K7M and Classic 550......where do I go from here? No where but up?

[morkys]

I have a K7M and a Classic 550. Whats the best Slot-a for speed, stock or overclocked. T-bird or Classic? I see some 900 Slot-a T-birds out there and they aren't too pricy. Would I be able to overclock a T-bird using my K7M or should I stick to the Classic Athlon? I am hoping to end up with a system that is a stock 900 mhz T-bird or a 950-1200 mhz Slot-A t-bird or classic.

So what are my options????

Should I try a 900 T-bird or what? I figure I might be able to do FSB 105 x 9 for 950 mhz? or 110 x 9 for 1000mhz? without extra stuff or GFD as long as I had good air-cooling? Oh yeah, I'll check out my Bios too!

thanx in advance for any info :)

My system is a Asus K7M with 2 x 256 MB PC-133.

[rocahopo]

Hi,

I took my K7M/CLASSIC(500 0.25u) upto 770MHz (7X multiplier, 110MHz FSB) using
the BIOS for the FSB and a Freesped Pro (GFD) for the multiplier.
I set the VCore to 1.8v (GFD). To go further I would have had to change the Cache ratio so I changed to a TBIRD.

My TBIRD(750) is running at 864, which I am pushing further.

My Config is as below :-

Cheers
Rocahopo

[Lolboy]

Hi Morkys and welcome to the board :xwavey:

As you have a K7M mobo which has an AMD chipset, I would go for a T'bird if your gonna buy another processor as it has its level2 cache running at full speed so you dont have to worry about changing the divider speed like you would on a classic. On a classic you have to start changing the divider speed of the cache the faster you push which can be a pain on the K7M mobo cos it doesn't have the option for doing it in the bios.
As far as going for 1200meg you being a bit optimistic. The quickest core speed you can get is 1gig and the highest you can change the multiplier to using a GFD (Gold Finger Device - Freespeed Pro) is 10x (1 gig with 100mhz bus speed) so any higher after that has to be achieved by pushing up the bus speed. I think the highest ever was 1180 by Berkswolf with his 1gig core classic and upping his bus speed to 118meg. (if I'm wrong then please don't be offended).
You may want to stick with your 550 at the moment cos some of those have clocked quite well up to 800/850.

Lolboy.

[morkys]

Some guy on eBay who is selling a Classic 1000 mhz Athlon Slot-A says he is not aware of the ability for the K7M to run T-bird Slot-A's over 800 mhz. Why does he say that? I haven't heard that. In the contrary, the T-bird was more compatibile with my K7M, correct?

Anyways, 900 mhz T-bird slot-a's are more plentiful than others, so I should still aim for those, right? Out of curiosity, are there T-bird slota 950 and 1000's out there? Somewhere?

[rocahopo]

The K7M does support clocks above 1GHz, you may however need a BIOS update, km1008 extended support above 1GHz, km1009 is the latest BIOS.

K7M BIOS Release Ver. 1009 04/20/2000
Solve issue about 686A Revision CD GPNV function failure.
Change L2 Cache timing.
Fix abnormal beeps issue while shutting down to DOS under Windows 98 (First Edition) ACPI mode.
Solve hang-up issue in BIOS Setup while changing "ACPI Aware OS" from "No" to "Yes".
Fix abnormal beeps issue for 1GHz Athlon CPU.
Solve system cannot boot from ASUS PCI-SIU2 SCSI card.


K7M BIOS Release Ver. 1008 02/21/2000
Added new codes to support AMD 751 revision C5 "Super Bypass Mode" and its setup item.
Fixed the bug about 82C686A USB ports 2&3 which will be disabled if AMR card is installed & enabled.
Add 82C686A internal I/O parallel port EPP+ECP mode support. Solve some high speed CD-RWs show "ATAPI-compliant" error message.
Change SETUP hardware monitor -5V/-12V default value to "Ignore".
Update new version SYMBIOS and Added item to enable/disable SYMBIOS.
Change SETUP client to support HDDs larger than 32GB.
Add ECC setup auto function.
Revise hardware monitor limit.
Extend above AMD 850MHz CPU frequency range.
Fix keyboard detect failure on Windows 98 SE Japanese version ACPI mode.

My Current TBIRD runs at 864MHz on the K7M

cheers
rocahopo