Spotting our old Friend

Once again, we see the trend of motherboard manufacturers using the same KT133 motherboard layout for their KT133A solution. The K7T Turbo measures in at 12 by 9 inches, slightly larger than the K7T Pro2. The layout design is based largely on the K7T Pro2, but with more modifications than most manufacturers are making.

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The biggest and most obvious of these changes is the addition of a Promise IDE RAID controller, which accounts for the increased size of the PCB.

MSI and ABIT are the only two manufacturers to have the VIA 8363A North Bridge rotated by 45 degrees. They claim that such a layout results in shorter traces and thus cleaner signals, which is probably one of the reasons why the board is extremely stable under our stress tests.

However, unlike the ABIT KT7A-RAID and the EPoX EP-8KTA3, MSI did not put a fan on the 8363A North Bridge, going with just a standard heatsink instead, just like the old K7T Pro2. As we have shown before, even though the 8363 North Bridge of the KT133 chipset does not necessarily need any special cooling, that is not the case with the 8363A North Bridge, especially when it comes to overclocked FSB speeds. A bit later, we’ll take a look and see if the stand alone heat sink is sufficient.

Is this heat sink enough to cool the hot KT133A North Bridge?

CPU cooling has been one of the most important factors when dealing with the high-speed processors we have today. With CPUs in the gigahertz range dissipating more than 50W of heat, a cooling failure could result in a highly unstable system. Fortunately, MSI has prepared carefully for such circumstances.

First, they left a lot of space around the CPU socket, so you should not have any problems in installing even the largest HSF unit. The power supply connector is located right beside the DIMM slots, so the ATX power cable will not interfere with airflow to the CPU.

The primary/secondary IDE connectors and the floppy connectors are located right in front of the DIMM slots, however the two IDE connectors by the Promise RAID controller are placed in-line with the fifth and sixth PCI slots, so you will not be able to put in any long PCI devices in those slots.

The Basic Features

The VIA 8363A North Bridge sits close to the CPU socket. It is the core of the KT133A chipset that provides all the major features of the board including the 100 / 133MHz FSB and memory bus, as well as AGP 4X support.  The AGP Slot is a universal slot, which means it is not keyed specifically for AGP 2X or AGP 4X cards, so you can install almost any current AGP card in the slot.  Following the trend of the K7T Pro2, MSI continues to include an AGP retention mechanism to lock the AGP video card in place.

The 8363A North Bridge officially supports the 133MHz FSB (266MHz DDR), thus offering support for the new 133MHz FSB Athlons as well.  In the past, even with 1GHz Athlons, users are limited to a FSB speed of 100MHz and a multiplier of 10.  Now the KT133A chipset allows users to have FSB speeds of 133MHz and possibly higher, so that with the same 1GHz chip, users can lower the multiplier to 7.5, and effectively boost the overall performance while remaining at the same clock speed. 

Most of the recent AMD Socket-A motherboards have included the hardware mechanism for changing the multiplier ratio settings of AMD processors, so this can be done easily.  There is some effort required on the user’s part to prepare their CPUs for overclocking, however we have diagrammed exactly what is necessary in our Athlon Overclocking Guide. Make sure you read the guide in order to fully unleash the power in your Socket-A processor.

The K7T Turbo has a total of three DIMM slots, supporting up to 1.5GB SDRAM. The memory controller in the 8363A North Bridge allows users to run their memory at either 100MHz or 133MHz.  When running 100MHz FSB, you have the option to choose to run your memory at 100MHz or 133MHz. However, the chipset will only allow you to run your memory synchronously with the FSB if you set the frequency to 133MHz or higher.  Officially the KT133A chipset only supports FSB:memory ratios of 100:100, 100:133, or 133:133. 

The newer VIA 686B South Bridge has replaced the good old VIA 686A South Bridge that was used on most KT133 boards.  The advantage of the 686B over 686A is that it supports Ultra ATA 100, whereas the 686A only supports Ultra ATA 66. The Ultra ATA 100 controller provides two IDE channels that support up to 4 IDE devices (two per channel).

