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KT-7 RAID, Athlon Thunderbird Gaming System Build
by Len "Viking1" HjalmarsonInstallation and Setup
Installation of the system board is standard fare. There aren't any great tricks to this trade, so I simply hauled out the new case and installed the board. The single caveat is that if you intend to use active cooling, you need to provide some condensation protection on the underside of the motherboard where the CPU sits. The time to do this is prior to installation of the board.
If you happen to have a fairly standard case, and if you intend to overclock significantly, this is also the time to think about any case mods. There are some articles on case modification on the Internet that involving drilling and cutting. You want to be sure to do this right. For most of us, however, some good fans will be sufficient.
Finally, if you intend to overclock by changing the CPU multiplier, you are going to have to unlock your CPU. I'll sell ya the key if ya send me the cash!
Then again, I can tell you how to do it with your average lead pencil.
CPU
In order to change the multiplier on your Thunderbird or Duron, you'll need to connect the bridges on the CPU at L1. A good "B" lead pencil will do the trick. Just stroke the pencil across the bridges you see on the top of your CPU, and voila!
Once I had all the components assembled, I booted with a WIN ME diskette and then engaged FDISK. I did the standard partitioning and formatting routine, then rebooted with the diskette. This time I hit CTL H to bring up the Highpoint RAID controller routine.
I wasn't sure what to expect, but this was not rocket science. I simply selected the disks and enabled RAID. Exit the BIOS and continue boot. After coming to the A: prompt I selected the CD and ran WIN ME setup. Not much point in playing with overclocking until you can boot Windows for some testing.
SoftMenu
The Things Mamma Never Taught Me
First, I installed the VIA Hardware Monitor from the CD that came with the mainboard. That way I could monitor CPU and system temperature as I ran various configurations. The surprises came after WIN ME was installed and I began playing with SoftMenu III. In short, there is a strange relationship between voltage and CPU speed and CPU temperature.
I discovered that upping the multiplier increased both speed and temperature. Oddly, however, increasing voltage at the higher multiplier setting enabled a slightly lower temperature. Furthermore, some higher settings simply wouldn't run apart from a voltage increase.
The best setting for my CPU came in at 9x110, for 990 MHz and a front side bus of 36MHz. The voltage required for stability at that clock setting was 1.8, up only slightly from the default value of 1.75 volts. The best part was yet to come.
SoftMenu III
The KT-7 offers the ability to tweak the front side bus (FSB) setting substantially. However, I could not get the system to run at 120MHz FSB, where the PCI bus (1/3 of the FSB) was then at 40MHz. But Abit designed a way around such problems. SoftMenu III Setup allows a number of options that you can configure to get the most out of your system memory.
The first option is CPU FSB Plus. With this setting you can tweak the FSB by single points, to a maximum of 28! I left this setting at "0" while I tweaked the following settings.
First, I set CPU Command Decode to FAST. I left the CPU drive strength at 2. Then I changed the DRAM Clock setting from HOST CLK to HCLK PCICLK. This adds the PCI clock to the CPU clock. In my case, this meant 110MHz 36MHz. My main memory was now running at 146MHz. My SDRAM is generic 133MHz (rating 7.5ns).
Three new settings were added by Abit's UL BIOS revision, including Enhance Chip Performance, Force 4-Way Interleave, and Enable Dram 4K-Page Mode. I set all these options to ENABLE for improved memory performance.
Next I went to the Advanced Chipset Features and enabled FAST R-W Turnaround and Fast Write Support. I also changed the SDRAM timings to MEDIUM (later I tried FAST but my system would not complete a bootup. If you have CAS2 you may be able to set this to FAST or even TURBO).
Finally, after ensuring my system was stable and that operating temperatures were safe, I went back to the SoftMenu Setup and changed the CPU FSB Plus setting to "2." My system now booted at 1008MHz and main memory was running at 148MHz. System temperature under load increased a single degree Celsius, and I decided to change the setting back to "0."
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