Hello and welcome to my little wrap-up of VIA´s latest chipset: KT400.

After weeks of testing and even more research, I finally am able to sum up all the good and bad things of this new chipset. The KT400 is VIA´s "upgrade" from the older KT333. It adds some impressive features to the already quite full list of the KT333, these are:
- AGP 8X support
- Serial ATA
- DDR400 unofficial support
- Firewire and USB 2.0
- Gigabit Onboard Network

In the above list the AGP 8X support and DDR400 are really interesting improvements over previous incarnations. Since no serial ATA drives are available at the time of writing, no test results were included.

DDR400 or in FSB words: 200Mhz Front-Side-Bus speed. These speeds were already reachable on the KT266A/KT333 with some high quality ram, and hopefully now they will become more common by introducing the extra settings in the BIOS for making your RAM run @ 200Mhz while the rest stays at 133Mhz.


When I stopped by our local hardware store: Comtechnology, they give me much more then I would ever wish for, an impressive collection of brand-new hardware to test:



I used RAM rated at different speeds from a variety of manufacturers



From top to bottom:
- Apacer PC2700 512Mb
- Apacer PC3200 256Mb
- Samsung PC3200 512Mb
- Twinmoss PC3200 512Mb
- Twinmoss PC3200 256Mb


The motherboards in this roundup:
- MSI KT3 Ultra2 (KT333)
- MSI KT4 Ultra (KT400)
- Asus A7V8X (KT400)
- Gigabyte GA-7vax (KT400)

I also received a brand-new Hercules Radeon 9700 Pro to test out the 3DMark&Gaming performance of these KT400 mobo´s and last but not least: XP2200+


An howto-movie on unlocking these Tbred CPU´s can be found here

This overclocking review on Madshrimps tries to find best performing hardware to get highest performance in benchmarks and games.

The opinions and conclusion made in this review are not necessarily those of the whole [M]-Crew.

Let´s get started and plug in the power!

KT333

The reference motherboard used was a MSI KT3 Ultra2, I would like to get hold of an Abit KX7 but it was not available to me at the time of testing.



The KT3 comes in a flashy red colour and supporting a sticker on the CPU socket that reads "CPU Thermal Protection". All good and well, but it was a pain to remove this and didn´t have any real use, I hope they remove this in the future. Basically the Motherboard monitors the CPU temp from the internal CPU diode, and shuts of the power when it passes a preset °C. The problem however it that the polling of the diode is not done fast enough, so removing the heatsink while the PC is on will result in a burning smell and a new keychain to add to the collection. It however does work when the CPU-fan decides to give up on you. But if the retention clip were to brake off you still are left with a dead CPU.



The MSI KT3 delivered stable and average performance at 166FSB, when pushed to 200FSB it was stable in windows but running 3DMark or other 3D Benches failed. This might have to do with the rather low max vcore of 1.75v. Or with the tearing effect I got during POST. This R9700 Pro seems to have problems with high FSB speeds, enter the TNT2 Ultra I got lying around. No tearing, clean boot, but it wasn´t stable @200FSB.

So back to 166FSB, after installing Windows XP and the latest Catalyst drivers I attained a respectable 12636 3DMark2K1 score.

Since the 3D benches didn"t work out I tried the Sisoft approach (Sandra 2002.6.8.97). The timings were set to CL2 3-6-3 2T and I then ran the mem-bandwidth test with this result at 166Mhz FSB:



I then cranked the FSB back up to 200Mhz and got these numbers on the KT333 chipset:



Not too shabby for this MSI motherboard. Now let´s see what it´s successor brings to the table

MSI KT4 Ultra:

This KT400 chipset motherboard is feature packed, but does it also perform? Unfortunately I was unable to boot with the Hercules R9700 Pro. No error beeps, no power up , nothing. So I had to work with the TNT2. Don´t expect any 3DMark2K1 results!



Pretty much the exact same layout as the KT3 Ultra2, luckily they didn´t include the sticker for the "CPU Thermal Protection" this time around!

I did encounter some weird bugs in the BIOS, trying to change the vcore settings gave me this:



After a reboot this problem was gone, but did reappear once in a while. A future BIOS release will surely remove this little annoyance.

As mentioned before: no 3D benches, so here are the memory benches.

At 166Mhz:



Pushing to 200Mhz was possible but was FAR from stable, even for "normal" desktop usage, here are the unstable memresults:



This motherboard did not impress me at all. Not compatible with the Hercules R9700Pro and worse performance results then the older KT3 Ultra2.

Let´s see if Asus can do better

Asus A7V8X:

The Asus motherboard layout leaves alot of room around the CPU socket for a large heatsink/waterblock/phase-changeHEAD.



So far the positive side of the Asus A7V8X..


Can it BE any closer?

This KT400 motherboard also refused to boot with the Hercules R9700Pro and it seems I´m not the only one with this problem. No matter what Hercules R9700Pro revision you have:
- He "almost" got it to work
- AGP 8x bug & ATI fix ?
- Yeah I got R9700 working but what cost, no cdroms and other HD, Sweet
- System POST related issues on AGP 8x motherboards

So again I was forced to use the TNT2 for testing. I was able to get a maximum FSB of 185Mhz. No matter what I tried, no matter what ram was used. Not impressive.

Memory benches @ 166Mhz:



and the maximum stable speed of 185Mhz results in:



Well there is nothing to say really, very disappointing results from the Asus...
Can the Gigabyte save the KT400?

Gigabyte GA-7vax:



No holes around the CPU socket, so forget about your ALPHA PAL8045 or that fancy Swiftech.

The box this motherboard comes in clames the following:



And as by wonder.. the system BOOTS! with the Hercules R9700Pro in place. Finally.. I get into windows.. check the CPU speed. huh? what 5.5x100?? It doesn´t seem to handle the unlocked XP2200+ very well. No problem I think. Reboot and quickly change the settting in the BIOS.

No multiplier controle in the BIOS! Only by using jumpers! This must be the most overclockers unfriendly motherboard in the roundup. Memory timings in the BIOS? Sure if you press CTRL-F1! And you will only know this if you:
a) read the manual front to back and over again with attention to every line
b) asked on a forum
c) read it in a review

Very user friendly indeed.

At this point I was getting very desperate and seeing this appear in windows didn´t help things one bit!


AGP disabled.. uhm


Let´s get to the conclusion before any accidents happen to these KT400 motherboards...

The final words:

I´ve thrown together some memory benchmarks to give you an idea how the KT400 chipset performance at 166Mhz and 200Mhz. Notice the impressive difference between the KT3@166 and KT3@200.



There you have it, if you are looking to buy an AMD motherboard, and don´t want to go for the newly released nForce2 (which really performances quite well). Then the KT333 is the way to go. The newer KT400 has alot of nice features but just doesn´t perform as good. And the fact that it has problems with the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is another reason NOT to buy this board.

I would like to thank Comtechnology for being this patient with me and providing all the hardware goodies, couldn´t have done it without them!
Let´s not forget the people over @ the forums for providing me with the much needed benchmark results


Comments and questions can be asked in this thread @ forums

Thank you for reading, Happy holidays!