Two traditional USB ports are mounted at the back of the motherboard together with the serial / parallel ports, and there are connectors ready for a third and fourth USB port at the left side of the board. However, MSI did not include the necessary USB bracket to take advantage of the second USB controller. But don’t forget that the board we received is just a pre-production sample, so the shipping version may include these USB brackets.

In terms of expansion slots, the K7T Turbo is edged out slightly by the ABIT and EpoX boards. Nevertheless, the 6/1/0/1 (PCI/AGP/ISA/CNR) expansion slot design should be very enough for most users. However, for those who still want to keep some of their ISA devices, the K7T Turbo is just not going to be the right choice. Although the overclocking market is growing rapidly, MSI obviously still wants to retain the OEM market where the majority of sales still come from, and keeping the CNR slot helps OEMs provide a low cost modem solution for end users. In the past, with the K7T Pro and K7T Pro2, MSI always allowed vendors to special order the board with an ISA slot in place of one of the PCI slots, but just based on the PCB design of the K7T Turbo, it doesn’t look like this will be possible this time around.

For onboard audio, MSI uses the VIA VT1611A AC’97 audio CODEC. Once again, it is capable of providing basic sound for normal users, but for anything more, you really should go with a hardware-based PCI sound card.

Aimed at overclockers

Ever since the release of the MSI K7T Pro2, most hardware enthusiasts have been aware of MSI’s efforts to provide some of the best product for reliable overclocking. In general MSI always focuses on making sure they include all the options so that users can push their CPUs to the limit, while making sure there is no degradation of stability.

Since the K7T Pro2, MSI has moved the multiplier and voltage tweaking into the BIOS for easy access, and there is no reason for MSI to drop that with the new K7T Turbo. Inside the Frequency / Voltage panel in the BIOS, you will be able to select the multiplier ratio setting for your CPU, provided that your have your AMD CPU unlocked already.

One interesting note is that when we first received the motherboard, it was using BIOS revision 10D. Later on MSI sent us a BIOS update, revision 10E, to correct some performance issues with the original.. In both revisions, the multiplier ratio settings we were able to select in the BIOS were only default, or from 8.5 to 12.5. Therefore, with the old BIOS, you might not be able to lower the multiplier in order to take advantage of higher FSB speeds. For example, if you have a 1GHz (100MHz FSB) CPU and you want to run it at 133MHz FSB, you would be out of luck since the multiplier ratio is 10, and even if you unlocked the CPU, you will not be able to get the multiplier ratio down to 7.5 on the K7T Turbo.

That constraint could really be a problem for overclockers everywhere. For example, when we tried to run our FSB testing, we ran into problems where we couldn’t increase the FSB speed a lot since the lowest multiplier ratio we were able to achieve was 8.5.

Fortunately, after some discussion with MSI, they released another revision of the BIOS, 10F, which has multiplier ratios from 5 to 12.5 available. We immediately flashed the new BIOS and ran all the tests again.

MSI is currently still debating whether they will include the new BIOS in the production version of the motherboard or provide the BIOS as an update on the website. Either way, you should have no problem in accessing lower multiplier ratio after a simple BIOS update.

For FSB speeds, MSI inherits the same design from the K7T Pro2 and allows users to choose FSB speed settings all the way from 100MHz to 166MHz in 1MHz increments. Just like the EPoX board, you will need to set a jumper on the motherboard in order to go from the 100MHz – 132MHz range to the 133MHz – 166MHz range. This is much easier than setting the FSB speed using only jumpers or dipswitches, but it is just not as easy as the ABIT KT7A-RAID, which is fully jumperless.

For CPU core voltage, you can choose between 1.300 and 1.800V in 0.025V increments, which is pretty typical these days. For I/O voltage, you can choose from either 3.3V or 3.45V.

There are a total of only two fan headers on the motherboard, one for the CPU HSF unit and one for the front chassis fan. This is odd since most of the time there are at least three fan headers, where one is for CPU HSF unit and two for chassis fans. In the PC Health panel inside BIOS, you will be able to read two temperatures and the speed of the two fans.