KK266 with 1.4 GHz Athlon on old BIOS?

[JamesM]

I'm going to be buying a KK266 soon, and I want to use it with a 1.4 GHz Athlon. I'd like to buy a KK266plus, but I can't find anywhere in the UK that sells it. Maybe it's just too new. :-(

It's not very likely that the KK266 I buy will have a new BIOS, but I want to use a 1.4 GHz Athlon.

The 0515 BIOS from http://support.iwill.net/index_e.html indicates added support for the 1.4 GHz Athlon: that's dated May 15th, so there's a possibility that I could get 1.4 GHz support in the BIOS, but I'm more interested in what happens if the BIOS doesn't have that support.

Will the system refuse to boot, or will it just run at 1.2 GHz (or whatever the max was) until I upgrade the BIOS to 0515 (I would use 0622, the latest version)?

In other words, do I have to be sure that the BIOS supports the 1.4 GHz Athlon before I buy, or can I boot with the 1.4 GHz Athlon and then upgrade the BIOS?

I don't have any other CPU that the board could use, this being my first x86 purchase: I could buy a 1.2 GHz Athlon but I don't see the point when I can have 1.4 GHz for not much more!

Thanks in advance,

James MacDonald

[Ripper2860]

You should be just fine. Perhaps the appropriate statement from IWill should have been "added OFFICIAL support for AMD 1.4GHz" . As long as you set the jumper on the motherboard to support a 133MHz FSB (and have PC-133 RAM), it will work. The 0515 BIOS added support for a 14X multiplier, which would be required to run 1.4GHz on a 100Mhz FSB. However at 133MHz FSB the multiplier is 10.5, which is within the older BIOS capabilties. Your system should BOOT fine and allow you to use the BIOS of choice (barring other issues).

I would shy away from the 0515 BIOS, as it has issues with Re-booting in cycles rather than shutting down under Win2000/Win9X. The 0622 BIOS has the offical 1.4GHz support and 14X multiplier and does not have the "re-boot" problem.

You've settled on a GREAT MOBO !! Have Fun !!

[Wizarium]

Depending how long the MOBO you buy has been sitting on the shelf, you will get either a 1.1 or 1.2 revision. I bought a 1.2 board about 6 weeks ago. It came with the 0315 BIOS (no official 1.4 support). On boot up with my 1.4 Athlon, the POST read 1400MHz. I installed the complete system with absolutely -no- problems whatsoever. Once I had a stable Win98SE system running, I went ahead and flashed the 0515 BIOS. On POST, it now read 1.4GHz, and other than that, no noticeable differences. I also built another identical system, but this time installed Win2k SP2 on it. Same procedure, no problems at all, and did the BIOS upgrade after the OS install.

In the Win98SE machine, it was constantly crashing 3DMark2001. This was giving me fits, because I was not overclocking anything at the time. About one out of every 5 or 6 attempts at benchmarking with 3DMark2001 would actually complete. I started experimenting with LuckyDaze's BIOS's, and his 'Memorial Day' 0515r BIOS (I have the RAID version of KK266) made it so that 3DMark2001 -never- crashes anymore. My Sandra scores remained unchanged, and system is quite stable.

I haven't tested out the newest BIOS released last week, as the tech notes only state that they added support for the Palomino chip. I may flash it for the helluvit and run 3DMark and Sandra just for comparison. Bottomline is, if you get a 1.2 rev board, you shouldn't have any problems with everything default. Once you start tweaking for performance, you're going to want to try a lot of different BIOS's and drivers. Getting the right mix takes hours, but hey, if you don't enjoy tweaking and fiddling with stuff, buy Intel!! hehe cheers!

- Keith

[snoopy]

I have the KK266R (rev. 1.2) with the new 6-whatever BIOS and before when using the 5-15 BIOS it supported my CPU just fine.

[JamesM]

Thanks to everyone for their replies: I'm going to buy the KK266 and 1.4 GHz Athlon, but before buying the motherboard I'll check that it's revision 1.2: if the BIOS isn't 0426 or later I'll need to upgrade it immediately (686B bug) but if it's aware of the 686B bug and seems to work I'll not upgrade unless I really have to: in any case I like 1400 MHz better than 1.4 GHz :-)

Since the 1.4 GHz Athlon will have a 266 MHz bus (I'll be buying 512M of good-quality PC133 SDRAM) then I'll be using the 10.5x multiplier which seems to be supported on all of the BIOS versions.

I'm not going to be doing any overclocking: I just want a rock-solid board with a good layout, and the KK266 seems to be what I'm looking for.

[The Gamer]

Hi James,
I'm in exactly the same position as you, i'm about to buy the amd thunderbird 1.4 gig and the I will mobo, you can get the mobo from a couple of places I know in the UK

www.overclockers.co.uk has it in stock for £128
and also
www.hitechpc.co.uk for £115

you will also find you need the following if you dont already have them or your gear will overheat and be damaged or underperform at the least :

350 watt power supply, I reccomend the Enermax EG 365p-ve

heatsink and fan, I reccomend Taisol cgk 760092

both these products are AMD approved for the 1400 cpu
and can be bought from overclockers.co.uk

[JamesM]

Thanks for the URLs; I think I'll get the KK266plus-R from HiTechPC to go with a 1.4 GHz Athlon from CCL (£100), and ThermoEngine HSF.

I don't want a RAID motherboard, but I do want the KK266plus, and I can't find the non-RAID version: since the plus-R is only £115 as you said from HiTechPC compared with £105 for the KK266 I'll just get the plus-R and jumper the RAID out to avoid conflicts/problems: is that still possible on the plus boards?

As for the PSU/case: is a 350W PSU really necessary? CCL are supplying 1.4 GHz Athlon systems with 300W, and since I don't want to overclock will I really need the extra 50W?

Can I run a 1.2 GHz Athlon with a 300W PSU or does that need 350W too? TekHeads -- http://www.tekheads.co.uk/ -- have a decent AOpen case with 300W PSU, and buying a case then PSU is more expensive.

As for the HSF I think I'll use a ThermoEngine V60-4210; it's only £3 more than the Taisol and the cooling performance is much better. Again since I won't be overclocking I don't think I'll need the Delta fan (noisy).

[The Gamer]

The power supply can vary with the brand, looking at amd's reccomended psu's list they reccomend 300's on some brands and 400's with others, all suitable for the 1.4 but then take into account all the extras you may have or want to add, like maybe a more powerful video card one day, more fans or another cd drive or hard drive, I just decided to go for the Enermax 350w

http://www1.amd.com/athlon/config

If you look at AMD's page here it lists all the reccomended gear, btw I didn't know there could be problems with a RAID version of the board? i've heard nothing but good about it if you get the latest 0622 drivers, which i've already downloaded, ready and waiting.

I can't see your thermoengine hsf listed in their list.

here's a handy guide to the I-will mobo btw:

http://www.x-faqtor.com/KK266.htm