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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 1:31 pm
by AlleyViper
I had an asus a7v133 1.05 (no dot), that was running flawlessly a tbred 2400+ stock at 2.0GHz, 133fsb (manual jumper config with "15X" mult, there was no official support on latest beta bios over palomino core). It had 2x512MB pc133 2-3-3-6, would superpi 1M around 1m:19s IIRC. Tbreds 2600+ do exist, but are very rare.
Despite a lot of bugs on the VIA southbrigde (nothing that mvp3 users aren't used too: latency, sb live problems etc), the kt133a was one of the fastest for SDRAM. I had that cpu briefly on a a7a266 (ali chip), but performance was slower with sdram. The good thing was that that board officially supported any cpu with 133mhz fsb without a problem unlike what I'll write bellow!

Be careful if you go the kt133a route, and be sure which mobo bios AND revs support each CPU. As an example, older A7V133 1.02 could hardly support any XP cpu, but the final rev 1.05. (extra dot) supported the Palomino core officially. But on the other hand, they had problems with the later Tbreds, whereas I was running one with the 1.05 (no dot) without a problem (but wouldn't support a palomino!). I had a DFI AK75+, as the 1.05., Palomino OK, Tbred no go depending on rev. (I was unlucky!)

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:52 pm
by dominicx
There are some Via KT266A boards that have both 3.3V SDRAM and 2.5V DDR slots and they are the fastest SDRAM-driven boards ever built (faster than SIS 735 boards). I bought one for my sister to use the PC133 memory from the Celeron 500 MHz system - it was the MSI KT2 Combo:
http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... =&cat3_no=
It has the VT8235 southbridge and is quite nice as for the SDRAM board.
I checked the overall performance with both SDRAM (256MB Nanya PC133 CL3 @133 MHz) and DDR (512MB Vdata PC333 CL3 @266 MHz CL2) and the performance was only about 3-10% higher in case of DDR. Results for DDR were comparable to those of Epox 8KRA2+ (KT600) for the same clock (which only shows how little changed in the structure of Via's chipsets over the time). Checked for both Athlon XP 2000+ Thorton @various speeds (capable of 2500 MHz @1.95V) and Duron 1400@Athlon XP 1788 MHz.
MSI KT2 Combo offically supports Athlons XP up to 2600+, but since it offers 143 MHz (286 MHz DDR) stable FSB and it's possible to set the 24x multiplier using bridges on the CPU, the max real clock that could be achieved for the Barton CPU is 3432 MHz (of course virtually ;)). Unfortunately the board is not so overclockers-friendly and has problems with keeping voltages above 1.85V, but if you have a mobile Barton you can play with the multiplier and achieve maybe ~2500-2600 MHz on this board - anyone willing to try? ;)

Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:49 am
by Snigel
I found quite a lot pretty modern chipsets with sd-ram support, especially for the intel socket.

Socket A
Ali ALiMAGiK 1 266MHz
Via KT133A 266MHz
Via SIS735 266MHz
Via KT266A 266MHz <- fastest

The fastest 266MHz cpu is the Barton 2800+ and the Thoroughbred/Thorton 2600+

Socket 478
ALi Aladdin P4 400MHz
ALi M1681 400MHz
Intel 845 400MHz
SiS645 400MHz
SiS 650 400MHz
SiS 651 533MHz
SiS 645DX 533MHz
VIA P4X266 400MHz
Via P4X266A 533MHz
Via P4X333 533MHz
Via P4X400 533MHz

The fastest 400MHz bus P4 is the northwood 2.8GHz. The fastest northwood with 533MHz bus is 3.06GHz.

This link was quite handy even though it is in german:
http://www.bytes-and-more.de/tech/chip.htm
It is not totally correct though, and misses some chipsets that has sdram support.

Of course there is also socket 370, but the fastest cpu for that is the P3 1.4GHz, so I wouldn't go for that.

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:06 am
by dominicx
I wouldn't go for P4 in case of SDRAM memory, since NetBurst architecture depends highly on memory bandwidth and SDRAM here would be a huge drawback. I seriously doubt that 3.06GHz P4 could compete with ~2500MHz real clock Barton, especially equipped with SDRAM memory.

AthlonXP has much different memory management and is better-off with low-bandwidth memory than P4; it could be even seen if it comes to cache - 512KB of cache in Barton gives very little increase in performance comparing to 256KB in Thorton - if we use the same CPU clock and FSB.

To achieve the best results, I'd recommend a mobile Barton CPU - supposedly a 2500+ model from a 'good' batch, which usually has great overclocking vistas, allows to choose any FSB and play with the multiplier. This system will be far better than P4 and still sufficient for todays applications.

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 12:42 pm
by Stedman5040
I have a mobile Barton XP2400+ (133x13.5=1800Mhz) running at (166x13.5=2250Mhz) on a recapped Soltek SL-75FRV (KT400 chipset) at default voltage 1.60V. Runs quite nicely, but not with SDRam of course.

Stedman