Motherboard Recommended

[RussellWild 0]

Hello -

 

I'm looking for an upgrade motherboard which supports AMD's Athlon (probably 1.4GHz) and PC2100 DDR RAM. I've looked at a few Asus ones so far. Can anyone here recommend a good motherboard which supports both these, and works well with XP? (especially ACPI/Hibernate etc).

 

Bye,

R

[PrinceAli0 0]

Hey,

I know I'll get a lot of negativity for this one, but please for your own sake don't get anything from VIA, I've suffered too many problems with them. If you plan on going with a SBLive, GeForce or a Radeon don't waste your time. Don't be fooled, its only wide spead cause VIA had a chunk of the market from AMD because they were the first alternative. I think with better driver sets the ALI Magik, SIS, or even if u want to hold out the NVIDIA chipset will be a better alternative. Believe me I've owned every single VIA chipset out there and I've had many successes but when I have failure its just a blackhole. Hope this helped you, oh if you want to go with the AMD 761 DDR Chipset get the one without the VIA Southbridge, currently only MSI has plans to make one using all AMD parts. Good luck

 

PrinceAli0

[Four and Twenty 0]

i agree i have built many systems with motherboards based on via chipsets from abit, asus, and msi and every single computer had some sort of hardware and or software compatibility issue. VIA = headache

[ThC 129 0]

i guess im not in the group on this one. My VIA chipset hasnt caused me any problems. Then again im not running a SB Live!, so that could be it. A LOT of people though have reported problems with them so i would stay away from them. I mean they make cyrix processors, and those things were top of the line sh!t. Ive heard good things about ALi boards, as for brand, the 2 best brands on the market are Asus and Abit, Abit more so because of Softmenu III which lets you set your processor in the BIOS not using dip switches.

[Four and Twenty 0]

yea the sblives are definatly athing to stay away from with a via board. many of those computers that i built had sblives in them.

i would also stay away from 3com products on those boards cause we had some probs with them also

 

i am not saying in any way that you cannot make a good solid stable pc based on a via board but i prefer better hardware compatibility and less headaces so i will stick with proven intel chipsets for now. perhaps an nforce down the line

 

i am still running a 440bx here, not the fastest thing around but it does the job until i build my dualie rig that i have been dreaming of.

[RussellWild 0]

Hello folks:

 

Thanks for the input. I am sure as hell going to stay away from VIA stuff! One person out of five with success is NOT good!

 

I was looking at a couple of Asus boards yesterday, the A7A266 DDR/PC100/PC133 (ALI Magik chipset) and A7M266 DDR. Has anyone got either of those?

 

The first one supports both SDRAM and the newer DDR modules. For some reason I just don't like the sound of that too much.

 

Best Regards,

R

[oaydin 0]

now, except amd 760 I used both via kt133a and asus a7a alichipset.

Let me tell u my own experiences with asus a7a , u choose to go or not. First , it doesn't have any driver or hardware conflict problem, all of my hardware worked perfect n fast. U will see some saying ali chipset is slow, yes it's a little slow than AMD760 but it's rock stable so it's ok, also u can get pc2400 cas2 ddr n use it at 150mhz fsb, u will be really fast. everything else again was ok with motherboard, I didn't have any problems I got with bloody via chipset. But there is 2 issues I couldn't solve. One is it has weird ide transfer performance problem, for ex when using ghost, with all same conditions, it dumps with 80 mb, u try again or restart n try this time it goes with 320 mb which is the must be level. I'm not sure if this is a issue with ali chipset or asus bios. Second problem is, that mainboard is running cpu hot, yes hot. there is min +10degrees with via boards, this is probably north bridge and transistors are making cpu more hot. So u better buy a good copper big heatsink. Hope could help. Btw u r asking of DDR n we dunno know yet if via's new kk266 ddr chipset has problems, so u better search for it n don't be in a rush

[Four and Twenty 0]

if u wanna do a dual p3 this board would be really nasty. I almost bought it but i decided to wait for dual p4s cause my PIII 500 is fine for now

[Four and Twenty 0]

o yeah here is the link

 

http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderi840_p.html

[shineon134 0]

I am running my main system on a asus via chipset and am curious. What is the compatibility problem with the SBLive and the via chipsets. The reason i ask is that i have a problem with windows XP everytime i try to install this thing i have problems. My system is as follows:

 

asus a7v

athlon 1.3

1.1 gig of ram

SBLive

3Com NIC card

geforce 2 ultra

adaptec scsi card

yamaha 72X tru-X cd-rom

sony cdrw

iomega zip250 IDE

2 western digital hard drives

 

Everytime i try to install the RC1 of windowsXP the install program starts to copy files then it restarts the computer for no reason during the process. I can not figure it out i have not tried to remove all the cards yet i just went back to windows 2000 because i know i dont have any problems with that. I would love to get windows XP running great because for the little time i had it installed i liked what i saw.

[Ranma_Simon 0]

I've absolutely have no problem with my MSI VIA M/B on Win Xp!

