"Tyan has posted the info on their new Trinity K7 KX133 based board, it features 6 PCI and 1 ISA, no AMR (at least one mfr. has the guts to scrap this currently rather useless slot).  The board is said to be on its way to the stores NOW, we'll see when they'll become generally available... Some stores on the net seem to claim stock early march, but I 'd expect a more general availability somewhere late March...

Here's the URL:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/s2380.html

As to the Asus K7V - word is that PRODUCTION of the K7V will start 28th, that's not the same as actual availability. I'd expect the K7V board out late March as well.  Aopen also plans their AK72 for a March release, as for Abit we'll probably have to wait till April/May...The ASUS K7V-RM would be in production since 3rd of February."

Thanks David.......Now a Abit KX133 board is something to look forward to :) Fluke

We just had a email from Derek in the States. He contacted Asus regarding the release date of the K7V VIA KX133 based mainboard and they replied it is being released on the 28th of this month. If this is true, we can't wait to get our hands on one. :) Fluke

iXBT Hardware has posted a CPU naming guide of all the x86 compatible CPUs both past, present and future. Very interesting stuff.

HELP NEEDED!!! :) .....We badly need more people to run the SETI client using our account. Please check out the SETI pages for more info. Cleggy has now started work on a results graph that will plot how we are doing over time, nice work. Fluke

"Do you all remember ASUSs first Athlon mainboard offering? Yeah that mobo that Intel weren't suppose to know about, the one that shipped in a plain white box until recently (the disguise perhaps?). Well ASUS once again are hiding from Chipzilla with their latest mainboard for the Pentium III "B" series CPUs. I present to you the ASUS P3V4X based on the VIA Apollo 133A chipset, the closest rival to the BX chipset boards." 

You can jump straight to the review here. Fluke

Anand over at Anandtech has posted Part 2 of his review of the new EPoX 7KXA KX133 Slot-A ATX mainboard. Check it here. Thomas

Our SETI results are still flying in ....we are now ranked 9795th in the world. Not too bad for two weeks work. Here is a link to our SETI page. Fluke

Anand over at Anandtech has posted a review of the new EPoX 7KXA KX133 Slot-A ATX mainboard. Here's a clip:

"With the recent release of VIA's KX133 Athlon chipset, you can expect a number of motherboard manufacturers to jump on the KX133 bandwagon. EPoX is the first to publicly release a KX133 motherboard, and for those that are looking for a KX133 board now, the 7KXA isn't a bad choice at all."

You can jump straight to the review here. Thomas

(he also has posted a review of the excellent Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro, check it out. Fluke)

Seagate has announced a very scary new drive :) ......the new Cheetah X15. Here's a clip: 

"SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. – February 23, 2000 – Seagate Technology Inc. (NYSE:SEG) today announced  the addition of the Cheetah X15 to its family of award-winning Cheetah disc drives.  The Cheetah X15 is the world’s first drive to operate at 15,000 Rotations Per Minute (RPM) and delivers 3.9 msec average seek times – the fastest in the world. The Cheetah X15’s performance is equivalent to a person reading the entire works of Shakespeare in less than .15 seconds. As the only drive on the market to achieve this performance breakthrough, the Cheetah X15 disc drive is the best solution available when both high-transaction performance and reliability are essential. Seagate enterprise-class disc drives, like the Cheetah family, serve as the backbone of the Internet. As the fastest drive in the world, the robust Cheetah X15 can deliver more transactions per second, bringing Internet users faster searches, quicker downloads and a more enjoyable on-line experience.  The new Cheetah X15 will be available in the popular 18 Gigabyte capacity. "

You can read all about it here in the press release posted at Storagereview.com. Fluke (thanks to our Dutch distributor O.Van Schaik for the info)

The Tech-Report have posted their Athlon OC Card roundup and our FreeSpeed Card performed very well in the tests. Here's a link straight to the review. Fluke

Chris Connolly at Game PC has posted a Nvidia GeForce DDR 6-Card Shootout. Here's a clip:

"Nvidia's choice to integrate DDR memory for higher-end GeForce cards has proven to be an excellent one. While no other company has put such trust in DDR technology just yet, Nvidia has shown us all that DDR technology is here and ready to go. It's only a matter of time until we see DDR SDRAM as system memory in consumer machines, and GeForce DDR has just helped build anticipation towards it. The combination of low-latency and high bandwidth makes it the perfect fit for graphics cards, which require large amounts of texture memory in very short bursts of time, which in turn allows gamers to use larger resolutions along with higher texture quality levels, making their game more enjoyable to look at, along with making it as fast as it can be." 


William Henning over at CPU Review has made a price comparison between the most excellent AMD Athlon series and Intels P3 series. Here's a clip:

"AMD won the price war. AMD K7-650's are cheaper than P3 500's OR 550's; As of today you can get a K7-650Mhz processor for $162 less than an Intel P3-650Mhz!" Thomas

CPU Prices

18/02/00: Update: Jaime "Maz" Díaz from our Spanish reseller NGA Sistemas has just contacted us to say they now have a user forum up for all Spanish speaking FreeSpeed customers. Thanks Maz. Fluke

On 28th February we can expect more price cuts from AMD, and this time on a large scale.
The 550Mhz Athlon is going to be discontinued to make room for the new 850Mhz CPU. Thomas

Many people are asking about info regarding cache speeds on Athlons. Here is the best summary I have found so far on the net courtesy of Anand from Anandtech. Here is a link straight to the article. (there is also lots of other useful info here)

If anyone has any urgent problems regarding Athlon overclocking here is my ICQ number "14649846" (urgent questions only please, as we answer every email within 12hrs anyway :) Fluke

Speedy3D has just posted a good review of the FreeSpeed Card....Check it our here. Fluke

Tom also has posted a article titled "The Impact of the AGP-Speed"....very good stuff. Here's a link straight there (does this guy never sleep :)  

Our SETI domination attempt is still going well. We now have completed 668 Units, that's almost 200 units in one and a half weeks.....we now are climbing the UK rankings fast. Our SETI page can be found here. Fluke

We got a chance to run some tests on a Athlon 550 today......this one was rather special as it had the fabled 750Mhz 0.25u core...it hit a rock solid 1Ghz with a Freespeed card fitted. We did not get a chance to run benchmarks.....but it felt VERY fast (hopefully we can source some of these in the future, but I doubt we will ever see another)

Many of you may be aware that it is possible to move higher than the FreeSpeeds published 1.9V core voltage limit. the reason we have never made available this information is that it is very rarely needed.....and in fact, without some pretty extreme cooling methods it could be very dangerous for the life of your Athlon. There are also some lower than 1.45V settings but it's not worth mentioning these unless you are heavily into underclocking ;)

Here is the unpublished core voltage settings .....please only use these if you have extremely good cooling and are prepared for a possible CPU meltdown :) Fluke

Alex Bientôt has started a FreeSpeed User Forum for all you French FreeSpeed owners out there. Fluke

13/02/00: Update: After a total reformat and reinstall of win98, the new MSI 6195 board is still looking very unstable whenever the we clock the Athlon fitted....we have also been talking with another 6195 user, and he is having exactly the same problems (maybe the regulation improvement / simplification has now reduced the boards ability to supply high current to a clocked Athlon) 

Whatever the reason, this board is going back for a refund, and the old 6167 is back in and working just fine :). Fluke

Sharky extreme has posted a review of the new extremely fast Athlon 850. Seems to kick some Intel ass, as usual. :)
Check out AMDs new high speed CPU!. Here's the link straight to the review. Thomas 

(many of us been running at this speed or higher for the last two months though. Fluke ;)) 

Anand over at Anandtech has posted a review of the VIA Apollo KX133, here's a clip:

"Ah, quite a bit has happened this weekend but I've put up my review of the VIA Apollo KX133 Athlon chipset. The chipset is an interesting offering by VIA, it's not a killer performer but then again it isn't horribly slow. Regardless of whether or not we want it, the KX133 will soon become the sole Athlon chipset until AMD's next chipset release which should be a big one."

