AMD Athlon 1GHz, 950MHz, 900MHz

Motherboard Support

In spite of last month’s release of the KX133 chipset, we have yet to see many motherboards based on the chipset available for purchase.  The EPoX 7KXA has been spotted in some areas, but its presence is definitely far from widespread, luckily we’re about to see an influx of KX133 based motherboards into the market.

In our CeBIT 2000 coverage, we managed to get pictures of twenty Athlon motherboards that are due out for release soon, most of which were based on the KX133 chipset.  We have actually had one of those boards in the lab for quite some time now, the ASUS K7V-RM.

We unfortunately weren’t allowed to talk about the board until now, but now that we can, it’s time to say that this motherboard is a very solid KX133 board.  While it’s a microATX board, a full ATX version is due out soon, the K7V, and it should perform just as well.  The K7V-RM is so solid that AMD even chose to outfit their evaluation systems with the motherboard which is a position previously held by the AMD 750 based Gigabyte GA-7IX. 

ASUS K7V-RM - KX133

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Expect a review of the K7V-RM this week.

The biggest question you’re probably asking yourself right now is how far can the 1GHz processor be overclocked?  Unfortunately, because of the current design of the Athlon, it features clock multipliers no higher than 10.5X.  This means that even with the aid of an overclocking card you won’t be able to take the 1GHz CPU up any higher than 1050MHz.  By increasing the FSB on a motherboard like the K7M or K7V-RM you are able to push it a little higher, but for the most part, overclocking the 1GHz chip isn’t going to be an incredible experience. 

If you’re looking for a chip you can overclock to 1GHz, look for the Athlon 900 which should be able to hit 1GHz with a bit of work.