The situation in the Socket A CPU market has changed rather significantly lately. These changes revolve around two events. First, AMD started using 133MHz bus for its processors and, second, the company's plans have changed after the last quarterly report. We have already discussed 333MHz bus in our previous reviews (see our AMD Athlon XP 2800+ CPU Review and Contemporary Socket A Chipsets Comparison: NVIDIA nForce2 vs. VIA KT400). Now let's recall what happened to AMD's plans.

AMD has initially intended to promote its eighth generation ClawHammer CPUs in the desktops next year, but now they have changed their mind. Due to manufacturing and engineering problems, AMD had to delay the launch of the Hammer family until the second quarter of 2003. Moreover, for some marketing reasons, the company decided to focus on promoting the server version of Hammer, SledgeHammer. As a result, the Athlon XP family, that was going to lose its flagship position and step down to the value CPU sector in the first half of the next year, seems to have acquired the second youth. AMD isn't going to replace Athlon XP with the new eighth generation processors for quite a long time still. The company spokesmen claim that Athlon XP will be able to compete with Pentium 4 next year, too, that's why Hammer will be mainly offered as a platform for high-end servers and workstations. All this helps to understand the current situation in the Socket A market. Namely, that Socket A infrastructure proved to be more resistant than had been supposed. Although AMD has been saying that processors for Socket A will be manufactured through the whole 2003, it now gets clear that Socket A platform will be supported for an infinite time yet. Moreover, in the first half of the next year Athlon XP CPUs will remain the highest-performing processors from AMD. So it seems rather early to consider Socket A platform outdated. And that's why Socket A mainboards still remain quite actual products.

All this breathes new life into Athlon XP mainboard market. Chipset makers announced their intention to continue developing Socket A solutions, while mainboard manufacturers introduced new products.

Our today's review is about one of the new mainboards for Socket A platform from the MSI Company. The MSI KT4 Ultra mainboard based on the VIA KT400 chipset, boasts very rich set of features and can become an excellent basis for a high-end Socket A system. Let's note that the previous mainboards from MSI, based on VIA KT266A and VIA KT333, were recognized as stable and high-performing products with an unusual set of features. So, what about this one?

MSI KT4 Ultra-FISR Specifications

MSI KT4 Ultra may arrive in a number of versions differing from one another by the availability of certain integrated features. There are four versions in stores now:

• KT4 Ultra-FISR (full version);
• KT4 Ultra (without Bluetooth, SerialATA, IDE RAID, IEEE1394 and Ethernet controllers);
• KT4 Ultra-B (without SerialATA, IDE RAID, IEEE1394 and Ethernet controllers);
• KT4 Ultra-BSR (without IEEE1394 and Ethernet controllers).

KT4 Ultra is also accompanied with a standard heap of cables and software. Besides, the package also includes:

• Two extra SerialATA cables;
• A back panel bracket, D-Bracket 2, with four-diode diagnostic system and a pair of extra USB 2.0 ports;
• A back panel bracket, S-Bracket, with coaxial and optical SPDIF outs and extra outs for six-channel sound;
• A back panel bracket with three IEEE1394 ports;
• A Bluetooth set with an antenna and daughter-board.

Closer Look

First, we would like to point out the fact that most mainboard makers who target their products for enthusiastic users bestow their solutions with about the same features set. So, nearly every VIA KT400 based mainboard available is equipped with an extra IEEE1394 controller, a network controller, SerialATA and/or IDE RAID controller and features six-channel sound. Take, for instance the already reviewed ASUS P4V8X. Our today's hero, MSI KT4 Ultra, boasts about the same features. But even here, MSI engineers included an original function: Bluetooth technology support.

As an up-to-date mainboard, MSI KT4 Ultra supports all present and perspective Athlon XP processors. The mainboard (our tests confirm it) works with processors supporting 266MHz system bus and new Athlon XPs with 333MHz bus. Moreover, the future Athlon XP CPUs based on the Barton core with 512KB L2 cache that are to arrive in the beginning of the next year will also work on MSI KT4 Ultra.

