KT133 (Athlon Tbird - Duron) motherboard article

[bloom25]

Anyone interesting in buying or building an Athlon or Duron system should read this article.  It just came out today.
 http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q1/010117/index.html

My old favorite the Asus A7v still looked very good overall.  It claimed the number 1 or two spot in most of the benchmarks.  If you top that off with it's unique overclocking abilities that none of the other boards have it would be the best choice still IMO.  (The Abit KT7 pretty much performed in the bottom 25% overall; but it is the only other board that comes close to the Asus in overclocking ability.)



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[214thCavalier]

Hmm well do you believe Tom ? or do you believe all the other sites and magazines and reviewers who rate the KT7 and especially the KT7-Raid as the best board around?
I have no idea what special overclocking abilities your board has but the KT7-Raid is THE board to have for overclockers and all the overclocking is accomplished within the well proven Abit bios. No need to fiddle with jumpers etc.
As an example of what the KT7-Raid is capable of and if you know what 3dmark 2000 is then heres my results running an AMD Tbird 850mhz overclocked and totally stable at 1100 mhz      
Btw my first score was pathetic around the 4000 mark changed to NVidia drivers not creatives and things started looking up big time.
 http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare.shtml?1230389  

If you wanna overclock go for the Abit they are VERY hard to beat and easy to configure for overclocking.
Also i am not saying your board is not a good one because i know it is, but Toms review makes absolutely NO mention of how the boards behave when overclocked.
Personally though i would wait and get the KT133a version it has had a stunning review here http://www.hardocp.com/index.html  amongst other places, check out how much extra they could overclock a previously topped out Tbird.
They also mention as do a lot of other sites that the KT7 was the board of the year.
And just in case they change the front door heres some direct links to articles related.
 http://www.hardocp.com/articles/hardestof2k/

and here   http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/mainboards/abit/kt7a/index.html

In the end you make your own mind up and pays your money, if you dont wanna overclock i would probably go with the Asus as it posts slightly higher results when run outa the box without overclocking.
But if you wanna be a Badass mother go with the Abit      

Actually i noticed below you post the Asus has better performance ?
Maybe outa the box and on Toms site but when overclocked i can prove you wrong  as currently my 3Dmark score http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare.shtml?1230389   is the fastest of any Tbird using any vid card in the up to 1100 mhz cpu bracket.

Unfortunately it dont make my noodle any bigger  

[This message has been edited by 214thCavalier (edited 01-19-2001).]

[bloom25]

I'm running a Thunderbird 700 at 927 Mhz.  I upped the voltage only 1 notch (1.75 I think).

Both boards overclock equally well, the Abit has the option in the bios, the ASUS has dip switches (the new bios has adjustments too).  The difference is that the ASUS has better performance.  

Really you can't go wrong with either board.  (I'd take into account that Abit has the HIGHEST RMA rate of any MB manufacturer.  Make sure if you buy online you have an easy way to get a replacement if you get a bad MB.)



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[prz]

KT7RAID here, have a 950TBird and could only overclock to 980 with all performance setting s on but I think temperature of CPU is the problem and I'm too lazy to rip my monster-cooler of the CPU and bend more transistors and sockets experimenting. Just got RAID to work with two IBM 75X drives & it rocks. Overall, high perf, easy, stable board. Oh, one thing to watch is IRQ collision for warping. I get with a GTS about 50+ frames steady and drops to 20s with 2-3 hangars smoking so good nuff ...