MSI KT4VL: Mini-Review

KT4VL is up and running, waiting for my DVD drive and Floppy to arrive so I can install Windows XP.

I will continue to post new information on how I like the board and it's features. So far from looking at the BIOS, it has the most RAM tweaks I have ever seen. Everything from CAS,Tras,etc to Bank Interleave to some other stuff I've never heard of. You can adjust the CPU voltage to 1.85, DDR to 2.8, and AGP to 1.8. Not too shabby for some basic air cooled overclocking, but the DDR and CPU voltage might hold back for some serious overclocks. By the way, I am using a CoolerMaster low noise HSF and it runs this 1600+ AXP at 46c in the BIOS. Ouch.. I posted up to 146 FSB so far, not tried higher, so it is fine at 1533mhz (1800+). Unfortunately, I don't think I can manage a 166FSB with this HSF!

I need to get some AS3 which will probably help temps 2-3c.

Anyways, will post more soon.

Well I have the system up and running.. here are the specs..

MSI K4TVL
Athlon XP 1600+
256MB Kingmax DDR333
Radeon 7500
Maxtor DM8 30GB 7200 RPM
Aopen 12x DVD
onboard LAN
onboard Sound


So far, this board runs flawlessly, I have had it up for about 4 hours with Windows XP Home installed. The BIOS has options for DDR266,333,400 for your memory. I have it set to DDR333 with normal timings. Since this rig is for stability, I am not overclocking it either. But I can say, that it peforms up 146 FSB fine, and I have heard it working fine over 166MHz. I have been playing MOH:AA for a few hours on it, breaking it in and it didn't do anything out of the ordinary.

Stability: 10 (will stress test more later, but so far, it's running fine as expected!)

Features: 10 (onboard ACL650 6 channel sound, LAN, bluetooth capabilities, extremely thorough BIOS!)

Price: 10 (was only $84 at newegg!, not bad for a KT400 board with these features!)

Speed: 10 (all KT400 boards are within +-5% of each other, until the nforce2 comes out, this along with other boards are the fastest out for the Athlon XP, excluding the 8k5a2+ :) )

Overclocking: N/A I cannot test the OC'ing capabilites at this time, I hope anyone else with this board can contribute to this thread and provide us with some results!

Overall, I have to say I am very happy with this board. From the 4/5 that I can rate, I will throw out OCing, and give it a 10/10 for what I can vouch for. Overall, the best Athlon XP board I've ever used.

If the mobo does not have SATA, how can you give it a 10? SATA is the interface of the future for all drives. As fast as raid, without using raid. Just imagine what SATA Raid will do for solid performance.
IBM and Seagate are in the battle of who will release the SATA drives first. Won't be long for this.

Because it costs $84... and to date I see zero, yes 0, SATA drives out. I can't really imagine what it will do at all, it is just a theoretical 17MB/s faster than ATA133. And with 6 PCI slots still open in my config, I see adding an SATA card if I need it will be no problem.

So this would be faster than an MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU? I will be using Samsung PC2700 DDR RAM.

Quote:

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Originally posted by yanguboris
So this would be faster than an MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU? I will be using Samsung PC2700 DDR RAM.

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I am not sure, I have no way of comparing the two. There are no reviews of it out yet that can show a comparison because it's a very new board. But it's very similar to the KT4 Ultra series but without RAID, so perhaps look at a comparison with that board.
I know it has presets for DDR333 with a 266FSB, as well as DDR400. It uses the KT400 whereas the KT3 uses the KT333.

Thanks gotmonopoly for posting something on this board. I've been looking at it b/c of the price+features. I'm trying to find a mobo to upgrade to, and this looks like it will support future products pretty nicely.

I'm not too concerned about the SATA drives, either. I've got a 133 drive, and don't plan on buying a new drive anytime soon. And, with all those PCI slots, and integrated LAN..there should be plenty of room.

I'll be filing this one away as one of my possibles.