All peripherals finds correctly, Sound Blaster Live works perfectly, Ata 100 is now native on Xp, all works great!!

Xp on Msi mainboard seems works well.

See ya!

[Dirty Harry 0]

dunno where the big headache is with via chipsets but perhaps they are quirkier than some others. The Ali Magic is suposed to perform slow so I wouldn't go for that. Personally I believe that if you want the newest and greatest (1400Mhz Athlon + DDR mem)you will encounter some trouble, regardless of chipset. Remember how the BX chipset mobo improved over the years?

 

On my part I'm getting the Abit KG7-Raid (AMD 761 chipset) and a KA7 1400/266 as soon as I get it, hopefully next week (true since june, but now I have a est delivery date at least). To me that board looks like the hottest stuff around and the candidate No:1 for king of DDR O/C boards. Check this link: http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/mainboards/abit/kg7/

Hell, maybe I'll just frame it and hang it on the wall...

 

I'd advice against PC2100 memory, the few bucks you spend extra to get 2400 is well worth it.

 

H.

[PrinceAli0 0]

RussellWild

 

Your thoughts are taken well, but remember via has a turnaround time of like 6 months, look at the KX133, where is it now, no updates, less and less driver support, less motherboard bios updates. I've abandoned mine already, the same will happen for all the ddr chipsets by VIA, i think they refuse to take in mind the customers. I have had many successes and many failures with their chipsets. I own many different pc and I have to say the most stable still seems to be the good old BX chipset from intel. That chipset has had time to mature, in todays rush to bring out the greatest and latest hardware support chipset makers have forgotten the customer. AMD doesn't seem to care as it just puts something out for its new processors to run on, but can you blame them as they just want to make chips. VIA just wants to be at the top, ALI is playing catchup, and SIS is tweaking thiers out. My last hope for the AMD Processor is the NVIDIA chipset, I think its the only one that has potential, but we all thought that with the VIA KX133. Oh well, even though I respect the AMD Processor in my honest opinion I believe Intel will edge out with the best performance as they seem to continualy update and tweak their chipsets for the customers. Well thats just my two cents, like it, hate it, or forget it.

 

PrinceAli0

[oaydin 0]

I hear u prince about BX, yes it was all the way problem free stable, also even it's a old technology it's still best performing chipset for PIII, but when I got my kt133a mobo, before noticing bugs, all I noticed was performance, it was way faster than intel.

Now I'm still confused, I don't understand why they can't put out a chipset good as bx n fast as kt133a

but we can't keep with old mobos, we have to update

n even there will be bugs existing, I won't give up from AMD

Btw, about nvidia, I won't give a shxt to them, they are becoming what intel was once. I was using elsa gf2 ultra, yes it was fast with benchmarks

but when I sold it n got a radeon than I saw how 2d quality is good, also games are running smooth n looking better, yes it's slow under benchmarks but as I said I don't care about scores anymore

imho

[infinity9 0]

Wow talkin about the blind leading the blind.. Believe this man, if you buy any computer product you are vunerable to any type of strange problems/compatibility issues. There is not perfect piece of hardware and Intel has had just as many problems as Via, "cough" 820, and there is no magical chipset to take you to fairy land of computers that work perfect. The fact is, ever new generation of chipsets there are some that work better that others. With Via you take chances of undiscovered compatibility problems due to their quick schedule to get new products out, AMD has not so hot driver support, this also goes for Ali, who also has some strange compatibility problems. SiS, are you kidding me? this is the chipset used in 2/3 of PcChips motherboards (the worst motherboard i have had the misfortune to work on). If you want a simple computer to work simple get a mac

 

i9

[PrinceAli0 0]

Blind leading blind??

 

Dude I've been in the PC business all my life and take it from me and anyone who builds pcs there is way more stability for the intel chipsets. There are no 4-in-1 bullsh*t and no major driver issues that will leave you with a BSOD in any OS you use 9x all the way to XP. Just remember that all major PC makers are still using the intel based PCs as their flagships for a reason, its less of a headache. Beleive me I'm and AMD supporter all the way I've got 5 of them in my house including my 1200mhz tbird running all on the VIA Chipset, it rocks, the only intel in my house is my server cause I'd rather have something more stable running at that level. For a starter or someone looking for less maintenance they would be better off taking the intel path. If you haven't read some of the reviews or worked on a SIS DDR Board you should say anything yet, performance wise it works better than a VIA based chip, but hey support may not be there. Regardless support isn't there for the VIA Chipset, so no road is safe. In my honest opinion if I was a newby I'd get an Intel 933MHz and an ASUS CUSL2 with some Mushkin SDRam and just go with that cause you'll get no problems there running any os.

 

Just my 2 cents.

PrinceAli0

[oaydin 0]

the thing I wonder why isn't there any real working QUALITY CERTIFICATE. I mean USA laws can push companies to test every thing about hardware before selling it

ok I don't mean with every software on planet but was it so hard for via to test if their 686b had ide problem ?

yeah that was really easy

if a law would exist like that we would breathe easier