Good board for an old T-Bird?

I've got an old 1.2Ghz (100x12) T-Bird laying around here and I want to bring it back to life. I've been scoping out a couple of MSI boards... but I would love to hear any other suggestions for a decent board for this old proc. A couple things I am looking for are options for higher vcore & vdimm.

K7N2 Delta-L - 1.8vcore / 2.7vdimm(I think) - T-Birds req. 1.75v default, not much head room

K7N2 Delta-ILSR - 2.0vcore / 2.8vdimm(w/modded BIOS)

I really don't care for all the SATA & Raid extras on the ILSR, but I'm leaning that way for the higher vcore. I really don't care if I fry this chip... and if I do I'll just drop an $80 mobile in it and be done.

Any suggestions on other boards or comments on these boards is appreciated!

Bump... Anyone?

Well, I don't think an MSI is such a dood idea. Ihere products a cheap and troublesome. I don't know that the Abit NF7 will support a TBird, but I suspect it does and it would be my first choice. My second choice would be the Asus A7N8X-X and I know it supports the TBird.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131468
BTW I still have an old 1gig TBird that runs quite nicely after nearly four years of steady use. That's the CPU that really put AMD on my radar.

rseven said:

Well, I don't think an MSI is such a dood idea. Ihere products a cheap and troublesome. I don't know that the Abit NF7 will support a TBird, but I suspect it does and it would be my first choice. My second choice would be the Asus A7N8X-X and I know it supports the TBird.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131468
BTW I still have an old 1gig TBird that runs quite nicely after nearly four years of steady use. That's the CPU that really put AMD on my radar.

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I can always count on my "drinking buddy" to come through with an answer. Thanks rseven!

I have always heard good things about MSI... a buddy of mine has one of the Delta2 board revisions- more recent than either of the boards I was looking at. None of the Delta2 boards support the T-Bird. Interesting information... your warning is taken into consideration.

Which NF7 are you refering to?

- NF7

- NF7-S v1.x

- NF7-S v2.0

I assume you are not refering to any of these newer NF7 revisions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&Category=0&minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

A friend of mine has the ASUS board you mentioned... don't like it. I really have no love for ASUS at all and will not spend my money on one of their boards.

Thanks for your help! Any further suggestions are much appreciated!

Sounds like you feel about Asus the way I feel about MSI. My luck has been bad with MSI, but with Asus it depends on the board. I have built 3 A7N8X based systems and all three run great. However, I have another Asus board based on the Via KT400 chip set that is on it's second rma.
There are not many boards that support a 100MHz bus speed cpu these days. As I said I'm not sure about the NF7. You may have to download a manual and check. I'd syick with the least expensive one you can find. I do know that this Gigabyte board will support it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128275
I know nothing much about it other than it's KT400 based and that is not as fast or versatile as an NF2. Besides the Asus those are the only ones I know of in a decent brand name. Good luck.

I'd get the Abit AN7. There's lots of modded BIOSs to play with, VDIMM goes up to 3.2v, VDD 1.75v, and vcore up to 2.3v. Look around for a cheap one though, as they still cost $86 on Newegg.

Ebay might be a good place for this kind of purchase, if only because of Abits great RMA service. They RMA pretty much anything, no questions asked. Even if breaks years from now (assuming they have the backups) they'll give you a refurb board for $25 plus shipping.

rseven said:

Sounds like you feel about Asus the way I feel about MSI... ... I do know that this Gigabyte board will support it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128275

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I just have no love for Asus. I would not be so quick to shun this Asus board if I hadn't seen one in action... don't get me wrong, it's a solid board- I just don't like it. I think it's all luck of the draw... a few bad experiences with any company's products will undoubtedly put a bad taste in anyone's mouth. I have an old MSI GeForce2 that's still kicking... and is actually the card I plan to use in whatever board I end up choosing.

Thanks for the link to the Gigabyte board! I'll check into this one.

Skeen said:

I'd get the Abit AN7. There's lots of modded BIOSs to play with, VDIMM goes up to 3.2v, VDD 1.75v, and vcore up to 2.3v. Look around for a cheap one though, as they still cost $86 on Newegg.

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Humm, thanks for the suggestion Skeen... but ummm, see my sig. I have two AN7 boards already. Maybe I should have been more clear in my original post.

I have already run this old T-Bird in one of my AN7s... not 100% compatible. That's why I'm looking for a slightly older board with good options that does natively support 200Mhz. FSB.

Whoops soory my eyes sort of glaze over when I see sigs with that much detail.

In that case you can get the NF7-S (either version). Vcore is up to 2.0v (might go up more) and vdimm up to 2.9v. I suppose the MSI versions you listed would be fine, I just had a bad experience with them, so my opinion is colored a bit by that.

Skeen said:

Whoops soory my eyes sort of glaze over when I see sigs with that much detail.

In that case you can get the NF7-S (either version). Vcore is up to 2.0v (might go up more) and vdimm up to 2.9v. I suppose the MSI versions you listed would be fine, I just had a bad experience with them, so my opinion is colored a bit by that.

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I understand... I know a lot of people probably hate me for my sig. But imo it's the details that are important. I read a lot of sigs... you can learn a lot by seeing what people run in conjunction and what kind of overall clocks they are achieving.

The only problem with the NF7-S boards is that I can't find an approved processor list for them, maybe I need to look on the .tw Abit website... so far I think I've only scoped out the abit-usa.com site. I assume by either version that you mean v1.1 or v2.0(400 Ultra version). At least 2.0vcore & 2.9vdimm is where I'd like to have the upper limit.

Another unhappy MSI user... humm, if I get much more advice against these MSI boards then I am definitely going to look away from these boards. Doesn't seem like anyone really had any luck with them. Just to be clear though, I'm not looking to OC the board. It won't be pushed past 400Mhz, even if I end up dropping a mobile in it. Hopefully that won't be necessary and I can torture that old T-Bird.

harlam357 said:

.... Just to be clear though, I'm not looking to OC the board. It won't be pushed past 400Mhz, even if I end up dropping a mobile in it. Hopefully that won't be necessary and I can torture that old T-Bird.

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LIAR!!!! we know you'll have that thing running at 250 x 12 in no time... HAHA..

seriously though... I have an old Athalon... old... 1800 runs at 1.1GHz... it's stuck in an old ECS board that uses PC133 RAM... lol remember that... I've used and abused this processor for..... 6 years?? it's old faithful... lemme know what board you use for this chip... I may just get one too... when I upgrade my Video card, I'll have an extra video card I can use with it, and then I just need a cheap psu... and I'll have another spare parts computer.

I love my old kt7a with pc133 ram. I have my brother playing dawn of war on it now and it still holds up like a champ (even though it idles at like 50*C).

silentdebuggers said:

I love my old kt7a with pc133 ram. I have my brother playing dawn of war on it now and it still holds up like a champ (even though it idles at like 50*C).

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Indeed, great old board, I have one as well running a Duron 850 at 1GHz rock solid, I can't remeber off hand but I think the vcore goes over 2v. The bios has a LOT of tweaks in it.

JDXNC/silentdebuggers... Thanks for the suggestion!

I would proabably bite on the kt7a if it only supported DDR. Am I asking too much to find a good board that will support 200FSB(T-Bird) & DDR?

What about a KD7? Haven't used a VIA chipset in a while.

Thanks again for any and all suggestions!

Found it! Settled on an Abit KT7E. - just like the KT7A except no onboard anything. Seemed like the right thing to do to keep my old T-Bird in a board and chipset of its era instead of a newer board.

Now all I'm lacking is a cheap'o case... Humm....

Thanks for sharing all the experiences! - I hope I made a good choice.