KT-333 Artice Discussion

[lhgpoobaa]

A very decent review i thought.
loooots of data to pour over.
tizz good to see my upand comming mobo (the epox) is a good performer.

and im gonna ripp of the northbridge heatsink anyway

just 3 things which i thought should be added:

1. some overclocking/stability results
2. running the fsb at 166 to show performance boost.
3. no Divx benchmarks



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[eden]

I liked it, it was decent. Problem is they never used the 166MHZ FSB, to show off a little more of the Athlon's final days of performance before Hammer.
Also there were things like, what were all those memory used in? Like, what does the 1532MB come in and where is it used for?

In the next article, I hope they make a test on the new FSB, maybe it could show us what CAS2 DDR333MHZ with 333MHZ FSB do.

I agree, the Epox proved once again it is a true performer for a nice price. In Canada we have it at the same price of the 8KHA+, at 199$, roughly 120$ US, far from the estimates of the mobos by THG's staff. The A7V333 sells for much less than the MSRP too.

--
I set my graphics aperture to 1024MB, why can't I open anything now?

 

[balzi]

Prices were really high I think.
poobah, what prices are you getting on those motherbaords.
I can get GA-7VRXP for $245 (no-raid for $210), DRV5 for $210, 8K3A for $210 (8K3A+ for $235), AV7333 for $290. MSI KT3 Ultra for $235.

so for US guys, you should halve that and then take a bit more off.
something that is US$100 would normally cost me A$200 - $250.

now, the review.
well, I thought it covered the boards well, but again. The benchmarks and comments make me wonder.

I think the results need some sort of averaging and percentage figures to show that when I board "leaves teh competition for dead" we know what is going on.

Anyone wondering, look at the final benchmark graph where the Gigabytes "leaves the comp. in the dust". Well excuse me, but aren't the first 14 Mobos seperated by only 2 seconds. with the first 2 coming equal first.

From the LAME MP3 encoding benchmark:

The chart clearly shows that the outmoded VIA KT133A chipset lands squarely at last place. The leader of the pack is the Epox board, wih Aopen following closely on its heels.

<b>clearly</b> uh-huh??!? so how come the KT133A is only third last?? and then the Aopen is in a group of 5 boards that all fall a meager second behind the Epox. and then, in this particular benchmark, all Mobos (133A 266A and all 333) are seperated by 3 seconds (116 -> 119)

I'm getting the feeling that our friends, Frank and Bert aren't looking at the results when they make comments. Maybe they look at the order of placings without paying attention to the actual figures.

anyway, enough whinging.

maybe they'll read this and fix their bungling foolishness and I'll delete my post.

balzi

I spilled coffee all over my wife's nighty... ...serves me right for wearing it?!?

 

[Crashman]

d00d, don't be silly, 166FSB is overclocking, works with the Kt266A just as easily as the KT333, and preferably the SiS 735 on the Leadtek Winfast 7350KDA, or the ALi on the Iwill XP333.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Crashman]

#2, just plain stupid, all modern chipsets allow the 166 overclock setting, so nothing changes with the KT333.

Take it to the motherboards forum where it belongs!

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

prices hmmm

well locally, auzzie prices typically being double the USA:
i know i can get the epox 8k3a+ for 225
others vary between 210 and 290, the highest i think is the MSI at 290
the only really wierd thing is the asus, WELL above everything else, the cheapest ive seen the nonraid is 305, and up to 380 for the raid.

i have no idea why asus demands such a price difference...
also of note is the product spread....
EVERYONE has asus
most also have gigabyte or msi
fewer have soyo
but if u want iwill, soltek, epox and the rest you really have to hunt around!

Today on Toms: Trisexual hamsters, anal applications of peanut butter and Marrige councilling!

 

[FiL]

Just for reference, here are British prices, in British pounds, natrully.

Soltek DRV5 £88

Asus A7V333 £117

Asus A7V333 + RAID £139

Gigabyte GA-7VRXP £94

MSI KT3 ULTRA £94

MSI KT3 ULTRA-ARU £116

all the prices seem pretty similar to each other over in the UK. I've no idea how to convert them to Canadian dollars right now though

 

[eden]

Clearly you read when I said WITH 333MHZ RAM. One without the other is simply silly for Athlons or even P4s.

