|
The MSI K7D
Master is not a board that was designed with overclockers
in mind. This is a server class product, that
strictly focuses on stability and SMP compatibility.
With that said, we did have some luck overclocking our
CPUs with the MSI K7D Master...
 |
|
Overclocking With The
MSI
K7D Master |
|
3.5GHz. Of
Goodness! (Technically Speaking!) |
|
We were able
to boost the clockspeed of our Athlon MP 2000+ CPUs from
their default 1667MHz. to 1750MHz. using a Front Side Bus
frequency of 140MHz. With the board configured to
run with 133MHz. processors, as opposed to 100MHz., there
are only 5 selectable FSBs within the BIOS (133, 138, 140,
144, 150). Contrary to what we've seen on some other
on-line publications, our MSI K7D Master did
have the ability to adjust the CPU VCore voltage
between 1.1 and 1.850 volts in .25 volt increments.
You cannot adjust the voltage to each CPU individually
though, changing your voltage within the BIOS affects both
CPUs. We suspect our K7D Master had the
ability to adjust the CPU voltage because we were working
with a "retail" ready board, flashed with the latest BIOS.
Early engineering samples, which were what the other
publication were probably using, sometimes lack features
that make it to final shipping products.
We were also
using some high quality RAM, and only had a video card
installed in our test system. We then upped the CPU
voltage to 1.85 and tried to max out the FSB at 150MHz.
immediately, but the system would not even post. At
144MHz. with the voltage maxed we were able to boot into
Windows, but the system was not stable at all.
Finally, we settled on an FSB of 140MHz., where the system
was fast and solid as a rock. We did not unlock our
CPUs to test multiplier selection, but the BIOS does give
you the ability to choose a multiplier between 5 and
12.5+. Had we done so, we may have been able to eek
a few more MHz. out of our CPUs, but as we said, this
board's focus is not overclocking.
 |
|
Test System |
|
The baseline for
performance |
|
COMMON HARDWARE:
AMD Athlon MP 2000+ (x2)
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (Single
CPU System)
256MB of Mushkin 2-2-2
Enhanced DDR RAM
IBM DTLA307030 30Gig ATA100
7200 RPM Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600
128MB AGP Graphics Card
On-Board Sound
Pioneer 16X DVD
Mid-Tower Case w/ 365W
Enermax Power Supply
COMMON
SOFTWARE:
Windows XP Pro
NVIDIA Reference drivers
v28.32
MOTHERBOARDS:
MSI K7D Master (AMD 762)
Abit AT7 (VIA KT333)
 |
|
Processor(s) Information |
|
WCPUID |
|
We ran a pair
of Athlon MP 2000+ CPUs in our MSI K7D Master. For a
closer look at what WCPUID has to say about our CPUs, and
their standard and extended feature flags, take a look at
the screen captures below.
TESTING METHODOLOGY:
We have seen significant variations in benchmark scores
from one site to the next, because of this, we feel it is
necessary to explain exactly how we configure each test
system before we run any benchmarks. The first thing we
did was enter the system BIOS and set the board to it's
"High Performance Default" settings. We then set the
Memory CAS Latency and other memory timings to
8-8-8-2-7-2-2. The hard drive was then formatted, and
Windows XP Professional was installed. After Windows XP
was completely installed, we hit the Windows Update site
and downloaded all of the available updates, with the
exception of Windows Messenger. Then we installed all of
the necessary drivers, disabled Windows Messenger,
disabled Auto-Updates, disabled System Restore and set a
768MB permanent swap file. Lastly we set the Visual
Effects to "best performance", installed all of the
benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive and ran
all of the tests at the CPU's default and overclocked
speeds. Now, on to our results...
Sandra and
Friends |