DDR333???

[RobUK]

I have heard a bit about the new PC2700 (DDR333) but what mobos will support this?? Is a new chipset required to run it or can a simple bios upgrade do the job? I ask this because i have the MSI K7T 266 Pro2 RU and it can do 166FSB (332DDR) but in the memory option you cant select it to go that high. The memory can be set to the FSB speed or indepentent of it. Will a simple bios upgrade do the trick??

Thanx Guys

RobUK

[jeiworth]

I'm affraid a BIOS-upgrade probably won't do the trick.

The problem is the FSB-PCI-divider (resp. the FSB-AGP-divider), which remains on 1:4 (=133MHz:4=33MHz and 166MHz:4=41,5MHz *ouch*) whereas it of course should jump to 1:5.

I don't know if the Via KT266A is capable of this setting, you might be lucky. Try running in asynchronous mode (FSB=133MHz, RAM=166MHz resp.), might work.

There are already 2 chipsets which support 166MHz RAM-frequency:
1) the SiS745 (asynchronous mode 133MHz FSB and 166MHz RAM-frequency)
2) the Via KT333 (will probably be skipped and replaced by the KT333A, as usual :rolleyes: )

nVidia has not commented yet whether they will build another chipset for 166MHz FSB or not, I suppose they're working on it ;)
AMD will unfortunately not build another chipset :( (or so they say *keepinguphope*)

[Brangwen]

RobUK:

You might look at Iwill's XP333 (or XP333-R). I'm presently using the XP333-R with 512MB Twinmos PC2700 DDR SDRAM.

Check Here (http://www.iwillusa.com/products/spec.asp?ModelName=XP333-R&SupportID=)

Good luck.

Brangwen ;)

[wallie_x]

Have they ever solved the performance decrease issue with the asynchronous FSB/Memory bus? I haven't kept up on my reading, but I remember benchmarks that showed the 133/133 setting doing better than the asynchronous 133/166. The Iwill DDR 333 suffered badley running asynchronous. It was also one of the first out to support DDR 333, but that was with the Ali Magik chipset. I hope they wised up. Ali seems always to be 3rd or 4th place in benchmarks.