A few words about the supported memory. Although the VIA KT400 chipset officially supports only DDR266 and DDR333 SDRAM, it allows clocking the memory bus at 200MHz. So, in theory, DDR400 modules can be used with the mainboard, too. But in this case the company guarantees stable work only when not more than two memory modules are used and when the modules are tested by the company engineers. Right now, MSI guarantees stable work of MSI KT4 Ultra with the following DDR400 modules:

As for the supported memory type, we should keep in mind one more peculiarity of MSI KT4 Ultra mainboard, which is imposed by the restrictions of the VIA KT400 chipset. You can only use DDR266 and DDR400 in MSI KT4 Ultra with 133MHz FSB. If the FSB frequency is 166MHz, the memory bus can only be clocked synchronously, that is, the only memory type available in this mode is DDR333 SDRAM.

Now let's consider the integrated devices. SerialATA/RAID controller comes first.

MSI chose the Promise PDC20376 controller to implement the IDE RAID and SerialATA support. According to the specs, the controller supports one ATA/133 and two SerialATA-150 channels that are actually present in MSI KT4 Ultra. The controller allows connecting simple Parallel and SerialATA devices as well as uniting them into RAID arrays of levels 0 and 1. 0+1 RAID arrays are not supported. We would also like to mention a certain deficiency in SerialATA implementation in the integrated controller. In fact, Promise PDC20376 is nothing else, but the older PDC20276 chip, in which one of the former ATA/133 channels was re-designed into SerialATA-150. That's why the SerialATA ports of the controller cannot reach their proper theoretical bandwidth of 150MB/sec and go no faster than 133MB/sec. But that's really of no importance now as the SerialATA controller is connected to the PCI bus that has the maximum theoretical bandwidth of 133MB/sec. It's still too early to expect bandwidth growth on transition to SerialATA. Fully-fledged Serial/ATA controllers may be integrated into the chipset or connected via faster buses than the 32-bit 33MHz PCI.

The VIA VT6306 controller is responsible for 1394(a) FireWire interface, as it's not supported by the VIA KT400 chipset. VIA has fallen behind SiS and NVIDIA here as they already offer chipsets with integrated IEEE1394. As a result, the mainboard makers have to use external chips. There are three IEEE1394 ports in MSI KT4 Ultra wired on the back panel bracket. Two ports are six-pin ones, and another one is four-pin.

MSI was the first company to use Gigabit Ethernet controllers in its products. MSI KT4 Ultra carries on the tradition in this respect. The installed Broadcom 5702 chip supports 10/100/1000Mbit/sec Ethernet. 1Gbit/sec networks are quite rare today, but they are going to grow popular and MSI KT4 Ultra will come in handy then.

One more house feature of MSI KT4 Ultra - Bluetooth technology support. It is implemented by means of a daughter card and antenna. Thus, MSI KT4 Ultra provides wireless networking with all sorts of mobile devices, such as cell phones, PDAs, laptops, as well as with other desktop PCs that support Bluetooth. For those who forgot: Bluetooth connection uses around 2.4GHz frequencies, works at up to 100 meter distance and has up to 1Mbit/sec data transfer rate. The package may also include a special USB 1.1 key that allows connecting another computer to the Bluetooth WLAN. By the way, when the Bluetooth module is in use, one of the six USB ports of MSI KT4 Ultra becomes unavailable.

The above snapshot shows the chip that is responsible for sound implementation on MSI KT4 Ultra mainboard. It's a six-channel CMI8738MX PCI controller. The provided sound quality isn't very impressive, but it is anyway much better than that provided by any codec, especially as MSI KT4 Ultra features the fully-functionality six-channel version of the controller with SPDIF support.

The MSI KT4 Ultra mainboard is equipped with six PCI slots, three 184-pin DDR DIMM slots and one AGP slot. With all this stuff onboard, the PCB size is rather small in spite of a number of integrated chips. That's why the mainboard design seemed to us not very successful as far as the placement of certain components is concerned.

For example, the 20-pin ATX power supply connector is located behind the Socket A so the power cable connected to it will hang over the CPU cooler hindering proper CPU cooling. The IDE connector going to the RAID controller is situated in front of the PCI slots and can cause problems, especially when full-size expansion cards are installed.

