Fastest AMD CPU for KT7A-RAID

[JASANITY]

Hi,
I was wondering what the fastest AMD CPU is that I can put on my KT7A-RAID? What's a video card that will provide max utilization of CPU and Video Card?

 

[aka1nas]

I was just messing with a rebuilt rig using that board. It is a 133fsb machine so technically any socket A chip up to 2500+ ought to work in it. As far as BIOS support goes, check ABITs webpage. Just an FYI, the onboard highpoint controller does not appear to support a 48-bit LBA with any official BIOS revisions. This means you won't see the full capacity of larger (160+ GB) drives. This is only on the onboard highpoint RAID controller, the regular IDE channels do have 48-bit LBA with the last few BIOS revisions. I did find a modded BIOS that hacked in updated highpoint firmware for the onboard chip and that worked.

 

[JASANITY]

thanks for the info. I'll look for a cheap chip. I think there was a Athlon 2400+ out there

 

[kb3edk]

Originally posted by: JASANITY
Hi,
I was wondering what the fastest AMD CPU is that I can put on my KT7A-RAID? What's a video card that will provide max utilization of CPU and Video Card?

That motherboard has a 266MHz Front Side Bus which reached its highest CPU speeds in the Athlon XP 2600+ Thoroughbred-B.

Not all 2600s will work in your motherboard however! Most of the ones you see for sale are on a 333MHz Front Side Bus.

In fact there are basically no new 2600s for sale anymore on the 266MHz bus, you will need to get one used most likely. As it is the fastest processor available for many other motherboards besides your own, prices tend to be on the high side for used parts - they routinely fetch $75 or more on eBay. Here is an auction for one that just got started.

As far as the video card, your motherboard supports AGP 4x. You can run some AGP 8x cards in that slot but performance is going to suffer a little... a good card for that board would be something a couple years old like a Radeon 9600. Those are easily obtained used on eBay for around $50. I wouldn't spend any more money than that... in fact many of the newest AGP 8x cards (like a GeForce 7800GS) won't even run in a 4x slot.

 

[ND40oz]

There's a 2600+ 266 front side bus floating around out there if you can find it as well. We've been looking for one for my buddies board, but they've all been ridiculously priced. At $200 bucks for the 2600+, for 50 bucks more you can have a DFI Ultra-D and an Opty 144.

Edit: I'm an idiot who kept this reply box open for more then an hour and didn't read the post in front of me.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Does XP-Ms work with it? If so, it would be a much better choice than the any of the 266MHz desktop chips.

 

[JASANITY]

Originally posted by: kb3edk

Originally posted by: JASANITY
Hi,
I was wondering what the fastest AMD CPU is that I can put on my KT7A-RAID? What's a video card that will provide max utilization of CPU and Video Card?

That motherboard has a 266MHz Front Side Bus which reached its highest CPU speeds in the Athlon XP 2600+ Thoroughbred-B.

Not all 2600s will work in your motherboard however! Most of the ones you see for sale are on a 333MHz Front Side Bus.

In fact there are basically no new 2600s for sale anymore on the 266MHz bus, you will need to get one used most likely. As it is the fastest processor available for many other motherboards besides your own, prices tend to be on the high side for used parts - they routinely fetch $75 or more on eBay. Here is an auction for one that just got started.

As far as the video card, your motherboard supports AGP 4x. You can run some AGP 8x cards in that slot but performance is going to suffer a little... a good card for that board would be something a couple years old like a Radeon 9600. Those are easily obtained used on eBay for around $50. I wouldn't spend any more money than that... in fact many of the newest AGP 8x cards (like a GeForce 7800GS) won't even run in a 4x slot.

how did you find that auction listing so fast? It was showing up on my search earlier because it was such a new auction. Is there a program to see these "just listed" auctions?

 

[m3a2]

tons of info about the abit kt7a-raid, I also have one of those boards, only the rev3 version of the board which has a different bios revision is supposedly capable of running cpus higher than 1.4ghz i believe http://www.sudhian.com/showfaqs.cfm?fid=2

 

[JASANITY]

i believe i have rev 1 of the board. will that prevent me from going above 1.4ghz?

 

[m3a2]

Im not really sure, i cant seem to get mine to work at 133mhz fsb, i did have a 1ghz 10x100ghz and dropped in a 1.6ghz chip not a duron, but it wont seem to run faster than 1.4 14x100ghz i haven't had the time or energy to go in depth to see whats stopping it I too have a rev1 board, there is a ton of info at that sudhian website and links to the hacked bios revision for the highpoint drivers, good luck

 

[JASANITY]

oh that sucks. guess im stuck at 1.4ghz too.

