KT400 or KT333

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: NicColt
Overclockers has a very interesting article about the KT400 if your thinking of overclocking it.

"What you need to know if you plan on running at well over 200MHz (which you probably should be planning on doing with future 166MHz FSB TBred/Barton CPUs) is finding out whether or not the motherboard supports a /6 divisor.

Why is this important? It could well be the difference between your machine working and not working at your desired goal.

But My Motherboard Can Run Up To 250MHz!

Can I sell you a bridge?

No, you have a setting on your motherboard that says "250MHz." Just because you have a setting doesn't mean it's going to work. In fact, it almost certainly won't work."

Agreed. However, in a recent review, Epox's KT333 board, the 8K5A2+ hit 231mhz FSB with an unlocked XP stable...not too shabby at all.



Also, all you guys that are so interested in S-ATA, you do realize it's not any faster than ATA100 or ATA133 right now right? Also, the Asus KT400 board does have S-ATA, but it's controlled by an add-in Promise chip. You can just as easily go out and buy a S-ATA PCI card on any board...

 

[NicColt]

>the 8K5A2+ hit 231mhz

does it have a /6 divider ?

The gib of the article wasn't that you can reach 230 or higher but without a /6 diver other components will eventually fail.

 

[teqwiz]

I also have the soyo kt400 prepaid at outpost.com. $ 190.00 is nothing compared to a $400.00 ti-4600 I bought a month ago.I'm also going with corsair pc 3200 memory 2 x 512mbs, and am waiting for AMD 2600+ release. I did alot of research on this whole issue and am buying for the next 2 years. The MOBO appears quite flexible and newer technologies in a year or so will be built around hardware available today. So it always is neccesary to build the platform before the components can be designed to use it.

 

[joe4324]

The new KT333 boards are shipping with the USB2.0 northbirdge... as far as I know the only thing the KT400 is bringing to the market is AGP 8X, but I wont even be using a KT400 board when AGP 8X becomes the norm I doubt anyone will...

Not to sling any mud. but if your talking about prices and performance AND features, look at this Chaintech 7VJL I just set it up on friday night and I am HIGHLY impressed. I've got GREAT onboard audio (eqal to sblive! in my opinoin), Lan, 6 USB 2 ports ATA 133 Overclocking of FSB,Multiplier,Cpu Voltage, Chipset voltage, Dimm Voltage,AGP voltage and memory Tweaks.

All in all problobly the best bang for your buck package out right now. look at the extra's and features! and its one of the highest performance boards out there to boot!

shipped from newegg. $116.00....




It should cost around $200.... I might sound a bit over enthusiastic about it, but I'm really excited about it!

 

[RideFree]

Irate,
If you need it now, all of the reviews (both recent and past) say that the KT333 is stable & that most boards fall into a near dead-heat, performance wise.

The KT400 will need a few months to mellow out as has been detailed elswhere in this thread.

Basically, it boils down to what features you will need with your new M/B. Two things are clear, it should have a nic (even if you don't need it now, chances are that you will) and if you are going for the raid configuration, the Highpoint is tops per the AnandTech KT333 review.

 

[teqwiz]

Originally posted by: joe4324
The new KT333 boards are shipping with the USB2.0 northbirdge... as far as I know the only thing the KT400 is bringing to the market is AGP 8X, but I wont even be using a KT400 board when AGP 8X becomes the norm I doubt anyone will...

Not to sling any mud. but if your talking about prices and performance AND features, look at this Chaintech 7VJL I just set it up on friday night and I am HIGHLY impressed. I've got GREAT onboard audio (eqal to sblive! in my opinoin), Lan, 6 USB 2 ports ATA 133 Overclocking of FSB,Multiplier,Cpu Voltage, Chipset voltage, Dimm Voltage,AGP voltage and memory Tweaks.

All in all problobly the best bang for your buck package out right now. look at the extra's and features! and its one of the highest performance boards out there to boot!

!

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Seriously considered this Board against Soyo and Asus based on this article. Totally Agree that it is the best value for the $. The only reasons that I went with Soyo over this board was future functunality of the KT 400 in future bios upgrades and and on board Raid. Soyo even sez it has a jumper setting to switch raid channel over to standard ATA 100 for a total of 8 IDE devices possible. Serial ATA may or may not take off as great technology in the future, but this board is suppose to have all these capacities according to thie manufacturer. Also comes with Smart card and SPDIF sound as with the Chaintech and optical out put for my mini disk. Too Cool to pass up!

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besides Who wouldn't want APG x8 ? Future Video Cards will be based on this standard now. NV30? ATI 8x doesn't even work on most cards yet even though that was a big selling point for those cards at their release. ATI 9700 Pro. They will work out a patch I'm sure, One of those Paper hardware launch campaigns sort of like KT 400 and AMD 2600=. We got it ! You can have it! We ARE releasing it it! Send money! Ooops, Oh yeah, Here's the rest of the software code. Sorry bout' that.

 

[teqwiz]

Serious review and comparison of KT 400 vs. KT333 review

 

[mbdowns]

From the Tom's Hardware review:
"Nevertheless, AMD has responded - an overhauled Thoroughbred core (the "B" version) is now available with Athlon XP 2400+ and 2600+ (2 and 2.13 GHz), and it probably won't be much longer until faster versions come out. Also, an increase in the FSB clock from 266 MHz to 333 MHz (double data rate) is pending. And with respect to the chipsets, there's no problem with this because the VIA's KT333 as well as KT400 support a 333 MHz system clock. "

There seem to be contradictory references to the FSB capabilities of the KT400 and KT333 motherboards. I've heard that the new KT400 will support the new generation of Athlon CPU's that will have the 333MHz (really 166MHz x 2?) and that the KT333 boards do not. The above paragraph says the KT333 already supports this. How?

Also almost all of the documentation (including Via's official specs on KT400?) says nothing about the 166/333MHz FSB. There's also some confusing references to FSB and system bus. Aren't these the same?

Maybe this will be cleared up as more of the KT400 boards are released and more reviews are written.