motherboard comparision

quarryman

hi,
i'm considering making a purchase one of the following mothernoards from komplett and posessing only necessary pc knowledge can't tell which is better. I'm looking at buying a AMD Athlon (prob 2400+) so am only really looking at socket A boards. any advice or recomendations from current owners of either of these:

MSI KT4V

Abit KD7

I noticed the ABIT KD7 has a higher max bus speed. is this not big plus? and if so will this affect how much i will be able to overclock? lastly will i be able to overclock with this setup (assuming i get the AMD XP 2400+?

Any help would be really appreciated.
quarryman.

elexes

id go with the abit ... but its only cause ive got one and its going fine for me

Red Moose

Only thing to watch for with the KT400 chipset is that the AGP 8x will most likely not work at all at 8x. I have to run my Radeon 9700 Pro at 4x. Yeah it doesn't make much difference but it would be nice.

The good about the KT400 is that it effectively "unlocks" the XP chips so you can simply plug in a retail one directly and start messing about with multipliers and FSB settings without having to mess with soldering irons or any extra stuff. AFAIK the nForce chispets do not do this.

CombatCow

The good about the KT400 is that it effectively "unlocks" the XP chips so you can simply plug in a retail one directly and start messing about with multipliers and FSB settings without having to mess with soldering irons or any extra stuff. AFAIK the nForce chispets do not do this.

Yup thats a great feature of the via kt400 but take note that the MSI MOBO DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS.



COMBATCOW

quarryman

ok so that means the Abit will allow me to overclock and the msi won't or just to a limited extent? to be honest getting a fast processor means i probably wont' be desperate to overclock so soon , but I'd like to have that option at some stage. I don't know what i was talking about the faster bus speed - they're both 333MHz. anyways the Abit does seem the better of the two (slightly) from what i've read but was just wondering on others opinions since online reviews should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt. thanks for the info!

CombatCow

Well the Abit mobo has the ( auto unlock chip ) feature,but the msi does not.simple as that.I was going to go for the Abit KD7 mobo until i heard about the new via chipset ( KT400A ) which gives 15% better peformance ( apparantly ) on the same mobo ( KD7 ) at more or less the same price.Dunno when it's gonna b out tho...shouldnt be too long.I think the Abit is the best choice ( great price too ) imo.:)


COMBATCOW

Paul.K

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Abit like Asus are skipping the Kt400A chipset based mainboards for the KT600 chipset which should be out also in the 2nd quarter.

Paul.

CombatCow

KT600 .THX 4 the info paul,christ it's hard to keep up with this technology lark.( was just readin bout the KT400A two weeks ago ):rolleyes:


COMBATCOW

kamobe

hmmmmm

I've just ordered the Asus A7N8X Deluxe from komplett, but i read a review saying that it was grand for overclocking from the bios?

I'm pretty sure it uses the nforce chipset ye were talking about though.....

Red Moose

TBH I'd say wait for the K600A, because VIA will prob cock it up again (e.g., 266 vs 266A).

AFAICS the MSI does, because I can change the multiplier and FSB from the BIOS. Wouldn't recommend the board though.

astrofool

it was actually ati's implementation of agp8x that caused problems, rather than the motherboards fault (radeon 9700 launched before agp8x did).

kt400 is a decent chipset, kt400a will be better, the ONLY thing the kt600 will add is official support for 200mhz fsb processors(not out yet).

getting a kt400 or kt400a would be the same as getting any motherboard now as all chips are getting an fsb increase and will require new chipsets within a few months (intel is moving from a 533 bus to an 800 bus).