 

[Stumps]

Ok I can answer this one for you, I used to sell alot of KT7A-RAID's back when they where new

any board that is revison 1.2 or less, the T-bird 1.4Ghz is the maximum, I had this board about 3 years ago and that is the fastedt it would take...but any average 1.4 t-bird could easily make 1.6-1.8ghz with decent cooling.

any board that is rev 1.3 or better, The amd 2100+ palamino is the fastest AMD that can be used.

there might be some hacked bioses that support the t-bred core out there but officially the palamino is the fastest core that can be used.
these are sh!t overclockers and it would probably work out cheaper to upgrade your board and cpu than to try and get that old KT133A board working with faster cpu's than the 2100+...and beside you will still be using PC133 SDRAM...thats going to cripple anything faster than a 2100+

 

[JASANITY]

yeah. the cheapest upgrade for mobo/cpu/ram is $500 bucks. Makes me think about getting a new system

 

[Stumps]

I would, as good as the KT7A-RAID/T-BIRD 1.4Ghz combo is(for 2001/2002)it is pretty old hat these days.
Simply put SDRAM didn't do the T-bird any justice...do you really think that a faster Palamino would really give you much of an increase?
I still remember when I upgraded my KT7A-RAID/1.4ghz to a GA-7VRXP/2000+ in mid 2002....not a big jump at all especially for the cost (over AU$600 in 2002), my 3dmark 2001 scores increased by about 500 or so points(I was using a hercules 8500 fdx at the time).
Most applications didn't even perform any better at all.
best bet, get an A64 and a decent board and a great wad of DDR400....you'll notice a big jump, especially if you have a decent graphics card to back it up.

 

[JASANITY]

all i have is a radeon 9600 AIW. Will that provide a noticeable jump? or does my graphics card suck too?

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: JASANITY
all i have is a radeon 9600 AIW. Will that provide a noticeable jump? or does my graphics card suck too?

It was mid-level when new, still beats the bare bottom budget level, but not by a lot, and one bottom-end card (not quite bottom end priced, though), the 128 Bit original Geforce 6200, beats the vanilla 9600 by a little bit. Your current cpu probably choked that card's performance just slightly. Remember that the great majority of the current A64 MB's, in both 754 and 939 socket varieties, are now for the PCI-e interface, not AGP. The Epox 8NDA with the NF3 chip set is still readily available, and is a good s939 AGP option. Right now, the two "max bits per dollar" bucks-stretcher cards, in either AGP or PCI-e, are the lower end of the X800 GPU, like the GTO (is it an XL in AGP perhaps?), and the Geforce 6600GT.

P.S. A set of quote marks has been added to satisfy a picker of nits' new nit.

 

[JASANITY]

Originally posted by: Kiwi

Originally posted by: JASANITY
all i have is a radeon 9600 AIW. Will that provide a noticeable jump? or does my graphics card suck too?

It was mid-level when new, still beats the bare bottom budget level, but not by a lot, and one bottom-end card (not quite bottom end priced, though), the 128 Bit original Geforce 6200, beats the vanilla 9600 by a little bit. Your current cpu probably choked that card's performance just slightly. Remember that the great majority of the current A64 MB's, in both 754 and 939 socket varieties, are now for the PCI-e interface, not AGP. The Epox 8NDA with the NF3 chip set is still readily available, and is a good s939 AGP option. Right now, the two bits per dollar buck stretcher cards, in either AGP or PCI-e, are the lower end of the X800 GPU, like the GTO (is it an XL in AGP perhaps?), and the Geforce 6600GT.

whats a two bits per dollar buck stretcher card? ive never heard of that?

 

[Perfectibilists]

Hi Everybody

The fastest CPU for the KT7A-RAID is the Athlon XP 2800+ (Tbred B or Barton) FSB 266 with, IMPORTANT, an unlocked multiplier, that means which is produced before March 2003, and that means a CPU with a lower model number than AxxxA 0333xxxx.
What you will need further is Upgradeware's XP-TMC which could boost your CPU up to a multiplier of 24x.
XP-TMC