Besides, MSI KT4 Ultra also suffers the popular problem when the installed AGP graphics card blocks the DIMM slots clips.

Socket A in MSI KT4 Ultra is placed too close to the right part of the card. As a result, when the mainboard is installed into the PC case, mounting or removing the CPU cooler turns into a nearly impossible task. You can hardly use massive cooling systems with MSI KT4 Ultra. Firstly, there are capacitors close to the CPU socket, and secondly there are no usual mounting holes around Socket A that serve to fasten a number of coolers.

The back panel of the mainboard follows the new standard: among the connectors at the back panel there are four USB 2.0 ports, a RJ45 connector, PS/2 connectors for the keyboard and mouse, audio outputs, one parallel and two serial ports.

Our mainboard featured an active cooler on the North Bridge of the chipset with some thermal paste under it. Some MSI KT4 Ultra modifications come with a passive North Bridge cooling solution.

Unfortunately, MSI KT4 doesn't use a thermal diode built into Athlon XP to measure the CPU temperature. The temperature is taken in the old-fashioned way: by means of the thermal diode in the center of Socket A. Meanwhile, the AMD website claims that MSI KT4 Ultra is recommended for the whole Athlon XP family, including the top models. The website also claims that MSI KT4 Ultra features a CPU protection scheme protecti ng the processor from failure in case of overheating.

It should also be mentioned that the AGP 8x bus of MSI KT4 Ultra is not compatible with old AGP 1x/2x graphics cards that can damage the mainboard if used. Moreover, MSI KT4 Ultra doesn't know to recognize if there is an old graphics card installed. On the other hand, we have encountered problems with AGP 8x graphics cards, too. As our test showed the newest AGP 8x RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card is unstable working in MSI KT4 Ultra.

BIOS and Overclocking

Unlike many other manufacturers that stick to BIOS from Phoenix-Award, MSI often prefers BIOS from AMI. MSI KT4 Ultra is no exception. Well, there is nothing wrong as the new AMIBIOS versions, unlike the previous ones, offer a wide range of Setup settings and often show better performance than the BIOS versions from Award.

As for the actual performance, we will talk about it later on in our article. And now let's dwell upon the Setup settings. Memory timings located on the separate page of the BIOS Setup come first.

You can see that all the key timings in MSI KT4 Ultra can be modified. Besides CAS Latency, you can change Trp, Tras and Trcd settings as well as DRAM Command Rate, Memory Interleaving and DRAM Burst Length. All the parameters can vary in usual ranges, while CAS Latency can even be set to 1.5, although we couldn't power up MSI KT4 Ultra with such a CAS value in our test lab.

At the same time, we would like to note that our DDR400 CL2 SDRAM modules from Corsair (Corsair XMS3200 CL2, 2x256MB) worked at 266MHz, 333MHz and 400MHz in MSI KT4 Ultra with most aggressive settings. As you may remember, this memory installed in ASUS A7V8X failed to work at 400MHz with these timing settings, so that we had to raise them up to 2.5-4-4-8-1. We learned later on that ASUS A7V8X was unstable working with more than one memory module and so we tested it with one 512MB DDR400 SDRAM module. As for MSI KT4 Ultra, we are glad to state that this mainboard works with two memory modules as stable as with one.

As for hardware monitoring, MSI KT4 Ultra keeps track of system and CPU temperatures, rotation speeds of two fans, processor core voltage and six other voltage values.

Of course, MSI KT4 Ultra has something to offer overclocking fans. These tools are listed in a separate BIOS page called Frequency/Voltage Control, and deserve a closer look.

Here is a list of options an overclocker receives from MSI KT4 Ultra mainboard:

• Bus frequency adjustment. You can set any frequency from 100MHz to 280MHz. Well, the top FSB frequency is just an attraction. The maximum working FSB rate you can set on MSI Ultra KT4 is 233MHz. If you choose a frequency above this value, the bus will actually work at half the desired rate.
• CPU multiplier adjustment. The range is from 6x to 15x.
• Manual adjustment of the CPU core voltage. The values available are Auto, 1.625, 1.650, 1.675, 1.700, 1.725 and 1.750V. So the options here are rather scarce (the regular core voltage is usually 1.65V).
• DDR DIMM slots voltage adjustment. The values available are Auto, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8V. It is also possible to set Termination Voltage (Auto, 1.27 and 1.29V). So MSI KT4 Ultra has every right to boast really cool means of memory voltage adjustement.
• AGP voltage can be set to Auto, 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8V.