Here's a link straight to the review. Thomas

The board is very similar to the old MS6167, but now has 6 PCI slots and loses a ISA slot. It also seems to have a improved power regulation design round the Slot A connector (less regulators and much more smoothing).

According to the manual the board comes in two different versions with different clock generator chips. One of these allows 1Mhz stepping of FSB in the BIOS. Ours unfortunately didn't have this...just 100, 120 and 130 (totally useless!, wonder why this was even included when a 20Mhz increase means no system with this board will ever boot, VERY strange). 

Other additions include improved hardware monitoring with a thermal sensor now included for the CPU, and a feature called D-LED, which is a stack of LEDs on the board that indicate fault conditions (though these fault conditions get mentioned nowhere in the documentation :\ . 

Voltage adjustment is also now in the BIOS allowing for up to 1.95v core....unfortunately there is no way of stopping the voltage alarm from going off if you have a FreeSpeed card attached...so the speaker needed to be unplugged (it sounded like a early 80s pong game going on inside my case :))....also even after a BIOS reset, I had problems with the voltage adjustment getting stuck on 1.3v....luckily after several more resets it defaulted back to normal.

So...a good motherboard ?, there is nothing wrong with it, and maybe a small improvement over the old 6167, but as far as a motherboard for clocking, it's not really any better....my advice, stick with your K7M Asus boards for now. Fluke

Moto over at The Tech Zone has posted a review of the AMK CO-P701 Cooler for Athlon processors. The AMK is particularly good as it solves the power connection problem on the Asus K7M mainboard and is constructed with a folded fin design which is very effective.

.

If you are looking for a easy to fit, great performing cooler for your Athlon, this is one of the best buys available. Thomas

We have put up a small SETI page for all those who are interested, check it out here. Fluke

Mark over at 3Drant has posted a great little utility he wrote that saves us Athlon owners digging around in our registry to enable all the good stuff :) ......the utility enables AGP 2x and AGP sidebanding on the 750chipset, and enables overclocking options in the latest Nvidia Detonator drivers. 

We now have been online at NM on the web for just under 6 weeks and we have been amazed at the interest in Athlon Overclocking and our FreeSpeed card. Our total visitors to this site are just under 50,000 :), thank you all for your help and interest.

As we expand, we are finding we need more and more staff to help. If anyone is interested in helping with daily Athlon related news on our site, please contact me. Fluke 

We have now completed 508 SETI units ....thats over 108 units in just 2 days :), thanks to everyone who's helping. Fluke

08/02/00: Super7.net has just posted a great review of FreeSpeed....here is a link straight to the review.

We didn't get a chance to give our MicroStar K7 Pro MB a test today...but will get it done ASAP and post the results here.

David Van Dromme has informed us of another VIA KX133 preview, this time the new Tyan S2380 over at Penstar Systems   ....another good looking KX133 based Athlon board. Fluke

You can see how we are doing in the rankings by looking at this page.

David Van Dromme has just mailed me some great pictures of some of the up and coming VIA based Athlon motherboards. by far the best looking of them is this......the new Asus K7V. (5 PCI, AGP 4x, AMR slot.....awesome :) Fluke

We had a quick test with the new MicroStar K7 Pro motherboard today, and hope to do some further testing this week. The board on first impressions looks very good and has FSB adjustment in the BIOS (though our board doesn't seem to want to do 1Mhz stepping ....gonna have to read the manual I think ;)

We are currently running a small team for the SETI screensaver. If any of your guys with very fast clocked Athlons wish to help us move up the rankings and help us find some aliens :), please grab the client from here, and log in as a existing user with the email address clantiger@tigercomms.com. We are currently ranked 32,000 out of 1.6 million users....and are sure we can do really well with a few Athlons doing the number crunching (Our 900Mhz machine takes only 7 1/2 hrs to complete a data unit) Fluke

Quote

"In regards to your posting on your website 04/02/2000.  The Dresden plant is FAB30, and it is currently -NOT- yet mass-producing Athlons.  If I'm not mistaken Dresden production (other than testing) is scheduled to start only Q2, even though everything is said to be ahead of schedule and the yields are supposedly very good - better than expected..."