--
I set my graphics aperture to 1024MB, why can't I open anything now?

 

[jihiggs]

i think the only reason they used 1500 megs of ram is because the 256 modules are a bit outdated, they are just trying to bench with the newest stuff possible. they had to use 3 to test how the board did with all 3 plugged in.

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[Crashman]

Yes, but the KT333 chipset is no better at bus speed overclocking than the 266A! Either will run the 166:166 FSB:RAM ratio!

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[bront]

Actualy, with the signal degridation issue in DDR, there have been issues with using 3 chips of that size and speed on some boards. So, it was more to prove it can be done safely and test stability than anything else.

They couldn't do more simply due to the fact that 1GB chips are well beyond a reasonable pricerange for DDR333.

I don't need an anti-virus program, I just boil my computer once a week.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

I'm getting the feeling that our friends, Frank and Bert aren't looking at the results when they make comments. Maybe they look at the order of placings without paying attention to the actual figures.

Welcome to the incompetence in many of the reviews by THG. There are a lot of stupid comments or unjustifiable claims made by the authors in the revies. At THG, it happens. ... A lot.

For example, as you pointed out, we <i>know</i> that the KT133A is going to suck compared to the KT333. Der! Why such a comment even be made?

If you think that is bad though, don't <i>ever</i> read the hard drive reviews. They're bloody moronic! Patrick Schmid actually <i>titled</i> one review "Western Digital WD1200JB With 8 MB Cache: Outperforms SCSI Drives" and then provided absolutely no benchmakrs from a SCSI drive whatsoever to back up the title. (Obviously because even though the special-edition WD drive is top-of-the-line IDE, it still can't beat a good SCSI drive.)

To me, the KT333 review would have made a <i>lot</i> more sense if they had even taken the time to point out which motherboards performed <i>worse</i> than the KT266A in the comments. (Or dare I suggest, even mention the ones who frequently did so in the conclusion.) I think this is a very important point, is that while KT333 is nice, some motherboard manufacturers are so shoddy that they can't even beat a KT266A! To me that's a lot more important than which KT333 motherboard 'won'.

What also bugged me about the article is that they specifically say "We were pleasantly surprised by Soltek and Asus boards, both of which switched off immediately when the CPU cooler was removed during operation." in the beginning of the article and then say "Note: AMD won't be requiring thermal protection for Athlon CPUs until June 10, so we've not included this new feature here." in the conclusion. They already told us once which boards out of the ones tested had the thermal protection. So why in the conclusion would they then say they aren't going to include thermal protection in the review? It makes <i>no</i> sense. It's absurd. It makes it seem as though they wrote the conclusion first and the rest of the article last.

Sometimes you really have to wonder just what the heck they're doing behind the scenes before these articles get released. I still think that if THG just hired a professional editor who reads these articles before release and fixes that kind of stuff it would <i>really</i> raise the bar of professionalism at THG tenfold.

maybe they'll read this and fix their bungling foolishness and I'll delete my post.

Not likely to happen. Many reviews at THG have similar silliness if not downright incompetence. You really learn to just dig through the benchmarks and feature tables if you want any real information. The rest of the articles are often fluff or poorly written. (That is, except for when Dr. Thomas Pabst actually takes the time to do articles. He's a much better writer than the lot of the other staff combined.) I've said as much in several posts, yet the THG staff continues to make the same mistakes. Nothing ever changes here.

<pre><font color=orange><b>du hast den Sweater verkehrt an</b></font color=orange>
Oh my!</pre><p>

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

dude like chill out ... go see spiderman have a drink and relax. Don't get all wild-up over a piece of silicon. Which by the way you can easily make it fun by saying "Silly-con" cos it's silly or something ... *shrugs*

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[FatBurger]

Methinks you haven't been getting much sleep lately

<font color=blue>Hi mom!</font color=blue>

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

who me? well when work gives you 3 days off + the weekend you take full advantage of it! lol... i won't see time off again for a long time.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>