Need motherboard recomendations.

Well I finally decided to upgrade, and I'm planning on going with a AMD 1.4g, Soundblaster Audigy Titinum, ATI 64 meg Vivo. But I'm lost as to a motherboard. I was thinking either Asus or Gigabyte, but it seems the have sound built on on and I do not want that.

What I'm looking for is some good recomendations.

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.·°Danrak°·.
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[This message has been edited by Danrak (edited October 01, 2001).]

Even if a board has onboard audio, it's easy to disable it... https://forums.windrivers.com/

if you insist on having no onboard audio, buy Abit, but I never thought they were exactly the greatest.

Epox 8k7a(+)/8kha+ (when it is out), or Gigabyte 7DX(R). the parentheses indicate the raid version... https://forums.windrivers.com/

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Mistake #6:
"If we got a new webmaster, you would get permanently banned and your Word Association post would be closed."

Antec SX840, AMD Athlon 1400@1584 STABLE, Epox 8K7A+, IBM 60GXP 40GB, 20GB Maxtor 7200RPM, Plextor 16x10x40, Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD-ROM, Yamaha 8x8x24 Firewire CD-RW, Maxtor 80GB external Firewire hard drive, ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 32MB DDR, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek NIC (blech), 1394 card, Thermalright Sk6 with Thermaltake 31cfm

Ignore what the Monkey has just said https://forums.windrivers.com/ https://forums.windrivers.com/ . You will struggle to find a better board than any of the Abit's. Asus come a close second, but I have had a fair number of returns from them in the past, hence why I will not use them now.

Abit all the way for performance & stability. If you are willing to wait a few weeks for Abit to release a board on the KT266A chipset (probably the KR7A-RAID), you can then be near on certain that you will have the fastest current AMD platform. Abit are always the last to release a board on a new chipset as they tend to iron out any niggly problems before jumping into releasing something. Some people will tell you of incompatabilities, etc, but these are nothing that does not occur on any other board with the same chipset.

Epox, have been one of the worst manufacturers of boards for a lot of businesses I have been in contact with, and Gigabyte do make good solid boards. If you can stretch to an Abit, you will not be dissapointed.

Whatever you choose, stay away from the Ali Magick chipsets, unless you like fiddling to get niggly problems sorted out.

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System Specs
Abit KT7A-RAID (Rock F'n Solid!!!) - AMD Athlon 1Ghz (10x100) - 1024Mb PC133 SDRAM - ATI Radeon (AGP4X) - Maxtor ATA100 30Gb - 2 x Seagate ATA66 (RAID 0 totalling 26Gb) - Toshiba SD-1202M DVD - Plextor PlexWriter 2410A (Buy One!!!!) - Creative Labs SB Live! Value (No Pops , Hiss or Crackles here) - 20" Eizo Flexscan Monitor - Microsoft Windows XP Professional OEM Final Release

Quote:

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<font face="Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva" size="2">Originally posted by Darren Wilson:
Ignore what the Monkey has just said https://forums.windrivers.com/ https://forums.windrivers.com/ . You will struggle to find a better board than any of the Abit's. Asus come a close second, but I have had a fair number of returns from them in the past, hence why I will not use them now.

Abit all the way for performance & stability. If you are willing to wait a few weeks for Abit to release a board on the KT266A chipset (probably the KR7A-RAID), you can then be near on certain that you will have the fastest current AMD platform. Abit are always the last to release a board on a new chipset as they tend to iron out any niggly problems before jumping into releasing something. Some people will tell you of incompatabilities, etc, but these are nothing that does not occur on any other board with the same chipset.

Epox, have been one of the worst manufacturers of boards for a lot of businesses I have been in contact with, and Gigabyte do make good solid boards. If you can stretch to an Abit, you will not be dissapointed.

Whatever you choose, stay away from the Ali Magick chipsets, unless you like fiddling to get niggly problems sorted out.

</font>

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I guess we've all heard different things https://forums.windrivers.com/ I guess you have just had good luck with Abits. Many others I have talked to haven't https://forums.windrivers.com/

Ignore what DW says about EPOX https://forums.windrivers.com/ https://forums.windrivers.com/ They are VERY stable and overclockable, even with mediocrle cooling i've been able to OC 200mhz. I haven't had one blue screen except when i OCed too much. Sorry u had bad luck DW but they are very good.

I agree with you 100% about Alimagik and KT266a though! https://forums.windrivers.com/


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Mistake #6:
"If we got a new webmaster, you would get permanently banned and your Word Association post would be closed."

Antec SX840, AMD Athlon 1400@1584 STABLE, Epox 8K7A+, IBM 60GXP 40GB, 20GB Maxtor 7200RPM, Plextor 16x10x40, Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD-ROM, Yamaha 8x8x24 Firewire CD-RW, Maxtor 80GB external Firewire hard drive, ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 32MB DDR, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek NIC (blech), 1394 card, Thermalright Sk6 with Thermaltake 31cfm

Quote:

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<font face="Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva" size="2">Originally posted by Jpbtennisman:
I guess we've all heard different things</font>

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One big obvious difference here JPB...DW and myself as well haven't "heard" anything. We know from first hand experience with hundreds if not thousands of boards over the years (I've been building systems longer than you've been alive). It's quite ok to say "I've heard some people had problems" but never use hearsay to refute another's first hand experiences....

