Whats the Word from Abit about the K8V-Max3 and the dividers removed from the latest?

[Kunaak]

is it true the 1/7 and 1/8 dividers are gone from the latest bios due to a chipset limitation due to the design of the K8T800 from Via??

is this true to all current Via boards, or is Abit's different somehow?

[ABIT Marketing]

Originally posted by Kunaak
is it true the 1/7 and 1/8 dividers are gone from the latest bios due to a chipset limitation due to the design of the K8T800 from Via??

is this true to all current Via boards, or is Abit's different somehow?

There is only 1 version of the BIOS for the KV8 MAX3 and I believe the 1/7 and the 1/8 dividers are still available. But I think the problem with VIA chipset is that 1/7 divider does not kick in until 220 or 223Mhz so most people can oc stable up to around 215-220Mhz before PCI/AGP bus gets too high.

[Kunaak]

then it sounds like the problem is simple.
if you can't hit 220 stable.
go for 225, and hope the divider kicks in ;)

[ABIT Marketing]

Originally posted by Kunaak
then it sounds like the problem is simple.
if you can't hit 220 stable.
go for 225, and hope the divider kicks in ;)

I can't seem to find a good proc that will do 225Mhz stable.. that's the problem. :(

[OPPAINTER]

ABIT,

Welcome back to Xtreme;)

OPP

[TheDude]

Ditto..welcome back!
It's great to have a rep here to answer our questions. I realize that you are doing this on your own time and appreciate it. :D

[bowman1964]

yep great to see you guys here.

abit.....way to go the best..(at least in my book)

[ABIT Marketing]

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and it's good to be back too. :)
I am going to try my best to answer marketing and technical related questions. Just make sure you guys go easy on me. :p

[Hardass]

Originally posted by ABIT Marketing
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and it's good to be back too. :)
I am going to try my best to answer marketing and technical related questions. Just make sure you guys go easy on me. :p

If they don,t you know who to call!!:D

[bowman1964]

Small question?

i here they may be a abit nforce3 board coming out for the a64?
any truth to that?

and if so..well the pci be locked or not?

as i have run a couple and found the pci is not locked.
as my chip will run past the fsb of 285 but i get bad hard drive problems at those speeds.

thanks.

bowman

[ABIT Marketing]

MAYBE.. (Don't quote me for it).. maybe we will have a 939 board based on the NF3 250 chipset, but I haven't seen anything for 940 or 754 on our roadmap yet.

[TheDude]

Man, if Abit came out with a good board with the right features for the a64....it would be a smash hit with Overclockers! I'd camp out in line to buy one! :D

[bowman1964]

Yea all we need is a nf7 type of board for the a64.locked agp and pci ,with voltages adjustable...and man...i would be happy.
you would sell a ton i believe...

just call it nf8xtreme.....

[Walrusbonzo]

Originally posted by bowman1964
Yea all we need is a nf7 type of board for the a64.locked agp and pci ,with voltages adjustable...and man...i would be happy.
you would sell a ton i believe.

I can second that. I'm waiting just now, don't want to get anything too new ATM as I see many are having problems with one thing or another.

There just isn't a perfect A64/AFX board yet. Shame really because the NF7-S V2 is the perfect board for durons/Athlons/AthlonXPs :D

[Kunaak]

you got to admit, it's a pretty poor market when Gigabyte and chaintech are the only boards people are fighting for...

the AMD64 is in need of a damn good board, and quick...

[JeffPH]

nice abit and welcome :)

[Iridium192_217]

Originally posted by Kunaak
you got to admit, it's a pretty poor market when Gigabyte and chaintech are the only boards people are fighting for...

the AMD64 is in need of a damn good board, and quick...

I agree, thats why Im sticking with p4

[ABIT Marketing]

I don't know about A64.. honestly I thought most people are waiting for the Socket 939 anyway. What are you going to do with the Socket 754 when 939 releases? Not trying to argue, but I can't seem to understand.

[deathstar13]

Originally posted by ABIT Marketing
I don't know about A64.. honestly I thought most people are waiting for the Socket 939 anyway. What are you going to do with the Socket 754 when 939 releases? Not trying to argue, but I can't seem to understand. umm buy a 939 mabey?
the multi being locked on the top end is stopping me from buying a 754 cpu/mobo

but to be honest ive seen better self control with $$$ at crack houses than here.

i dont blame them either as i do the same when i can.
via will have to learn deviders are dead,stop kicking that horse,they wont sell hardley anything good until locks are done on the busses,

[DoGMaN]

Originally posted by ABIT Marketing
I don't know about A64.. honestly I thought most people are waiting for the Socket 939 anyway. What are you going to do with the Socket 754 when 939 releases? Not trying to argue, but I can't seem to understand.

