OCplus MSI KT3 ultra review
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MSI KT3 ultra KT333 chipset MB
This review was kindly made possible by:
July 30-2002
 
 

 

 

System specs : Maxtor ATA133 7200rpm 40gig HDD / xp1700 @ 11x166 / Samsung PC2700 256meg ram / C-media sound card / Leadtek GF4ti4200 / Win98SE / Direct X8.1/ Volcano 7+ / 400W power / 

CPU
    - Support Socket A (Socket 462) for AMD® Athlon™/Athlon XP
   /Duron™ processor
- Support 600MHz up to 2100+ MHz processor and higher
Chipset
    VIA® KT333 (552 BGA) Chipset
- FSB @200/266MHz
- AGP 4X and PCI Advanced high performance memory
  controller

VIA® VT8233A (376 BGA) Chipset
- High Bandwidth V-link Client controller
- Integrated Faster Ethernet LPC
- Integrated Hardware Sound Blaster/Direct Sound AC97 audio
- Ultra DMA 66/100/133 master mode PCI EIDE controller
- ACPI
FSB
    100/133 (200/266)MHz clocks are supported
Main Memory
    -Support six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs
-Support a maximum memory size up to 3GB
-Support 2.5v DDR200/266/333 DDR SDRAM DIMM
Slots
    *One AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot
-- AGP specification compliant
-- Support AGP 2.0 4x
*One CNR (Communication Network Riser) slot
*Five 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots
--Supports 3.3V/5V PCI bus Interface
On-Board IDE
    - An IDE controller on the VIA® VT8233A chipset provides IDE
  HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 66 / 100/
  133 operation modes
- Can connect up to 4 IDE devices
Audio
    *Integrated Realtek® ALC650 Chipset (6-channel S/W audio)
- Direct Sound AC'97 Audio
- 6-channel analog output
On-Board Peripherals
    On-Board Peripherals include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M
  and 2.88Mbytes
- 2 serial ports (COMA + COMB)
- 1 parallel port supporting SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 1 IrDA connector for SIR/ASKIR/HPSIR
- 1 Audio/Game port
- 1 D-Bracket pinheader
- 4 USB 1.1 ports
BIOS
    - The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which
  detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the
  board automatically.
- The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface
  (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
Dimension
    30.4 cm(L) x 23.5 cm(W) ATX Form Factor
Mounting
    6 mounting holes.

 

Setting this card up in my case was as easy as could be [ well ive put 3 of these boards into cases for other people to date ]  , still I have to mention that the instruction manual is a little lacking in detail , something MSI should look into improving .  Other than this the only other thing I have to harp on about is the lack of voltage to the cpu , maxing out at 1.85v . I have never tested one of these boards before so it was a slight surprise to me when I found this board to be so stable , perhaps even more so than my Epox . This is a KT333 board and as such I will be running it at 166mhz FSB , making my XP1700 a XP2200 [ 11x166fsb ] at 1.75v , lucky me .

SISOFTSANDRA 2002

CPU Arithmetic Bench :

Epox 8k3a

ALU 5121Mips

MSI KT3

ALU 5128Mips

Epox 8k3a

FPU 2502 Mflops

MSI KT3

FPU 2505 Mflops

CPU Multimedia Bench :

Epox 8k3a

Interger 10079 it/s

MSI KT3

Interger 10090 it/s

Epox 8k3a

Float-point 11150 it/s

MSI KT3

Float-point 11157 it/s

Mem Bandwidth :

Epox 8k3a

Ram int 2522 Mb/s

MSI KT3

Ram int 2407 mb/s

Epox 8k3a

Ram Float 2384 Mb/s

MSI KT3

Ram Float 2194 Mb/s

3DMARK2001SE :

Epox 8k3a

10719 3Dmarks

MSI KT3

10075 3Dmarks

Well , make what you will from those scores , the MSI board is good , but for some reason the mem benchmarks are down , and thats because my RAM would not run on any setting other than NORMAL , ? , I didnt have time to find out what was going on so too bad , just keep that in mind ok , as the MSI could have made a clean sweep of the benchmarks with a faster ram setting in the bios .[ today is Monday , the board needs to be back Tuesday , you see my problem ? ]

Overclocking :

Here I get to have some fun , so How did the MSI do : rather well actually , even with the limited voltage I had to work with . Starting with 1.75volts I got the system to boot into windows at 175mhz FSB , but as soon as windows had finished the boot , it rebooted , the cpu just lacking enough voltage not to be stable . [ Epox was stable here , not that stable , but stable enough for me to navigate through windows with no problems ] eeer we are talking 1925mhz folks @ 1.75volts air cooled . Next I dialed in the max voltage of 1.85volts and was able to get:

Thats 1963mhz @ 1.85volts , and stable enough for me to get this screen capture , another half a volt and it may very well have been Prime95 stable [ 3Dmark2001 stable etc ] . With my Epox its a mater of just giving the cpu more voltage at this point , so ? I really dont know why MSI would make such a good board , and leave out whats needed most , more voltage to the cpu .

Conclusion :

If you can live with the voltage limitations to the cpu , then you will be rewarded with voltage adjustments to the ram as well as graphics card ( agp ) , not that they were needed , but I must In the strongest possible terms say : PLEASE MSI give your customers at least 2volts to the CPU , OK .

I loved this board , if there had been more voltage available to the cpu ( at least 2v ) I would have left this board in my computer case , I was that impressed with it . I would have liked more time with this MB , its not been that often these days that a Motherboard has seriously impressed the hell out of me , now if only some one would post a voltage mod for the MSI KT3 ultra so that we can feed the cpu more voltage . MSI please take note ( as if ) more voltage would make this board a serious bad ass overclocking board , so please in the future keep us hard core overclockers in mind and give us at least ( the very least ) 2 volts . The user manual needs refining , the board lacks enough voltage adjustment to the cpu , so I give this board 8 out of 10 , but keep in mind folks , this is still one hell of a good board .

Matt korhonen