N8
06-12-2002, 11:01 AM
The boss asked me to build a new PC for our office manager, and I agreed. Its basically an Excel/Word/Book-keeping workstation...and I love pushing these Intels outta here and replacing them with AMD's :)
I decided to use MSI's KM266 mATX board, and man, was I ever impressed! The board has integrated video/audio/LAN so I didn't have to add a single AGP/PCI card(even though it has 1 AGP and 3 PCI slots). The most impressive part to me was the chipset performance. I'm at work typing this now, and the benchmarks are on her PC(which isn't set up yet) so I don't have the sandra benches to show you. But I can say that the memory bench outscored the reference KT266a in Sandra 2002. I was hoping for at least KT266 performance, but never expected performance equal to or above the KT266a. The board is currently running an AXP 1800+ & 256MB of Crucial PC2100. BIOS memory timings are set to most aggressive...and sharing 32MB of the memory for the onboard video.
The only overclocking option in the BIOS is FSB frequency in 1MHz increments from 133 to 199. This would actually be nice with my 1600+ AROIA as it can be taken up to around 166MHz FSB without any multiplier/core voltage change. But, I'd hate to leave this thing at 1.75vcore ;) Hell, most hardcore OC'rs would have a fit that I run it on air :)
Just thought I'd post here in case anyone might be considering using a motherboard with this chipset in a system, but feared poor performance. I've yet to find a KM266 board reviewed on the net, and if anyone's seen a review of one, I'd surely like to know of it :) I wouldn't use it for my main overclocking system, but the thing is definitely no slouch!
EPoX also has their own KM266 solution...perhaps it has more overclocking options...I'm not sure. You would not be disappointed with this MSI board if overclocking is not what its intended for! The MSI is selling for a mere $70 in the USA. It can be found at http://newegg.com.
I decided to use MSI's KM266 mATX board, and man, was I ever impressed! The board has integrated video/audio/LAN so I didn't have to add a single AGP/PCI card(even though it has 1 AGP and 3 PCI slots). The most impressive part to me was the chipset performance. I'm at work typing this now, and the benchmarks are on her PC(which isn't set up yet) so I don't have the sandra benches to show you. But I can say that the memory bench outscored the reference KT266a in Sandra 2002. I was hoping for at least KT266 performance, but never expected performance equal to or above the KT266a. The board is currently running an AXP 1800+ & 256MB of Crucial PC2100. BIOS memory timings are set to most aggressive...and sharing 32MB of the memory for the onboard video.
The only overclocking option in the BIOS is FSB frequency in 1MHz increments from 133 to 199. This would actually be nice with my 1600+ AROIA as it can be taken up to around 166MHz FSB without any multiplier/core voltage change. But, I'd hate to leave this thing at 1.75vcore ;) Hell, most hardcore OC'rs would have a fit that I run it on air :)
Just thought I'd post here in case anyone might be considering using a motherboard with this chipset in a system, but feared poor performance. I've yet to find a KM266 board reviewed on the net, and if anyone's seen a review of one, I'd surely like to know of it :) I wouldn't use it for my main overclocking system, but the thing is definitely no slouch!
EPoX also has their own KM266 solution...perhaps it has more overclocking options...I'm not sure. You would not be disappointed with this MSI board if overclocking is not what its intended for! The MSI is selling for a mere $70 in the USA. It can be found at http://newegg.com.