Help With Motherboard!

[aintgottime]

Im wanting to buy a new motherboard. I have seen this one on ebay ASRock® K7VT2 Motherboard! I was wondering whether you guys could help out a little and tell whether it is in any good and what will be the maximum processor speed it is likely to take? Please help guys thanx aintgottime

[ilw]

What chip u thinking of putting in it?


In case anyone wants the spec its basically this:


# VIA KT266A (Northbridge) / VIA8235 (Southbridge) Chipset
# Supports AMD® K7 processors
# Supports 266MHz Front-Side Bus 
# DIMM & DDR 266 DIMM memory support //Apparently detailed spec says supports DDR 333
# USB 2.0 Support 6 USB Ports (Four back-panel ports, 1 USB headers providing two extra ports)
# Supports up to 2GB of main memory
# Ultra DMA ATA 133/100 support
# Provides a AGP 4X graphics port
# 2MB AMI BIOS Flash ROM.  Power Management CPU parameters and memory timing
//Detailed spec also mentions a lan card 10/100 & built in AC97 sound (stereo)


Detailed spec (http://www.amptron.com/html/ASrock_K7VT2spec.html)

Looks ok for an older chip/budget pc, only has AGP4x and only 266MHz bus (supports up to XP2500 (thoroughbred), but it only costs about 30quid (uk). Seems a good budget choice

[aintgottime]

Thats why im thinking about it. Havent got much money and my current motherboard will only go up to 1ghz! How fast is a XP2500 if you dont mind me asking?

[ilw]

Errm 2.5 x faster than an Athlon 1GHz :)
Actually i made a screw up there is no 266 MHz bus version of the XP2500, the max chip that motherboard could take would be an XP2400 which unsurprisingly is 2.4x faster than an Athlon 1GHz.
It should be roughly equivalent to a P4 2.4GHz.
Does that help?

[aintgottime]

Yeah thats great thanx. So do you think its worth the buy? I can get it for dead on £30! I want to buy it now but what do you think? Plus im going to have to wait a month before I can buy the XP2400 so would my 1ghz amd thunderbird run on it?

[CornerPocket]

Athlon XP2400=1.93GHz and yes your current cpu is supported (http://www.asrock.com/support/CPU_Support/CPUSupport_K7VT2.htm).

[ilw]

I think that ur chip should run on it, maybe u should wait and see if someone else can back me up on that ;)
There shouldn't be any rush to buy it (am i right in thinking there would be from ebay?), anyway u can get it from www.dabs.com for 30.71quid (including delivery to anywhere in uk)

[aintgottime]

Thanx you guys you've been a great help like always.

[bigdawgfoxx]

ILW you mentioned that it should run about like a P4 2.4 GHZ...noo i subtract at least 300 from the number...Ex: 2500XP-300 would be 2200...so about 2.2 GHZ..does neone know an exact way to calculate this?

[ilw]

The athlons XPs are calculated as how fast they perform calculations compared to the 1GHz Athlon first released. (to take into account for improvement in architecture and on die memory) This compares pretty accurately to how fast a Pentium IV of the same value (ie 2.4GHz) would do those calculations. However, I think Pentiums have an advantage in 3D calculations. As Corner Pocket said a 2400 will actually run at about 1.93GHz