Virtues and the rest
Not all is perfect, however. We did encounter a few tricks during the two week testing period. At first, the K7T Turbo gave us some headache, as well as some VCore overvoltage, 0.14V more than what was set in the BIOS. OK-OK, that should be no problem, we lowered our setting to get the needed results. Freezing the system at 600MHz was unacceptable though. How? Why? Something was not right, every second-third boot gave us fatal errors somewhere and we could barely get to the BIOS to check the settings. Once we got there, it was a shock to see that the CPU was set to operate at 8.5 x 140MHz (1190MHz). Right :). MSI once again came to the rescue, all we needed is to drop them a note that something is wrong and within a few hours, a fresh beta BIOS was awaiting in the mailbox. We immediately proceeded with the flash and were happy to see that all of our problems went away. Well, almost all. The voltage regulator still overvolted the CPU no matter what we did, but since we were overclocking anyway, this actually came in handy :) (just kidding, I know this still was a problem. Eighter the voltage regulator or the hardware monitor was off a bit, but we could not determine for sure. As everything was running silky smooth and the CPU wasn't too hot, we suspect that the hardware monitor chip gave inaccurate readings.). All in all, the K7T was exceptionally stable, just make sure you use the latest available BIOS.
Hirdetés
We were a bit unhappy not to see any ISA slots. Surely CNR is a good thing, but we can't stuff our Gravis UltraSound P&P sound card in a CNR slot, it won't fit :). And although the days of ISA are already numbered, there are still some old SCSI and network cards lying around that could be put to perfect use. Thinking of Gravis: the onboard AC'97 CODEC is VERY basic, it is mainly a feature for OEMs, if you do intend to listen to music/play games, turn it off for your sake. It has a pretty high CPU usage anyway.
Ergonomy. Not the strongest point of this particular model. Nothing too serious, but... It all began with the power cable connector.. I decided to take the system apart for some reason. So, pull the [power] plug, right? Not exactly. The space between the inserted SDRAM modules and the power connector was very little. So, take the RAM out first, right? Not exactly. The space between the SDRAM slot levers and the inserted VisionTek GeForce2 Ultra was very little. So, take the AGP card out first, right? Right! But don't forget to open your AGP retension mechanism, then take out the AGP card, then the SDRAMs and finally, pull the plug :). Of course, taking the whole system apart is by no way a "regular" occasion, but a little better arrangement of the components would have been appreciated.
Another little nuissance was the inconsequency of the BIOS and the mainboard manual. One part where they differed was the already mentioned multiplier adjustments and the other being a misterious 66MHz DRAM Clock option (mentioned in the manual). Well, it wasn't available. It wouldn't make sense anyway, so forget the whole thing, we just thought it might be worth mentioning it, for the sake of completeness.
As with any board based on VIA's newer chipsets, like the KT133A, one must not forget to install the VIA 4-in-1 driver pack (preferrably v4.28a), else the global performance will decrease somewhat. We first forget about the AGP GART driver and it did take some time before we realized that our GeForce2 Ultra should be scoring around 130FPS instead of 90... so, for the sake of 30-40% performance, don't skip this step.
Here it is: the good ol' SiSoft Sandra 2000 memory benchmarks. Instead of measuring Quake3 FPS results, which tell us a lot about our video card, we voted for Sandra. Besides general CPU stability, memory stability and performance is a key differentiator amongst motherboards. A well-built board should perform well and be able to run the memory at the most agressive timings at high FSBs. The K7T Turbo-R excelled in all these areas, if you don't believe us, check out the diagram below. MSI's offering only falls short of the Iwill KA266 DDR mainboard, but that shouldn't suprise us. The difference in performance is far less however, than the difference in the prices.
A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!
