to not overclock and I'm not discouraging you from being here, but you are going to be a lone voice with that message.
Tiribulus:D

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Tiribulus
"Hey you guys, when you say HD corruption at 200Mhz FSB, do you mean like 2x 100mhz (as mine is at 2x133Mhz) or is it 2x200MHz (overclocked) giving a 400Mhz total."

In that context 200 means 200x2 ie 400ddr. You should beable to get your bus to run at 143 or so x 2 ie 286 with no problem on just about any decent air cooler around. Unless you're running really cheap memory. You probably wouldn't even have to touch the voltage and yes that will give you a noticable performance increase. You won't have any issues with drive corruption until your're way up there, 190-200 range or more and even then it usually means "ntoskrnl.dll" won't load or something which is usually fixed by rebooting at a slightly lower speed. You're welcome to not overclock and I'm not discouraging you from being here, but you are going to be a lone voice with that message.
Tiribulus:D

---

Alright thanks. Right now it's at 100, meaning it's really at 200 bus with my AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1ghz. As I believe :)

Now, I'm not too sure what you mean of having to touch the voltage and such. I have generic pc2700 512mb unbuffered ram.... maybe that will help out on your reply, if you do.

My friend told me that hard drive corruption would like wipe my hd out? I just don't want to get to this level, It doesn't look like I will now, since I don't do overclocking and such.

Set the bios to optimal defaults, slap the 2100+ plus in and let her fly. You should have no problems running with stock settings on the KD and xp2100+ :banana:

For now yes that is probably the way to go. Hang around here for awhile and we'll help you with some tweaking. No need to fear. This stuff is not nearly as scary as it seems at first. BTW if you have 200fsb Tbird (which it sounds like) then you have it on the correct default settings. All this will be second nature before you know it. Know this though. You will NOT blow anything up by just giving it a wrong bios setting. There's probably a case somewhere, but I've been playing with performance machines for a few years now and have never heard of anybody ever destroying equipment just by tweaking/overclocking. All the warnings, "why you're taking a chance of" add your favorite disaster here, never happen by tweaking alone. Improperly installed coolong is the biggest culprit.
Tiribulus:D

Quote:

---

Originally posted by mbrock
Set the bios to optimal defaults, slap the 2100+ plus in and let her fly. You should have no problems running with stock settings on the KD and xp2100+ :banana:

---

So I shut down, boot up, go into bios, set it to default. Shut down, take out old processor, put in the new. Boot up, then do I go into bios and make sure it's right? :)

I'm not new at this stuff, but with this motherboard, I am going to be careful now. Just incase, because I've been spending a lot of money lately here... ;x

I would shut it off, jump it clear, switch the cpu's. It'll say cpu is unworkable or has been changed most likely when you boot back up. Hit del to go into the bios, arrow over to set optimal defaults, enter, enter to agree to the change, F10 and enter to save changes and exit. If you set it and then switch the processors it'll change again when it sees the new processor.
Tiribulus:D

I installed the 2100+ w/ thermaltake volcano 7+ heatsink/fan.

I went into bios, set it optimal default, when I reboot, before it gets to bios SOMETIMES it works through bios, but before it gets to XP startup screen, it shuts down.

I also tried it the speed of 1500+ and it booted fine.

Not sure what else to do, I'm going to try and figure this out at a friends house now, post if you know what we can do if he doesn't figure it out.

Ya just to note on that (misticals friend here) That im thinking its a power problem of some sort (maybe) :rolleyes: We will see when he gets his arse here LOL:D

Go back into the bios, softmenu III part after you set it to load optimal defaults and reboot and see what it sees it as or actually the boot screen should tell you. If it sees it as a 2100+ go over to the system diagnostic page and watch the temperature for a few minutes and see what it climbs up to. The volcanoe 7+ is an ok, but not great cooler. If you creep up over the mid 40's (which I suspect) you're most likely going to have trouble especially running games or anything cpu intensive. Someone may run in here and say "I know somebody who idles at 60c and they're fine". Trust me you want it cooler than that. If you,re getting high 40's sitting in the bios your good for 10c more at least once you give it some work. Let's see what you have for temps and go from there.
Tiribulus:D

Quote:

---

Originally posted by IceCaps
Ya just to note on that (misticals friend here) That im thinking its a power problem of some sort (maybe) :rolleyes: We will see when he gets his arse here LOL:D

---

Could be that too. Check those rails when you get in there.
Tiribulus:D

Uhh, have any of you seen overstated Internal CPU temps this high?

System temp: 32c
CPU (external) temp: 36c
Internal CPU Temp: 77c

MAYBE it's just me... but thats uh.... like 30c too much? heh. That's a BIG overstatement and I want to know if something is really wrong or not.

That's rip snortin hot there Dude, maybe calibration issue if it runs at that reading.
Tiribulus:D

His CPU Core TEmp is 96C and CPU Sufrace temp is 48C and sys temp is 43C THE CORE IS HOT AS HELL!!!

Hey he has a 300w power supply, i dont belive this is enough...am i right about my speculations?

What is the brand of the power supply and that is either waaaay too hot or is reading incorrectly or both. That core temp can't be right if that cpu is still good. You should get much bette than that with Volcanoe 7+ and even decent fan. Check to be sure hs/f is on the right way and not :banana::banana::banana::banana:ed or something. Don't laugh it's been done, and not just by idiots.
Tiribulus:confused:

OK here is status(his Heatsink was backwards :p :p :p After i fixed that now his temp is 62C (core) 49C(Surface) and sys(44C) we had it booted up as a 2100+ ONCE then after we restarted it, poof blackscreen, reset bios brought back to 1500+ Boots ok, change back to 2100+ Black screen We also installed a 4PIN Power cord to the mobo (the one that is 2 black wires and 2 yellow wires) the 5V is at 5.10V and the 12V is at 11.61V AGP is 1.55V His power supply is a SH(Generic im guessing :rolleyes: )

What fan does it have? Those can be ok for defaults only. I have one here that I took out because it was just not gettin it done for me. Again some may say that's not that hot, but though some Athlons will run that hot they are in the vast minority in my experience. If you want to test this, get a house fan of some kind and point it straight into the case. Power supply probably could use replacing though i don't think that alone will stop it from booting at all.
Tiribulus:D

It wont boot period, seems when we change something in bios and save changes restart, it just black screens on us !!!! ON the cpu he has a Volcano 7+ with the copper heatsink. running at 6500RPMS