CPUs for KT7A RAID

I have a KT7A. When I bought it I was advised that the fastest suitable CPU was
an Athlon 1400.

Subsequently I've come across someone who's used an Athlon XP 2000+ in one by
flashing the BIOS to a newer version and adjusting a few settings manually.

The BIOS I have currently allows a multiplier of 13x which combined with a
133MHz cpu clock gives a speed of 1729 MHZ which is already faster than the
2000+ XP's 1667 MHz ( 12.5 multiplier - if there was one ). There's also a
curious 13above setting for the multiplier which I don't have a clue about. This
BIOS is a year younger than the final A9 release which I haven't upgraded to
yet.

CPU core voltage which may need tweaking I suspect is adjustable from 1.1 to
1.85 Volts in 25 mV steps.
I/O voltage is adjustable from 3.2 - 3.9 V in 100mV steps
What the heck is FSB plus btw ? It goes from 0-28 MHz

Has anyone used a KT7A with any of the XP CPUs and what did you have to do ?

There's also the issue of whether to choose a Thoroughbred or Palomino Core.
I've seen some were also available as Mobile versions which might be a good
choice to reduce power consumption.

All contributions welcome.

Graham

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:30:17 +0100, Pooh Bear wrote:

What the heck is FSB plus btw ? It goes from 0-28 MHz

It's what it says it is. It increases the FSB clock speed by whatever
figure you use there.

Has anyone used a KT7A with any of the XP CPUs and what did you have to
do ?

There's been many differernt models of XP's and XP-M's used in the KT7A.

There's also the issue of whether to choose a Thoroughbred or Palomino
Core. I've seen some were also available as Mobile versions which might
be a good choice to reduce power consumption.

If you want to maximize your power, you want a Barton core XP-M. Next best
would b a Tbred B core (not A). You don't want a Palomino period. But to
be honest, you'd come out ahead both performance wise and money wise
upgrading to a K8 CPU and selling your old MB/CPU/ram on ebay. The best
you'll do with a K7 is a Barton core XP-M running at about 2400MHz.
Finding a cpu to do that will probably cost you $70-$100 or more. For $79
you can pick up on sale at Fry's a Nforce-3A 754 MB and a Sempron 3100+
that'll clock higher than that. And the power for the speed is much
greater on the 754 cpu. It's time to upgrade the MB and ram too.

But if you're set on just upgrading the CPU, see the My server link below
for info you will need.

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