Sounds promising....If anyone ever has any news that they feel needs to be posted, or wishes to contribute regularly please let me know. Fluke

AMD-K7550MTR51B A

230004504784

All four 550s reached 800Mhz, but for some reason refused to go any higher (even with cache and voltage adjustment).....This compares to the older 0.25 650Mhz cores used in later 500s. It seems that the move to 0.18 micron has not improved these Athlons clocking ability. 

This leaves everyone with a few choices when buying an Athlon. You could buy a late 500 and reach up to 850Mhz....or buy a newer 550 and have a 1 in 3 chance of getting a 0.18u 750Mhz core and hitting 900Mhz+, if you get a 650 or 550 0.18u core, you should see similar speeds to the old 650Mhz 0.25u cored Athlon 500. (check the earlier post regarding how to tell what process core you have without opening the Athlon)

The chances of getting 750Mhz 0.18u cores in 550s should start to improve as AMDs yields increase....does anyone know the FAB number of the new Dresden plant ? (Dresden is meant to be state of the art and producing excellent cores)...maybe this could be the key to finding good Athlons (only a idea :))

Has anyone got any results with the 0.25u 750Mhz core yet ? (these CPUs are probably fairly rare) Fluke

Well, yesterday we received the two replacement 6167s and........they were also both faulty also. This is getting beyond a joke :) ....We have reordered from another supplier and will receive them today for our 0.18 650 Core testing.

We now have a small page with some banners that can be used to advertise the FreeSpeed card. You can check them out here.

We also received the new Extreme! Cache and Reverse Core cooling kits from Montac and are very impressed with them. A definite worthwhile addition to your existing Arctic Circle cooler. Check them out. Fluke

We have had a bad day with CPUs today. This morning we received four 550s ......it turned out they were 0.18 650Mhz cores with 3n6 cache....however, these may still prove very good Athlons for clocking. 

We also has ordered to MSI 6167 boards to test them on, but these turned out to be faulty stock sent to us in error :( .....we are getting replacements in tomorrow, so hope to get some results posted. 

Hopefully if the results are good we may purchase a batch for resale here.

Stay tuned Fluke

PCNet21.com (one of our resellers) has just posted a review of FreeSpeed......

www.plagued.co.uk had also posted a FreeSpeed review........

Kurt from Austria has mailed us with a nice page he's put together in his Athlon clocking exploits....if you speak German, check it out here

We just placed a further order of four 550 CPUs that are looking like they may be 0.18 750s. These are from a batch of 30 other Athlons, and if they prove good (will find out tomorrow) , we will purchase the entire lot to sell at NM.....please don't email us regarding these, we will post here hopefully around 9PM GMT tomorrow with the results, fingers crossed :) Fluke

Alot of people are having trouble finding the elusive 550 0.18 micron Athlons, and actually confirming that you have one without removing the heat sink plate is often difficult. There is however a way, without even opening the Athlon case!....if you look down the gap between the heat sink plate and the Athlons PCB, you can see how big the core is (the size of the core is the only definite way to identify it)

Here are two pictures that show the differences (thanks to Magnus Rasmussen for the pictures)

Both of these cores are from Athlon 550 CPUs

The Core on the left is 0.18 micron marked as a K7 550 (notice the "A" on the end of the number). The Core on the right is 0.25 micron and is marked as a K7 750! (note the "C" on the end) 

Now this is very strange as it was not thought that AMD had made any 750Mhz 0.25 cores (the 750Mhz Athlon is a 0.18 CPU). the only explanation is that they switched over to the 0.18 process just before releasing the 750, and then had some old 0.25 cores to use up :) .........anyone else have any thoughts on this ? (things are getting more complicated day by day) Fluke

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