Moved from a MSI K7TPro2A to an Abit KT7E(not a typo), interesting results

[BenSkywalker]

First things first, the MSI board died through not fault of its' own. I have been using a 250Watt PS for all of my various Athlon rigs and the thing melted down and took the mobo with it(charred internals on the PS, visibly burnt ATX connector on the mobo- dead:|).

With the upcoming release of nForce I decided to find a low cost SocketA mobo to hold me over and see how nV's chipset pans out. I searched around for a good price and was a bit dismayed to find that $120 or so was the going rate for any half decent mobo until I came across the KT7E over at NewEgg. Never heard of the board before, but Kyle seemed to really like it in his review and for $100 shipped(FedEx no less) I decided to give it a shot. Picked up an Enlight 300Watt PS to be on the safe side(was going to pay up for an Enermax, but couldn't find any in stock at the area computer stores).

So I ordered it late Monday nite/early Tuesday morning and the board showed up yesterday afternoon, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to throw it together until today. I had slapped together a makeshift P2 266 system with an old 4GB HD I had running Win98 as I didn't want to lose the data on my main HD and unfortunately(in this instance anyway) I have it secured. So when I was assembling the KT7E system I just threw in my unformatted HD and all my other components and everything worked.

After the initial boot I rebooted and went into the BIOS to see if my Duron650 would multiplier OC(I had a "bugged" K7TPro) and it would NP. Decided to leave it alone for the time being and went into Win2K to run through a few quick benches.

Tried Quake2 and my FPS were up 30...... wtf?

Ran Quake3 and my FPS were up 20.......:Q

OK, I had to have set the multiplier wrong which it turns out I had, I was running underclocked by 50MHZ!?!?!?

So I decided to play around with it a bit and had it running solid @900 1.7V with Q2 FPS over 200FPS, a jump of about 70FPS over the same chip running default in the MSI board, Quake3 ended up at 45FPS faster @145. I haven't pushed it yet, and I have acquired a GHZ TBird currently waiting to be unlocked.

The reason why I decided to post about this was that I have spoken on the MSI K7TPro2A's behalf several times, the board was incredibly stable up until its' unfortunate demise, and I don't have enough time with the Abit to speak conclusively about any factors outside of performance. The ability to OC was a given going with Abit, but what was shocking was the extreme performance increase using identical settings on similar mobos.

For anyone curious, the KT7E has 1AGP, 6PCI, 1ISA, 3DIMMs and not much else. A hs/fan on the northbridge and assembler friendly construction round it out(no intergrated audio, no cnr BS slots). For $100 bucks shipped, right now I consider this one he!l of a deal.

 

[S0me1X]

<<So when I was assembling the KT7E system I just threw in my unformatted HD and all my other components and everything worked.>>

It sounds like you did a clean install of your OS, which usually helps boost FPS in games.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Sorry, worded that poorly.

I didn't touch my HD(except physically moving it), it was the exact same install of Win2K without a single thing changed(not even the resolution has been touched yet).

 

[RedShirt]

The wimpy PS of your old computer probably made it run poorly. The Videocard probably wasn't getting enough juice

 

[zzzz]

Abit board probably has better memory performance.

 

[OrangeDoor]

was your MSI board running at a lower FSB? The ABIT kt7e does above 133 mhz fsb fine, it's simply cheaper but the performance on it is great.

 

[GT1999]

I've built over 4 systems with the Pro2-A total and I own a Abit KT7-RAID at home. The memory performance is MUCH better than the Pro2-A.

I built a system with the IWill KK266 at work and I like that board's performance and stability better than my KT7-RAID though. IWill makes some nice boards, as does EPoX. My next board will probably be an EPoX.

 

[GT1999]

NOTE: I also *did* have interleaving enabled on the Pro2-A's. This is not to mention that two of those 4 Pro2-A's were dead on arrival and the third was extremely unstable. The 4th board wasn't for me, but for a friend - that board works fine (he hasn't called at all). Interesting

 

[LXi]

Who says you can't get a good mobo for $100? I found a handful that are better than the KT7E.

1. Iwill KK266 $100
2. MSI K7T Turbo $89
3. Epox 8KTA3 $89
4. FIC AD11 $108
5. Shuttle AK31 Rev2 $97

 

[nortexoid]

what fsb were u running both boards at?...

 

[BenSkywalker]

RedShirt-

I considered that, but running a GeForce DDR if your down on juice you tend to run into stability problems. I'm not saying that couldn't be it, but it would seem a bit strange to me.(though, the performance gap seems strange to me for that matter).

OrangeDoor-

&quot;was your MSI board running at a lower FSB?&quot;

Nope, same FSB.

GeekishThoughts-

&quot;I've built over 4 systems with the Pro2-A total and I own a Abit KT7-RAID at home. The memory performance is MUCH better than the Pro2-A.&quot;

I can understand that impacting Quake3 so much, but Quake2? Seems odd to me.

LXi-

&quot;Who says you can't get a good mobo for $100? I found a handful that are better than the KT7E.&quot;

Where did you get those prices from? Do they include shipping? I wasn't going to look at MSI again as I didn't want to risk a non functioning clock multiplier(I need to be able to run between 500MHZ and 1GHZ at least and even when you didn't have a bugged board you still couldn't underclock with the Pro2A).

nortexoid-

&quot;what fsb were u running both boards at?...&quot;

100MHZ for each. BIOS options were set nearly identical(identical as far as I can tell, but it is possible I overlooked something on the Abit, they have very similar BIOSs)

 

[zzzz]

the only board possibly better than KT7E is the Iwill KK266 within the same price range and even that not $100 shipped anywhere. (according to pricewatch today)