MSI Confusion

Voltage

First, an MSI K7TPro website has just been started here.

Second, there’s a little “feature” of the K7TPro2 Duron users should be made aware of. The motherboard does not let you set voltage to 1.85V. Rather, it lets you set voltage within .2V of the default voltage.

This is no big deal for TBird owners, since the 1.85V maximum falls within that range, but it is for Duron users, especially those with chips with a 1.5V default voltage.

We’ve been hearing contradictory stories in the MSI newsgroup. A few have said they used a lead pencil on the L7 bridges to up the “default” voltage to something they liked. A couple have said this hasn’t worked for them.

A Hacked BIOS?

A couple have suggested using a hacked BIOS which allows for 1.85V. I located that at a certain website, and they said they got it from another website. Checked the other website, and it wasn’t there.

I downloaded that BIOS along with some regular MSI BIOSes and found the
following:

1) The “hacked” BIOS is listed as version .101, which doesn’t make a lot of
sense since the first version of any K7T BIOS is 1.1. I could see .111 or .161 or
.171 or .181, but not .101.

2) More importantly, the name of the BIOS itself is different. All the MSI
K7T bioses say MS6330vms . VMS is supposed to stand for the type of
chipset used. The hacked BIOS says MS6330vtt.

Nor have I found anybody who claims to have successfully used this BIOS. I wouldn’t try it if I were you.

Capacitor Changes

Most if not all of the reviews you’ve seen mention that the K7TPro2 has a bunch of 4700uF capacitors. People actually getting the boards, though, have reported
a little different. Some have boards with all 4700uF capacitors, some have boards with some 4700uF, and some 3900uF capacitors, and others have all 3900uF capacitors.

A person with the handle “PC” in the MSI newsgroup wrote them asking about this, and got a (quick) response, which said as follows:

There is only one version of the board. With regards to the 3900UF & 4700UF,
at first we are using the 4700UF, but due to shortage of 4700UF, we have to
find a similar replacement, after some testing with 3900UF, there is no
difference between using 3900UF & 4700UF. That’s why for all the new boards,
it will be with 3900UF.

Take it for what it’s worth. Presumably, older boards will have the 4700s, and the newest ones will have 3900s.

We expect to pick up this board Thursday, and check these things out ourselves then.

Email Ed