After checking all the options in practice, we can state that the entire range of FSB frequencies up to 233MHz is working, that is, the mainboard is stable at any FSB frequency up to 233MHz. Overclockers should really enjoy it and continue the AMD's initiative about raising the FSB frequency of their Athlon XP above 166MHz. But at 166MHz FSB, the memory in MSI KT4 Ultra can be clocked only synchronously due to the restrictions in the VIA KT400 chipset. Moreover, the minimum divisor of the PCI bus that's activated at the FSB rate over 166MHz is 1:5. So, when overclocking the FSB above 166MHz, the system may lose some of its stability because of certain problems with the memory or expansion cards.

There is one more unpleasant peculiarity we noticed when overclocking the CPU in MSI KT4 Ultra. This mainboard turned to have no means to reset CPU parameters in case of "over-overclocking". So, when the mainboard doesn't start up after a change in BIOS Setup settings, the only way to reanimate the system is to use the Clear CMOS jumper.

Performance

Before turning to the actual benchmarks results, let's mention that mainboards based on one chipset don't greatly differ in their performance. So when choosing a specific mainboard, most important are rich specs, overclocking-friendly features, stability and reliability, and technical support rather than its performance in benchmarks.

In our tests we compared the performance of MSI KT4 Ultra with that of ASUS A7V8X (also based on VIA KT400) and of the legendary EPoX EP-8K3A+ based on the VIA KT333. Benchmarks were run with different memory types and two Athlon XP processors that work with both 266MHz and 333MHz bus.

The testbeds were configured as follows:

• AMD Athlon XP 2700+ (333MHz bus) and AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (266MHz bus) CPUs;
• ASUS A7V8X, EPoX EP-8K3A+ and MSI KT4 Ultra mainboards;
• 2x256MB DDR400 CAS2 Corsair XMS3200 and 512MB DDR400 SDRAM from Samsung;
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card;
• Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, 80GB HDD.

The first part of our test session is dedicated to checking the performance with the processor supporting 266MHz bus. We used Athlon XP 2600+ here that works at the actual clock-rate of 2133MHz.

The results show that MSI KT4 Ultra is close to ASUS A7V8X in performance. Both mainboards are alternatively taking the lead in different tests. EPoX EP-8K3A+, based on an older chipset, is lagging behind the leaders.

More details about the performance of different Socket A chipsets can be found here.

The second part of our test session was carried out with the help of an Athlon XP working with 333MHz bus. It was Athlon XP 2700+ with the actual clock-rate of 2166MHz.

The results are similar to those we had in the first part. Both VIA KT400 based mainboards show about the same speed.

Conclusion

MSI KT4 Ultra mainboard is a high-quality product, with rich features and fast performance. Thanks to different product modifications shipping, it can meet the demands of nearly every user, both ordinary and enthusiastic. The mainboard with the maximum features set has a full range of features one can ever think of. It supports USB 2.0, IEEE1394, Gigabit Ethernet, SerialATA and IDE RAID. Moreover, the mainboard may come with an extra Bluetooth module, which helps to set up a wireless connection with mobile devices as well as other computers in an apartment or small office.

The mainboard supports all Athlon XP processor models, including those that work with 333MHz bus. MSI KT4 Ultra is also listed among the mainboards recommended by AMD, which is a real honor. The only disappointing thing about MSI KT4 Ultra is its inability to monitor CPU temperature through the built-in thermal diode. Besides, some overclockers may grumble at the small step allowed during processor Vcore modification.

Highs:

• Supports new Athlon XP CPUs with 333MHz bus;
• High stability and performance, both in the regular mode and during overclocking;
• Supports modern technologies such as USB 2.0, IEEE1394, Gigabit Ethernet, SerialATA and IDE RAID;
• Rich options for memory configuration.

Lows:

• Doesn't use the thermal diode built into the CPU;
• Upsetting drawbacks in the PCB design.