Best mobo for Tbird 800 slot a?

[kelesh3]

I have a k7v kx133, geforce 2 gts, and a tbird 800 slot a. I'm looking to replace my 2 month old k7v with a mobo that is highly stable for regular operations and for playing games such as EA sports games, unreal tournament, quake 3 arena, and starcraft. I'm currently running windows 2000. When I emailed AMD and asked them what a good board would be for an 800 tbird, they responded with this:

Thank you for contacting AMD. The Slot A Thunderbird has been found to be
unstable with motherboards using the KX 133 chipset due to the on-die L2
cache. This processor was released in limmited supply and has only been
approved for two motherboards, the MSI 6191, and the Digicom Pro 2000.
Hope this helps,

Regards,
AMD
TSC

They mention the MSI 6191, but that has only 3 pci slots and is a relatively unattractive board to me. I checked out Msi's site, www.msicomputer.com , and it appears that the 6191 and the 6195(k7 pro) are almost exactly the same. Does anybody know anything about this? Several people have recommended the MSI k7 pro, and I was wondering how people have found it to be w/ a slot A 800 tbird. Is it stable? I know I dont' have a lot of options, but what is the best mobo for a tbird 800 slot A cpu

 

[Durron]

My MSI K7 Pro has been perfectly stable for as long as I've had it (geeze, almost a year now? hrmm i dont remember).

Anyway it uses the AMD750 chipset instead of the VIA but you can't beat it's stability.

-Durron

 

[fastvideo]

ASUS K7V-T

check this out from there site, it is new, slota t-bird support m/b.

 

[kelesh3]

dude, they don't sell that in the western hemisphere.

 

[Davegod75]

MSI k7 pro or the asus k7m

 

[jonnyGURU]

Believe it or not, I'm using an FIC SD11.

They've got all the bugs ironed out now! Sucker runs 24/7 w/ no blue screens or locks! Good enough for Compaq....

Anyhoo... The MSI K7Pro and Asus K7M are the best choices.

 

[Nighthawk69]

I have to jump in here to say that I am SOOO happy to be getting rid of my FIC SD-11, it is teh crappiest motherboard I have ever used! = )

Locks all the time with a GeForce 2 GTS and any driver of the 6.xx series, plus it blue screens a lot and EVERY time I shut my puter down. It also has no hardware monitoring (temp) and is slow.

Gonna put in my MSI K7T Pro tomorrow with a T-Bird 1.1Ghz! Can't wait!

 

[IronMike]

Let me jump over Nighthawk with another happy dumper story of the sd11. Had the latest revision of the board 1.8 and never got the thing to work with a geforce. The asus k7v is heaven.
By the way, which of the slot a tbird mobos lets you use the full 4x agp and pc 133 ram?

 

[Carrot44]

I have the MSI K7Pro running a T-Bird 800 at 880 and its stable as a rock

 

[jonnyGURU]

Ironmike and Nighthawk69: I knew I'd get that kind of reaction! The GeForce doesn't work too hot on ANY Irongate board. GUESS WHAT! I don't care. I don't use a GeForce card. Like I said K7Pro and Asus K7M are the best choice, however, for the T-Bird. Assuming you can still find one at a decent price.

Ironmike: Your statement that the K7V is "heaven" has nothing to do with this thread. You're only going to confuse poor kelesh3. The K7V is NOT heaven if you have a Thunderbird (unless you have a -T).

Red: No. Canada couldn't possibly be in our hemisphere. Say it ain't so!

 

[IronMike]

Johnny, Kelesh has emailed me several times about our k7v, and I have informed him several times that it will not work with a slot a tbird. I don't think I am confusing him about that issue.
Also the reason I have asked about 4x AGP and PC133 is that I know Kelesh's system uses that video card and ram.

 

[kelesh3]

Thanks for all your help, guys. This has been a helpful thread. Fyi, an amd response email:

"Thank you for contacting AMD. The on-die cache is part of the architecture
of the processor. You could disable it, but it would seriously decrease the
performance of the processor. There are only two motherboards recommended
for this processor. Go to
http://www1.amd.com/athlon/mbl/index/1,1503,,00.html . Your processors OPN
is AMD-A0800, not AMD-K7800. You must choose the 800(slot*) for the correct
list. Hope this helps, please reply with any other questions.

AMD
TSC"

* = Refers to the new slot A AMD Athlon? processor featuring performance-enhancing cache memory.


1. what happens if i disable L2 cache in the bios?
2. What's the difference between ATX and uATX? Is that power supply or something? I have ATX i think.
3. What's up with the digicom pro mobo? never heard of that before.

 

[SuperGroove]

I'm running my stuffs on a MSI K7PRO stepping 6, -110CG at 115x7.0: 805MHZ, BABY!

Can you say stable as a mother *bleep*er?

 

[fastvideo]

take a look on mine.

ASUS K7M with beta bios KM132
NEC 128m/pc133
SlotA T-bird 900
AMD-A0900MMR24B
710035028824
CORE MARKING:
A100CMRHFA
91739040233
0030GPBW

it is a 1G core, try 10.5x no boot at all.
now it is running at 10x115, 1150mhz default vcore setting 1.75v.
the max fbs is at 119, 1190mhz also at default, no boot at 120.
with 84watt peltier and p7125 hsf, an extra 120mm panflo sucking on top of the two hsf with a ventilation pipe on side cover. max temp is not more than 40c.

info from some japanese site, saying the beta km132 bios on k7m can max to 119. that looks like what is happening with me too.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Ironmike: Cool

That's probably why it's considered bad netiquette to take a forum issue into a private environment. One makes a post inviting the advice of several, but then takes it into private with an individual and discusses things that leave those willing to help on the public forum out in the cold.

 

[kelesh3]

anybody workin' the geforce 2 & irongate/amd751 combo?
i'm somewhat scared of what my geforce 2 gts is going to do with that chipset. can't be much worse than my tbird/geforce/kx133/cheap ram experience, though =(.

 

[KJY9]

Ha Ha Johnny..your remark about Compaq running the FIC is enough said. No self-respecting geek would even think about running a Compaq or a FIC..they're both junk. Go with the K7V. I ran two of them before the Socket A's came out, one with an 800 Mhz Athlon and one with an 800Mhz OC'd to 1,000. Both ran without so much as a hiccup. Whereas my first Slot board was a nightmare...the FIC.

 

[kelesh3]

uhh... kjy9... wtf? i have a k7v now. It's not tbird compatible. The via chipset sucks to top it off. I went with the 6195, my only concern being that it's agp 1.0 and my geforce 2 gts 32 mb wants agp 2.0. I'm hoping that if i keep it at 1x and stuff it will be stable.

 

[eyeless]

Go for an Asus K7M if you haven't ordered something already. check outmine

 

[jonnyGURU]

Thank you kelesh3. I think KJY is suffering from accute "missing-the-point-itis".

Fact is, I really don't think that there's anything wrong with the newest revision SD11. The Asus K7M and MSI K7 Pro certainly are BETTER, but the SD11 works very well.

<sarcasm>Then again, I only work with a hundred per day, so certainly my margin of error is pretty great.</sarcasm>

 

[kelesh3]

k7m isn't bad, but i ordered a k7 pro. i'm just hoping the agp 1.0 agp slot and my agp 2.0 geforce 2 gts will be happy together.