MSI KT4VL sucks????

[Jeff7181]

I just bought this board... installation was simple... I've heard people complain about the location of the IDE ports at the bottom, but I love it... it moves the cables out of the way for better air flow.
But anyway... after installing all the updated drivers and flashing the BIOS... I decided to benchmark my computer again.
Well... my score is lower in PCMark2003 and lower in 3DMark2001... is this just cause the KT400 chipset is new and hasn't been fine tuned as much as my old Shuttle AK31 motherboard that's been around forever? It's not just a small different either... it was 300 points for the CPU in PCMark, 200 for RAM, and almost 100 for the HDD... and it was below 10,000 in 3DMark... my previous score is in my profile.

 

[Iron Woode]

I thought I read somewhere that there was an issue with the newest 4 in 1's involving a performance hit.

 

[CraigRT]

What are the best to go with? I think I have 4.37 or something like that... my scores are all fantastic. I am beating a guy with an XP1800+@2000+ and a Ti4600 while I have a XP1800+ stock speed and Ti4200 overclocked. I am talking 11,400 3dmark2001SE score, while his is hovering around 10K.. I am quite pleased.

this is a KT266A chipset.
but yeah, it could certainly be a VIA driver issue... try another VIA service pack (4in1's) and see how that flies.

 

[Jeff7181]

I've been playing with settings... got my CPU score and video card score higher, but HDD and Memory is still lower. I'm also still unable to go past a 140 FSB as with my old motherboard.
Also... my CPU runs significantly hotter, I think it's because of the way the heatsink must be oriented... right now, the outlet blows directly onto the ram, and toward the back to a case fan... before with my AK31 it blew up into the PS's bottom fan, and down into my slot fan... it's very odd though... my case temp is lower now, but CPU temp is higher. I can't figure it out unless this boards temperature monitor is more accurate, and my old one was giving incorrect readings.
I've applied arctic silver 3 to the core according to AS's instructions on their web site, and at idle it runs at 116F... with the old board it idled at 105F. Under 100% load after 15 minutes it reads 125F now, before it never broke 120.
I'm just wondering if the performance hit is due to the KT400 being a brand new chipset and still doesn't have the bugs worked out of the drivers for it. Oh well... maybe I'll just spring for an all copper heatsink like I put on my brother's computer. An all copper one will work for an XP2400 or 2600 right? If of course I use an adequate fan. Right now my fan is reporting 4500 RPM... kinda slow since I see most specs on some good ones are about 5500... I don't know the specs on it... Tiger Direct sent it to me when I bought the CPU.

 

[Iron Woode]

The MB takes temps from the thermal diode inside the cpu. You are actually getting the proper temp reading.

Make sure that you are in UDMA mode ATA 100 or 133 in the device manager.

 

[Jeff7181]

Yup... it's in Mode 6 right now, which is ATA133 correct? My old motherboard only supported ATA 100 and seemed to be faster... go figure.

 

[Dean_Jen]

just bought the KT4V yesterday.

Right now my 1700+ is running at 166x10(2000+) at default voltage. I didn't do any bridge modification, but I can still change the multiplier in BIOS.

Just that 166x11 ain't working...strange.

As for performance in memory and disk...I'm using CL2.5 DDR333, so it can't be too slow or too fast...

ONE thing I don't like is that the max. voltage for CPU Core is 1.6...