Kt7 -> Kt7a?

Hey, recently decided to upgrade my system, so i went onto ebay, and picked up myself ar Duron 800, and an ABit Kt7 Raid.

After reading around a bit ive noticed that the Kt7 seems somewhat outdated now, and that the Kt7a would be a better bet for overclocking.

Would it be worth upgrading to a Kt7a Raid, which i could pick up for around the same price (got mine for £70) or will i be able to get the most from my duron on the kt7? Would i be able to get more out of my CPU if i had a Kt7a?
ive yet to test as i havent got the MB yet, should arrive tomorow

cheers

The KT7 uses the Via kT chipset which unfortunately can not obtain a very high FSB (it has trouble making above 115 mhz fsb) while the KT7a uses the later Via KTa chipset which will run at high FSB speeds.. This obviously gives you greater flexibility when overclocking however you must take into consideration your other components for example if you have PC100 memory a KT7a will not be of any major benifit as the memory will stop your from running at a high fsb speed.

I used to run a Duron 800 with a 140 mhz FSB on a KT7a-Raid without any problems however you would not be able to do this on a KT7.

Obviously DDR based mobo's are the way to go for the future however the Abit KT7a is still a great performing SDRAM mobo

hope this helps

If you don't plan on going DDR just yet I think it would be a better idea for you to go with the KT7A & make use of the full bandwidth of your current RAM seeing as they are PC133

I'm not sure at this point I can recommend buying a PC133 motherboard.... DDR is definitely the way to go. Especially since you have only 256 MB of RAM. If you had an ungodly amount of PC133 (like 768 MB or more) I'd say stick to an SDRAM mobo. But since you don't, I'll say go with the Shuttle AK31 rev 2 (which is a dang good motherboard for under $100 USD) and use the extra for some Crucial PC2100. I think you'd be more satisfied.

But if you're going to stay the PC133 route, you can't go wrong with a KT7A or a KK266.

SickBoy

Hmmm, decisions decisions, well for now i gotta stick to what i got, until i can some money together (saving for uni ) but if i manage to sell one of my many computers i got lying around then i might just go for some o' that ddr, does sound nice n sleek