MSI-6195 K7Pro and the T-Bird

[paulcs]

Yesterday, I ordered the K7Pro as a follow-up on an article on Slot A Thunderbird compatibility.

Someone read the last article, and emailed some questions. He mentioned that he started out with the MSI board, but he wanted to take advantage of the T-Bird's on-die cache. He clarified later on when he wrote, "The ECC Table Default is actually disabled along with the external cache write back... I called MSI tech support in CA and ask about a beta bios' for that board. They said there was probably no hope. I was looking for a bios that would take advantage of the 256k on die cache."

Is this true? If it is, what are the ramifications?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[paulcs]

I asked him to clarify and he wrote back:

"I am assuming it is an issue because when I did a fresh install of ME GOLD (I am a beta tester) my HD benchmark test with Sisoft Sandra 2000 standard showed at 17,000 score with the External cache write back and ECC Table default "Enabled". But when I "Disabled" those two puppies, the score jumped to over 20,000+ on a Maxtor 30G (broken down into 4 partitions) 7200 RPM UDMA 66 drive. Another thing; I used the default install drivers that came with ME GOLD, not the AMD drivers that came with the board. If I use the AMD IDE driver ver. 1.24 the performance really falls off to a dismal 11K to 12K."

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[paulcs]

Fixed. I should have known better. Obviously, the key to his problem was hidden in this line:

"I called MSI tech support in CA and..."

I found a new BIOS on SlotA.com yesterday, and sent him the link. Problem solved.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net