Danrak, ABIT is always the first choice unless you're looking for a configuration they don't support at present (like a dual XEON P4 for instance....).

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Note to self: Re-index brain cells, database corruption present.

OK...Sowulo & DW are right, I just figured Darren was one of the lucky ones. Listen to them! https://forums.windrivers.com/

Although Epox boards do not suck!

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Mistake #6:
"If we got a new webmaster, you would get permanently banned and your Word Association post would be closed."

Antec SX840, AMD Athlon 1400@1584 STABLE, Epox 8K7A+, IBM 60GXP 40GB, 20GB Maxtor 7200RPM, Plextor 16x10x40, Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD-ROM, Yamaha 8x8x24 Firewire CD-RW, Maxtor 80GB external Firewire hard drive, ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 32MB DDR, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek NIC (blech), 1394 card, Thermalright Sk6 with Thermaltake 31cfm

AMD, No INTEL, No AMD, No INTEL, No AMD, No INTEL.
Oh sorry were talking Motherboards.


For me it goes ASUS first because of personal luck with the boards.
Then ABIT because a rarely have to fix a system with one installed.

But you will be making a good decision if you purchase either.


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https://forums.windrivers.com/ "What works for One person May not work for Another"
God Is My Judge dLagace=DANIMAL

Quote:

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<font face="Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva" size="2">Originally posted by Jpbtennisman:
I guess you have just had good luck with Abits.

</font>

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No it is that I know how to set the Abit boards up!!!! https://forums.windrivers.com/ https://forums.windrivers.com/ The Epox boards that failed were all working fine until the actual boards themselves had capacitor failures or IDE controllers going bad.


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System Specs
Abit KT7A-RAID (Rock F'n Solid!!!) - AMD Athlon 1Ghz (10x100) - 1024Mb PC133 SDRAM - ATI Radeon (AGP4X) - Maxtor ATA100 30Gb - 2 x Seagate ATA66 (RAID 0 totalling 26Gb) - Toshiba SD-1202M DVD - Plextor PlexWriter 2410A (Buy One!!!!) - Creative Labs SB Live! Value (No Pops , Hiss or Crackles here) - 20" Eizo Flexscan Monitor - Microsoft Windows XP Professional OEM Final Release

I've also done well with Abit's. So well in fact I made it my board of choice for my home machine. The KT7A and the -RAID version are great boards, but like Darren says, if you can wait for the KT266A version to come out, you should be pleased.

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Posts look pretty stupid without the signature, so here it is. https://forums.windrivers.com/

I would wait for asus to update their a7v266 to the a7v266a, via changed the northbridge on the kt266a chipset and its supposed to fly!!!

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"Do you hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death." -Agent Smith, The Matrix

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm going to see if I can get my brother to hold off a little so I can get the new Abit. My old computer will be going to him, and he has been complaining constantly that his is too slow. Thats part of the reason for the upgrade.

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.·°Danrak°·.
Coming soon to a web site near you... www.stupidtechtricks.com
Already at a website near you:
www.trickhtml.com
www.freewebarticles.com

From Tomshardware.com: "Pricey Foundations-9 Boards for the Pentium 4"


Abit TH7: Features Galore
Aopen AX4T: A Plate Combats Electromagnetic Radiation
Asus P4T: High Performance
DFI WT70-EC: No Strengths, No Weaknesses
Elitegroup P4ITA: Black Sheep - unusable
Epox EP-4T2A: Good Average
Gigabyte GA-8TX: Very Costly and Slow
MSI MS-6523: Performance Leader, via Overclocking
QDI Platinix 4: Reserved Refinement

I know these boards are not for your AMD CPU but the comments do say something about the companies behind some of the common brands.....

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Note to self: Re-index brain cells, database corruption present.

Just because the ECS (Elitegroup) board that Sowulo noted from a review above did not score well it does not mean their AMD boards are not good..

here is a review on the infamously cheap K7S5A. Onboard LAN, SIS 735, full ATX...$70!

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=112

it Scored a 9/10 on AMDMB and the reviewer noted its value and stability.

It's even faster than my 761-based board :-\

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"I don't care if it's called the Crap-tastic 9000! If it's good, I'm getting it." - Me

Mistake #6:
"If we got a new webmaster, you would get permanently banned and your Word Association post would be closed."