I'm running an 2600+ without any problems on a KT7A-RAID Rev. 1.0. The precondition is just that you flash your BIOS to the newest version (A9) and change some settings afterwards. (What you shouldn't forget is to deactivate any LAN cards because not all can handle 133Mhz, and it will result in a crash).
In SoftMenu III of the BIOS you choose User Define for the CPU Operating Speed and you set the Multiplier to above 12x. The jumpers on the XP-TMC adapter must be set a priori to a multiplier of 16x in this case (2600+). Further you change the FSB Speed from 100 to 133 Mhz, then you should set the CPU Power Supply to User Define too and there to increase the Core Voltage from 1.650 to 1.700 V, and then scroll down to the Output Drive Control and set it to Manual, then change the Output Drive Strength to a value of 2 (or if it wouldn't work, and you get a system failure or such, then try a 3.)
Ok, now do not change anything else and save your changes and reboot your machine.
Because this board supports only the XP up to 1,4Ghz, your BIOS will say Unknown CPU Type when booting but you could ignore this cosmetic error because you will see the correct tact frequency of 2133Mhz.
The pc works with 2133Mhz very stable at a CPU temperature of about 46° Celsius (52° when gaming). It is just important that you are cooling it right. I'm using a Zalman CNPS7000B-CU, which is very powerful and at the same time pretty silent.
The GPU is also overclocked - ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB DDRAM with new values of 325/300 comparing to standard 275/270 (Core/Memory). The GPU uses both active and passive cooling (Zalman ZM-RHS1 VGA RAM Heatsinks, Zalman ZM80D-HP Dual Heatpipe and the ZM-OP1 Fan)
Also the SDRAM modules (1024MB) are equipped with (Thermaltake TrueLight) RAM Heatsinks.
The maximum I've ever tried with the KT7A-RAID and which was running in persistence mode stable for days, was 2320Mhz (Multiplier 16x / FSB 145 / CV 1,750 V / ODS 3)

So, one more time, the 2800+ FSB 266 is actually the fastest CPU for the KT7A-RAID. Because they are very rare to get, a 2600+ could be the solution. Increasing your PC133 SDRAM to the Max, would give you another extra boost and you will be amazed by the new speed

Cheers!

 

[JASANITY]

Originally posted by: Perfectibilists
Hi Everybody

The fastest CPU for the KT7A-RAID is the Athlon XP 2800+ (Tbred B or Barton) FSB 266 with, IMPORTANT, an unlocked multiplier, that means which is produced before March 2003, and that means a CPU with a lower model number than AxxxA 0333xxxx.
What you will need further is Upgradeware's XP-TMC which could boost your CPU up to a multiplier of 24x.
XP-TMC

I'm running an 2600+ without any problems on a KT7A-RAID Rev. 1.0. The precondition is just that you flash your BIOS to the newest version (A9) and change some settings afterwards. (What you shouldn't forget is to deactivate any LAN cards because not all can handle 133Mhz, and it will result in a crash).
In SoftMenu III of the BIOS you choose User Define for the CPU Operating Speed and you set the Multiplier to above 12x. The jumpers on the XP-TMC adapter must be set a priori to a multiplier of 16x in this case (2600+). Further you change the FSB Speed from 100 to 133 Mhz, then you should set the CPU Power Supply to User Define too and there to increase the Core Voltage from 1.650 to 1.700 V, and then scroll down to the Output Drive Control and set it to Manual, then change the Output Drive Strength to a value of 2 (or if it wouldn't work, and you get a system failure or such, then try a 3.)
Ok, now do not change anything else and save your changes and reboot your machine.
Because this board supports only the XP up to 1,4Ghz, your BIOS will say Unknown CPU Type when booting but you could ignore this cosmetic error because you will see the correct tact frequency of 2133Mhz.
The pc works with 2133Mhz very stable at a CPU temperature of about 46° Celsius (52° when gaming). It is just important that you are cooling it right. I'm using a Zalman CNPS7000B-CU, which is very powerful and at the same time pretty silent.
The GPU is also overclocked - ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB DDRAM with new values of 325/300 comparing to standard 275/270 (Core/Memory). The GPU uses both active and passive cooling (Zalman ZM-RHS1 VGA RAM Heatsinks, Zalman ZM80D-HP Dual Heatpipe and the ZM-OP1 Fan)
Also the SDRAM modules (1024MB) are equipped with (Thermaltake TrueLight) RAM Heatsinks.
The maximum I've ever tried with the KT7A-RAID and which was running in persistence mode stable for days, was 2320Mhz (Multiplier 16x / FSB 145 / CV 1,750 V / ODS 3)

So, one more time, the 2800+ FSB 266 is actually the fastest CPU for the KT7A-RAID. Because they are very rare to get, a 2600+ could be the solution. Increasing your PC133 SDRAM to the Max, would give you another extra boost and you will be amazed by the new speed

Cheers!

