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 / 

 

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