Antec SX840, AMD Athlon 1400@1584 STABLE, Epox 8K7A+, IBM 60GXP 40GB, 20GB Maxtor 7200RPM, Plextor 16x10x40, Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD-ROM, Yamaha 8x8x24 Firewire CD-RW, Maxtor 80GB external Firewire hard drive, ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 32MB DDR, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek NIC (blech), 1394 card, Thermalright Sk6 with Thermaltake 31cfm

Based on personal findings in real life usage (not synthetic benchmarks) by manufacturer:-

• Abit - Solid, fast, reliable, rarely any problems if setup correctly
• Asus - As Abit, but a little less reliable.
• PC-Chips - Not even going to start.....
• ECS - Basically the same company as PC-Chips (Yes PC-Chips distribute all of ECS's boards), and experiences have not been good with reliability whilst using this brand
• Epox - Not that bad, nothing special, some of the SS7 boards were VERY good, but the later boards have not impressed me at all
• Legend QDI - Very Stable, not the best performers, well priced, only ever had to RMA one which was DOA with the secondary IDE. Solid no frills boards
• Gigabyte - Some of their boards are very solid (made a good name for themselves with the BX based boards until the advent of the DualBios which caused more problems than solved). Not too badly priced, but I would choose a QDI over Gigabyte for use in customers units for the reliability factor.
• FIC - I class this company lower than PC-Chips!!!!
• DFI - Not that brilliant but a couple of the older boards were stable.
• Atrend - Similar to QDI but I have had a few more RMA's than I would have liked
• Intel - Very very stable boards with reasonable performance. Not tweakable at all and most definatly not overclockable. If you want as close to 100% stability then an Intel branded board is a must (for Intel based systems obviously)

I have used a lot more boards than this over the years, but these are a few that I have just run off for examples.

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System Specs
Abit KT7A-RAID (Rock F'n Solid!!!) - AMD Athlon 1Ghz (10x100) - 1024Mb PC133 SDRAM - ATI Radeon (AGP4X) - Maxtor ATA100 30Gb - 2 x Seagate ATA66 (RAID 0 totalling 26Gb) - Toshiba SD-1202M DVD - Plextor PlexWriter 2410A (Buy One!!!!) - Creative Labs SB Live! Value (No Pops , Hiss or Crackles here) - 20" Eizo Flexscan Monitor - Microsoft Windows XP Professional OEM Final Release

Darren if I may I would like to add 2 more to your list that I have had good experience with:

1. IWill (AMD)
2. Tyan (Intel, have not worked with the AMD versions)

Though I love ASUS and use the A7V133 myself these two board are very good. The Tyan is not the most o/c friendly critter in the world but rock stable. The IWill is one of the easiest boards I have ever worked with and may be my choice when the next upgrade comes up (hint to my wife for Christmas)! https://forums.windrivers.com/

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Who were the beta testers for Preparations A through G?

also of note, remember that Amptron and PC ware are also PC Chips boards..i have heard of so many people buying these not realizing what they really were! https://forums.windrivers.com/

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"I don't care if it's called the Crap-tastic 9000! If it's good, I'm getting it." - Me

Mistake #6:
"If we got a new webmaster, you would get permanently banned and your Word Association post would be closed."

Antec SX840, AMD Athlon 1400@1584 STABLE, Epox 8K7A+, IBM 60GXP 40GB, 20GB Maxtor 7200RPM, Plextor 16x10x40, Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD-ROM, Yamaha 8x8x24 Firewire CD-RW, Maxtor 80GB external Firewire hard drive, ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 32MB DDR, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek NIC (blech), 1394 card, Thermalright Sk6 with Thermaltake 31cfm

I have been working with computers for 17 years and with PC's since 1992. I have never found a better board than AOpen (www.aopen.com). I have NEVER had a single problem with them. They offer a wide variety of boards from micro to server. They are reasonably priced and sell virtually all components in addition. If you can't find a reseller for the boards you can contact me directly and I can get one for you.

[quote]Originally posted by APCSI:
<strong>I have been working with computers for 17 years and with PC's since 1992. I have never found a better board than AOpen (www.aopen.com). I have NEVER had a single problem with them. They offer a wide variety of boards from micro to server. They are reasonably priced and sell virtually all components in addition. If you can't find a reseller for the boards you can contact me directly and I can get one for you.</strong><hr></blockquote>


I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before...

[quote]Originally posted by kingtbone:
<strong>


I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before...</strong><hr></blockquote>

Me neither, and even the main UK distributors say things about them that turn you away instantly!!!!

I sense that you are worried about more then just who makes it. Make sure you get a decent board made by a very respectable manufacturer that will be able to get it fixed if they messed up. My first choice would be to buy from a store that would allow an exchange if it didn't work, that way you won't have to wait a few months to get it back from RMA. For the manufacturer of the MB, I'd choose ASUS, as I have one and have been fully impressed with it. If not, then ABIT made the MB a good friend of mine uses and he has been quite impressed with it as well. Both come from companies that will not die in a few months and you will most likely have fewer problems getting it repaired or replaced by them. When I made the switch to AMD, I got a DFI MB, which has worked fine for me. I would, however, preferr one of the other two I mentioned.

I've found any Branded hardware to be a better buy in the long run - ASUS, Abit, Epox (Running a Duel P3 on one), IWill - better support and frequent fixes/downloads from there manufacturers website.

Avoid PC-CHIP's like the plague, in fact if you ever do see a PC-Chips board you have permission to drive a large motorised vehicle over it.

On board devices can be easily disabled through the BIOS, and that is not really a concern these days.

EPOX
ASUS