ABIT KV7 (KT600): Budget Performance in a Small Package
by Evan Lieb on September 7, 2003 10:42 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ABIT KV7: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don’t receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
You can access ABIT’s RMA policy by going to their Taiwan web site first, at www.abit.com.tw. Click on the English (Americas) hyperlink and then click the eRMA (also known as Express RMA) hyperlink on the left-hand side of your screen (under the heading “support services”). Here, you will find an extensive description of ABIT’s RMA policy. Once you have finished reading ABIT’s policy, scroll down until you find a hyperlink reading www.abitusa-rma.com and click on it. Sift through the options until you reach three hyperlinks listing warranty info, RMA policy (again) and FAQ. Once you have read all the conditions click on “I accept” and you will find a short RMA request form to fill out. Overall, ABIT makes finding and filling out RMA information quick and easy, not nearly as painstaking as other motherboard RMA procedures.
There are two main points that we’d like to reiterate about ABIT’s RMA policy:
1. ABIT, in contrast to other motherboard manufacturers, encourages the consumer to make direct contact with their RMA service instead of the predictable, “please get in touch with the vendor from whom you purchased the motherboard from”.For ABIT tech support information, end users should head on over to their U.S. website and click on the “support” hyperlink. This hyperlink will immediately take you to their primary tech support web page. ABIT clearly and concisely outlines several procedures for end users to follow before directly contacting ABIT tech support. You may view this page in its entirety by clicking here. ABIT also posts their e-mail address at the bottom of that tech support web page.. Reaching ABIT by phone is fairly simple. Just ring them at the following number: 510-492-0968. ABIT holds excellent hours, ranging from 9:00am to 6:00pm. ABIT's phone hours are a bit better in the U.S., but other top tier motherboard makers like ASUS keep slightly better hours (of course, ASUS doesn’t really answer their tech support phone calls, so it hardly matters).
2. Upon receiving a user’s defective product in the terms the end user has set, ABIT will process the RMA and return the fixed product typically within the neighborhood of 10 business days.
Overall, we found ABIT’s RMA policy and tech support response time to be of the absolute best quality out of any of the top 5 desktop motherboard makers. We can’t think of a single reason why any end user would be unhappy with ABIT’s customer support or eRMA. Memory maker OCZ is similar to ABIT in this aspect of their operations — polite and speedy customer service to the average user and enthusiast alike.
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Evan Lieb - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link
Haha, thanks for clarifying that #13. ;)Take care,
Evan
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link
I think #5 is referring to the apparent omission of the word "look" in the sentence. I congratulate #5 on taking the time to carefully proofread the article in search of typographical errors. As I was more focused on the substance of the review (which I thought was excellent, conistent with my general experience with Anandtech), I missed this major point that seriously affected the readability of the entire article! :)Evan Lieb - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link
Oh, forgot to comment on a couple other things.#1, Anand does more than you'll ever know. Right now he's been relegated to two things: 1) Technology reviews, which he is best suited for because he is easily the most well versed AnandTech editor. And 2) administrative duties such as hiring new editors (Andrew Ku, Wesley Fink, and more people you'll hear about soon), getting the products and content editors need, and just running the web site (which includes a countless list of things).
#3, set your FSB to 175MHz (350MHz DDR), set your DRAM speed to DDR400, download CPU-Z v. 1.18, and then look in the memory section and see what your memory is running at. Your memory should adjust itself accordingly to its FSB.
Evan Lieb - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link
#10, I was unaware that ABIT has that policy. I'll have to confirm that with them. Even if that is the case, other motherboard makers do the same thing, and quite honestly it's not that big of a deal IMO.#5, how is that sentence not readable? Do you have any suggestions?
Take care,
Evan
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
#7, they're not charging for standard shipping, just the upgrade to express, which is understandable and was only in my message for info (since it wasn't included in the review). I even don't have a major problem with the $7 "processing fee", but to charge $150 ahead-of-time and then the additional time of waiting for the "check is in the mail" refund seems to be less of a good policy compared to other's policy of charging only if the defective unit isn't returned with 30 days.Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
#7, what he explained is a quite common thing on nForce2 motherboards, especially among advanced users. I cower in fear everytime I update my bios or drivers fearing either my system or board will be hosed. You never know when you'll download that bios or driver that will just decide to kill everything (*cries about having to repair install windows xp after installing 2.41 and again 2.42, as if I didn't learn my lesson first time :P*).Granted most of these problems disappear if you leave your system alone and stick to the 2.03 driver set (if you can stand the little quirks about it), the occurrence of such problems are seemingly less in the latest VIA chipsets.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
#6, I (#3) did not want to run FSB/RAM asynchronously. I want to run it in sync no matter what the FSB is set to, but the board has no clear setting for that. The available RAM settings are 266, 333, 400 and SPD in wich it goes with whatever the RAM module is rated to run at. There is no setting to simply let it follow the FSB as in all other boards I have ever encountered. I could guess that it does in fact follow the FSB anyway, but have no way to confirm it. Especially when the BIOS reports one of those set RAM speeds when booting up, regardless of FSB frequency. (I know of the AGP/PCI business but it's irrelevant to this specific technical issue)Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
#2, of course ABIT is going to charge for shipping, it's ridiculous to think they're going to eat those fees.And by the way #4, nForce2 motherboards are much better than KT600 motherboards in general. This is fact, why try to deny it by claiming your experience is the norm. Idiot.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
to 3there's no need to run amd based systems FSB/mem async, it doesn't get you more speed. you'd better manipulate with multiplier. if you raise your CPU's FSB the mem/agp/pci come all along. for example if you raise your kt600 fsb to 220 your mem speed will also be 220MHz (you can't run it on pc2100 or 2700 levels to normalize your mem speed, but only on pc3200 mode) and yor agp/pci will be 73,5MHz/36,7MHz.
for example, I'm running my kt333 at 200FSB and my agp/pci is 80/40. and I cant understand how come anantech guys only got out maximum of 210 mHz fsb, i belive some peolple here need to learn more about overclocking. I've got even 215MHz of FSB out of my kt333. isn't that strange? has there been a downward evolution by VIA.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
"Anyway, today we take a close at ABIT's latest creation, the KV7."Please take the time to make your articles more readable. Thank you.