Need some clarification on Athlon's

[toph99]

It's time to update the dinosaur so i can play Deus Ex Invisible War. I have currently an Abit KT7A-RAID with a duron @ 866mhz. I want to put in a 1.2 or 1.4Ghz Athlon, but i'm not sure which ones will work. I found a 1.2Ghz Athlon on ebay, but it said it had a 200mhz fsb, and i know my fsb is not DDR, with a max of 133mhz. Will this Athlon work anyways? I don't think i can use XP Athlons, and I probably need to stick to Thunderbird cores(am i right?)

Any help will be greatly appreciated, i've been out of the computer scene for so long i have NO idea what works withwhat anymore.

 

[MichaelD]

You're correct; you cannot run an XP Athlon on a KT133A chipset, and will need to stick to TBird cores.

AFA "what's the fastest CPU" you can run, that will depend on what bios version you have. IIRC, the KT133A has a native 133 FSB.

If I may...even a "low level" AthlonXP/DDR rig will at least double the performance you're getting right now. Do you have an upgrade budget?

True, you'd need a CPU/memory/Mobo, but I'm sure you can get in the game for around $200 or so.

 

[RussianSensation]

That game is very intense I have a 3.2ghz p4 and radeon 8500 and it doesnt run smoothly at 1024x768 so I dont see how your 1.2ghz athlon upgrade will play it. Besides with prices this cheap....you can get an Athlon XP cpU + a motherboard for $100 together. That will be significantly faster than your 1.2 - 1.4 Athlon.

just search on www.pricewatch.com and here's what you will find:

CPU Athlon XP:

$44 - $83 = Athlon 1600+ - Athlon 2600+

Motherboards...You can really get a KT333 as there isn't much difference if you are on a budget...but now even Nforce 2 mobos you can pick one up for $50 bucks like this one:

FIC AU13 400FSB DDR400 ATX S/L/1394 soc A $50
or
haintech 7NJL3 (Socket-A / nForce2) Motherboard supports 133/166/200FSB
or
Biostar M7NCD Socket A AMD DDR (400FSB) Motherboard (MB) $53

There are plenty other ones...yes this might not give you that 220FSB of NF7-S but all of them will hit 200FSB easily.

Now all you need is some 3200 ram...since in dual channel u gain 2-3% tops you can just get 1 stick of 512mb of ram.

Geil Value Series Golden Dragon 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 $67

Or you can get Geil Ultra Platinum PC3500 256 $43 each from newegg, or Mushkin Basic or Buffalo for around $40 per 256.

If you get Athlon 1600 - 2400 266fsb you wont need any memory faster than PC2100 unless u want some overclocking room. Otherwise you can get a barton with 333mhz ram (PC2700).

If I was you i'd probablyget some pc3200 ram and a Barton 2500 (stock speed 11x166 = 1830) and run it at 11x200 but just bumping the front side bus and increasing the voltage somewhat with stock cooler. Then you'll have yourself 3200+ Athlon XP 512 of Ram for $200 thats not bad. Then get yourself a cheap GeForce 4 4200 off e-bay or get a new one for cheap....Then for about $270 you'll have a decent system. I think its worth the upgrade though.

 

[Budman]

After some digging it looks as if you can run an Athlon XP in that board after all.

http://www.ntcompatible.com/story7076.html

http://forum.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000122

http://fae.abit.com.tw/download/bios/kt7/kt764.exe (only for ver 1.0-1.2).

 

[toph99]

I cannot afford a new motherboard/cpu/ram(broke university student ). I don't care how the graphics are, i want to play it simply for the story(i love Deus Ex). I'm going to have to do some reasearch on the KT7A/XP thing, but aren't XP's ddr fsb? I know for sure this motherboard doesn't support a DDR fsb... I'm all confused I have a version 1.1 board as far as i can tell.

Thanks for the mobo suggestions RussianSensation, but i need a board that has built in RAID(or a RAID adapter) and that simply complicates things further.

Keep the ideas comin guys! thanks a bunch

 

[MichaelD]

Oh heck, I'll just post and not read the links! XPAthlons take DDR ram. TBirds/KT133A chipsets used PC133 SDR ram. WTH?

Other than the TBird and the XP both being Socket A/462...they are different.

 

[Budman]

Athlons do no NEED ddr they are just cpus, just like you can run a Duron with SDR/DDR Athlons are the same,it's the chipset that decides the ram type,NOT the cpu.


Just like you can run a P4 with Rdram/DDR/or even Sdram,depending on chipset it's the chipset that controls ram type used.

 

[Swanny]

As Budman said, any Athlon XP will run either SDR or DDR. It does not matter which.

 

[toph99]

Cool Learn somethin new every day! I guess i can start shopping for XP prices, although i think i'll borrow my friend's XP to make sure this new BIOS works. Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: toph99
Cool Learn somethin new every day! I guess i can start shopping for XP prices, although i think i'll borrow my friend's XP to make sure this new BIOS works. Thanks for the advice everyone!

You might want to check abit's site,they might have an even newer bios out.

 

[Super6]

My last KT133A MB wouldn't support anything beyond a 1400 Tbird.

Super6

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Super6
My last KT133A MB wouldn't support anything beyond a 1400 Tbird.

Super6

That's probably because a bios to support it wasnt written,what board did you have?

Did you look at the link I provided to the OCworkbench thread? seems as the KT7 will run with a Athlon XP.

 

[Confused]

You have to have a v1.3 KT7A board for it to take XP CPU's.

There is a little sticker somewhere on it saying what version it is


Confused

 

[buckmasterson]

Originally posted by: Confused
You have to have a v1.3 KT7A board for it to take XP CPU's.

There is a little sticker somewhere on it saying what version it is


Confused

The sticker is suppose to be on the bottom of the ISA slot. If the sticker isn't there, you have a version 1.1

 

[MrRobercik]

Your motherboard supports 133 FSB so you should be able to run Athlon XP. The only issue you may have is that without BIOS update your CPU may not be recognized as XP , but just as a regular Athlon, so XP1800 will show as a regular 1500 MHZ and so on, but it'll stil work fine. Make sure to check with ABIT what CPU can you use. The fastest I've ever mounted on KT133A was XP2100, but there's a chance you can go higher (after BIOS update of corse)

 

[RickH]

The type of Athlon you can run in that board depends on the die, 0.13 or 0.18 or ??? Make sure before you do anything. R

 

[MrRobercik]

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=89
1400 MHZ... that's not much... get a new motherboard....