Thanks for the info!

 

[Perfectibilists]

As for the Video Card... Theoretically you could use any GPU that is made for the AGP slot. But you should keep in mind that the KT7A / KT7A-RAID supports only up to 4x AGP, while today's modern GPUs are using 8x. Of course you could place an 8x card but you will be able to run it only with half the speed. For optimum results try the ATI Radeon 9xxx Pro series or the nVidia Geforce4 Ti 4xxx series.
If you upgrade the SDRAM, you could go to a max. of 1024MB. The board would handle more but you wouldn't feel anything more. If you are using Windows XP, I would suggest these 1 Giga RAM, for a fluent working.

The KT7A-RAID is actually made to run at a speed of FSB 100 Mhz, a 2600+ or 2800+ are made for 133/266. Therefore I would recommend that you better increase the multiplier instead of the FSB. When you set the FSB to a higher value, everything, your PCI and DIMM slots will work at that higher speed too. Higher speed may sound cool but this higher speed results in higher temperature and this is not so good.

This mobo, once the best of his kind, is still a good choice for a low budget customer, and it provides maximum performance at a very low price. All required components which are from the view of a modern high end user, already antiquated (CPU, VGA, RAM etc.) are meanwhile so cheap that you could build your "own high end system" almost for free.

AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+, Mobile, UNLOCKED, FSB 266

WOW! XTREME 2.58GHz AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ SMASHES 3200+

NEW ATI RADEON 9200 SE 64MB AGP VGA VIDEO-OUT RETAIL



Never touch a running system, so why throw away an Abit KT7A-RAID when it's still running?

 

[Perfectibilists]

For those who are still interested in upgrading the old KT7A mobo. Try the Mobile version with the low core voltage of 1,55v (OPGA). It is truly just great for overclocking. The XP-M 2800+ works fine, turbo-fast and stabile (24/7) on my old mobo, @ an incredible frequency of 2527MHz and even 2660MHz with the following settings:

1. XP-TMC: Multiplier 19x (ON, OFF, OFF, OFF, ON)


2. BIOS


SoftMenu III:

CPU Operating Speed: User Define
- Multiplier Factor: x12above
- CPU FSB/PCI Clock: 133/33MHz

CPU Power Supply: User Define
- Core Voltage: 1.700v
- I/O Voltage: 3.50v

Output Drive Control: Manual
- Output Drive Strength: 3
Enhance Chip Performance: Enabled
Force 4-Way Interleave: Enabled
Enable Dram 4K-Page Mode: Enabled
DRAM Clock: Host CLK


Advanced Chipset Features

- DRAM Timing: Fast

- AGP Mode: 4x


I tried then 2660MHz (19x 140) and I was able to boot (CV: 1.775v, IOV: 3.70v ODS: 3, 4-Way disabled, 4K Mode disabled, DRAM: 8/10ns, AGP 2x) but had problems afterwards, like freezing of the screen when gaming in high resolution mode etc.
20x 133 (2660MHz) is doing a better job as I found out that increasing the FSB over 133 makes the most problems, doesn?t matter which multiplier I choose, or which settings I change.

BTW, sorry for the bs I?ve wrote above? don?t know where my head was when the fingers were typing. The KT7A (RAID) is made of course for 133MHz but back then when it was new, there were still parts like the RAMs, the LAN cards etc that were just compatible with the old PC100 specification, which could make trouble. The mobo itself is PC133 compatible! That was what I actually meant but wasn?t able to write

 

[kb3edk]

Originally posted by: kb3edk
In fact there are basically no new 2600s for sale anymore on the 266MHz bus, you will need to get one used most likely. As it is the fastest processor available for many other motherboards besides your own, prices tend to be on the high side for used parts - they routinely fetch $75 or more on eBay. Here is an auction for one that just got started.

I don't ordinarily self-quote but this time I couldn't resist. I checked back on that auction I linked to here a few weeks ago and that used AXP 2600+ went for $148 :shocked:

$150 for a three year old processor! For that kind of coin you can get a Socket 754 mobo, K8 Sempron, a stick of RAM, and change.

But I can certainly understand the thinking... slapping a new CPU in sure is faster than building a new rig from scratch (and backing up all your files, and reinstalling your OS and all your other apps)

I wonder what the OP decided to do with his KT7A system?