MSI K7 Master-S vs. K7T Turbo Limited

[Guest]

i'm in the market for a new motherboard and have been reading all of the great things about the 7 master-s - well thanks to steve's insight we now know that we should stay away from that one for a while.

does anyone have any info or thoughts on MSI's K7T Turbo Limited?

any feedback would be great!

thanks!

 

[hatimh]

After Steve's insight, I actually went out and bought the mother board. The only problem that Steve mentioned mainly was that, it could no longer be endorsed by his company because they changed the spec on release. This change was the reduction in DIMM slots (details in his post) but it still remains the best DDR Mobo for now.

Beer is the devil's piss.

 

[Guest]

would you know the main differences between the Master and the Turbo?

byron

 

[Guest]

To start with, they support different kind of memory. K7 Master (with -S or without) supports DDR-SDRAM only (PC1600 and PC2100), while K7T Turbo supports normal SDRAM only (PC100 and PC133).

Leo

 

[Crashman]

The Master has the far superior AMD northbridge, while the K7T uses the supremely inferior VIA northbridge.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[pvsurfer]

While what you say is true - unfortunately, both use the same (highly suspect) VIA686B Southbridge!

Remember, "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link".

 

[Crashman]

So what would you suggest, adding to the problems by getting one with a VIA northbridge as well, or getting less performance with the ALi MAGiK 1?

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[Guest]

You can't really compare northbridges that are made for different kinds of memory.

Leo

 

[Crashman]

Gee, I guess Tom and my other news sources, manufacturers, and reviewers must all be wrong when they said that the KT266 and MAGiK 1 were DDR. Either that or your wrong. They also said that the MAGiK 1 is the slowest, the KT266 the second slowest, and the 760 the fastest. They also said that the KT266 was a VIA chipset. That means that it had a VIA northbridge, right? So if the VIA southbridge has such a profoundly bad affect on the AMD 760 board that use it, why wouldn't it suck just as bad on the VIA northbridge?
Do some research!

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[Guest]

Excuse me? K7T Turbo is based on the KT133A chipset. You must have confused it with K7T266. This a completely different mobo.

Leo

 

[Crashman]

Sorry, what I was TRYING to say is that with the other boards you end up with the worst of both worlds, VIA north and south. So that is my support for the K7-Master. When I read your last response I Should have reread the initial question to provide a more apropriat answer, but I stand behind my reasoning for the K7-Master, that it is better because it has the AMD northbridge.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[Guest]

that's a significant difference and an important buying decision for me... thanks for the info!

 

[Guest]

is there a DDR amd mobo you would recommend?

 

[hatimh]

Yeah, the K7 Master! *sigh*

Beer is the devil's piss.

 

[Guest]

thanks for the advice!

i'm looking at the specs for the k7 master and the k7 master-s and all i see that is different is the on-board scsi... is this correct?

 

[hatimh]

Yeah, everything you want to know about this MoBo this a thread with the name of the Mobo as the subject title.

Beer is the devil's piss.

 

[yoda271828]

I have a K7 Master and it is awesome.