MSI Shipping Bad Boards?

[rmaclean]

Running WCPUID on my new MSI KT3Ultra2 MB (with PC-2700 DDR installed), I'm surprised to discover it identifies the Northbridge chipset as VIA KT266/A (not the supposed KT333) and a DDR bus speed of 266MHz.

A little more exploration using Sandra Pro illustrates nominal difference between my other (KT266/PC2100-equipped) system, and my new (KT333/PC2700-equipped) system. (This is also borne out in the standard benchmarks shipped with Sandra - check them out.)

Has MSI shipped supposedly-KT333 boards without the KT333 set? Has VIA shipped KT266 chipsets labeled as KT333?

What's up with this?

 

[zeno]

Woah... Wierd. I thinkthat takes that board off my list.. heh.. I would certainly make some calls... Has anyone else made a similar discovery? If not, maby you should RMA and ask for another one..

Say, what version of DOS is on this sparc thingie?

 

[Spitfire_x86]

What WCPUID version you use?

 

[Spitfire_x86]

I forgot to tell, WCPUID is sometimes stupid detecting chipset. It's latest version (3.0g) can't detect any southbridge in my MSI nForce mobo! (For referenece: my southbridge is MCP-D, no nForce chipset based mobo is southbridgeless)

 

[CMRvet]

Don't worry about it. It's just the version of WCPUID. I have the same motherboard and WCPUID is showing KT 266 too. If you want to be sure about the chipset just remove the heatsink of the northbidge and see what it says.

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

 

[rmaclean]

Yes, it appears that the KT333 may report "KT266A,KT333" and WCPUID 3.0g is locking in on the first part of the string. However, the real issue seems to be that the KT333 does not deliver any memory bandwidth improvement at all over the KT266.

 

[andlcs]

Remove your northbridge fan/heatsink to see the chipset...

VIA and MSI would never make mistakes concerning labels!

 

[Bohica]

i have the same board, and yes mine too says kt266/a on Wcpuid 3.0g....

too late to take it back and get a diffrent board ! Damn.

 

[Bohica]

actually, in the motherboard manual it says kt266/a though it supports pc2700..... i think it was a scam...cause of course it would support 2700 just not utilize its full potential...

 

[Crashman]

Yes, a bunch of guys replaced their KT266A's with KT333's because they were stupid. They expected PC2700 to magically improve the performance on a 2100MB/s CPU bus! Some people defended the chipset, saying "you can always unlock the CPU and overclock the CPU bus to 166Mhz to take advantage of the 166MHz memory bus". Well, you could do that with the KT266A as well, it's called overclocking the bus!

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

yeah.
but the main difference is that the kt333 supports the 166 bus speed with the 1/5 divider, something i dont think the kt266a did.

small but useful point.


<b>My CPU cooler is so Massive it bends Space and Time! </b>

 

[Crashman]

I don't know for certain. Boards such as the Leadtek 7350KDA (SiS 735) an Iwill XP333 (ALi) have shown that some chipsets support ratios that aren't available on most boards.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>