Upgrade :D

Glad to see you back AM :toast:

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by ABIT Marketing
I don't know about A64.. honestly I thought most people are waiting for the Socket 939 anyway. What are you going to do with the Socket 754 when 939 releases? Not trying to argue, but I can't seem to understand.

Your not alone in that thinking. Even hardcore hardware freaks like myself have not been compelled to go with the dead end 940 pin FX. Reg ram and quirky mobos don't help. The NF3 150 is not up to snuff, and the VIA has no PCI/AGP bus lock. The AMD 64 is really in the same boat when it comes to mobo choice too.

No discredit to the "pioneers" who have made the jump. Some are really having fun with those systems. And they're indeed the fastest things out there. But, I like highly overclocked, full featured systems that are rock stable too. The only choices there are XP and P4 systems at the moment.

Make a solid, overclockable 939 pin mobo based on the NF3 250, and I will buy one in a heartbeat.

[MrIcee]

Some thoughts from recent testing of the KV8-Max3 on my bench:

With the shipping 15 bios, dividers are reflected as you progress up thru the FSB in Soft Menu...with 233/66/33 and 266/66/33 being the indicators. With the beta 16 bios those indicators disappear, and it progresses from 200/66/33 until you reach 300/100/49.

With a cheap Nvidia TNT2 card installed, I was able to scale as far as 257Mhz with the multiplier lowered via clockgen. That was the brick wall, where reboots started to begin.( I was able to get into the low 260's but very unstably, as stated in another thread) Bandwidth was very good at 3900/3800 in Sandra, OCZ Platinum Limited Edition at 2-3-3-7 @ 3.2v.

With the 9800 Pro installed ,which is more sensitive to high AGP bus speeds, it would not function past 240-245Mhz before reboots ensued. Benching 3D stable was only possible at a max of 222Mhz FSB. This with the multiplier at 4.5 which takes CPU speed out of the equation as far as upper limit FSB is concerned. I attempted to manipulate settings such as switching to 4x AGP and increase/decrease AGP driving strength to try to attain higher 3DMark benching FSB, but to no avail. Reducing LDT bus frequency had little effect either. Ram was run as high as 3.2V, as well as Hyper Transport voltage at 1.4v.

All onboard devices such as Lan, Sound etc were disabled in the bios to take them out of the equation as possible limiting factors.

To further throw out limiting factors, I tried running with the memory set at 333Mhz while scaling the FSB(166/200 ratio) and it made no difference in FSB scalability.

On a positive note, my 3D tests at 1000Mhz with stock "out of the box" 9800 Pro yielded impressive results in comparison to a competitor running similar specs, but with nForce 150 board at 4x250Mhz FSB(512MB Ram), the KV8-Max 3 @ 4.5 x 222(256MB Ram). The Abit provides for some nice bandwidth in the Car and Lobby tests compared to the nForce3 150 board as illustrated here. Paddy was running clocks 5-10Mhz higher GPU/Mem( my Raddy@460-465/385) than my test setup which gave him a touch higher score in the Drago's and Nature.

Even with phase change cooling you will be limited in total CPU Mhz for benching 3Dmark and other benches by the inability to scale FSB as users have with the nForce3 150.


All in all I find the KV8 is a great performing and full featured board, albeit with the limitation of lower FSB clocking out of the box compared to some of the current nForce3 150 offerings.
Randi:D

[Kunaak]

it does indeed look like you tried every trick there is for the Via boards, but heres one I found out myself this weekend that you may wanna give a try to.

I have 4 hard drives here, 1 western digital 80 Gig SE drive is my main, then I have 2 more IBM deskstars in my back up PC, and a lowly little 3.2 gig western digital from like 1998.

I tried all the fast fancy hard drives but I was always limited to about 2.42 ghz on air.
I got to thinking, and stripped my seti machine of it's 3 gig HD and install 2000 and everything I can.
this hard drive is slowwwwwwwwwwwwww, it only scores about 180 points on PCMark2002, and takes about 1 minute to boot...

but this HD allowed me to start benchmarking at 2.51 ghz and smash my old 5900 NU score.
granted your 9800 pro will probably hold you back before the HD does, but it's worth a shot ;)