Which mobo?

[WoLFe]

Right, as some of you may know, i've recently purchased a radeon 9700 .

It runs fine, had alot of trouble with drivers (it came with no instructions) but all is well now...i think.

Anyway, my motherboard and cpu are deff the limiting factor on my pc right now, and i have enough cash to get myself a nice upgrade.

First things first, my motherboard is a asus A7A266-E mobo, with a max fsb and ram of of 266mhz. without a bios update (i hear its complicated, and i've never even seen my bios...enless its that jargon on start up ) my motherboard supports my current cpu max.

well, i'm looking for a ASUS motherboard, with hopefully no onboard goodies (like nforce has a intergrated geforce mx) and no onboard sound. it would need to support at least 333mhz fsb (400 wouldn't be bad) and have at least 2 or 3 slots for DDR ram up to pc 3200.

I am yet to find a suitible motherboard, the nforce 2 looked nice, but i hear bad things, plus i really dislike intergrated/onboard components.

Once my mobo is purchased, a update to a athlon xp...(barton or throughbred?) and some new ddr ram...

I'd want to stick with AMD though, and the board will have temporary support for a standard athlon.

Thanx in advance

[acidrainy]

I'm going to open up my clipboard.txt file that i have in my documents foler.....

Ahh yes, here we go
Abit NF7-S v2.0 with an Athlon XP1700+ DLT3C

Is all you ever need
Pair it up with some twinmos w/ winbond 3200 and off you go!


This is the only AMD combo I ever recommend really. There is a good reason, its just that damn good!! (price/performance wise)

/me waits for the rest of the xp1700/nf7-s cult to arrive, lol

[WoLFe]

what about that abit with a xp2500?

[Ben Rogers]

Depends what stepping XP2500 you get really, most should clock to at least XP3200 speeds with stock vcore though.

I'd get an XP1700 DLT though if you can find a good clocker. The 0308/0311's were very good and sometimes can be found second hand for not that much.

The newer ones seem to need much more voltage to do crazy speeds though.

[Austin]

Particular revision matters little, almost all TbredB (even XP1700+) and Barton (even XP2500+) easily hit 2.1ghz with very normal type voltages (1.60-1.65v). You should find 2.2 - 2.3ghz doable esp if you don't mind upping the ante (risks and heat too) by using voltages around 1.70v. Since the XP1700+ (must be TbredB) are £40 and the XP2500+ (always Barton) are < £70 what does it hurt if you're 'limited' to 2.1ghz?

You'll want a decent HSF too, I rec the Volcano 11 (£15) as it is very cost effective, well built, powerful and can be adjusted so you can decide precisely between speed and noise levels.

We're not in Skt7 days now, onboard stuff is VERY good and esp nForce2 (esp ones with MCP-T / Soundstorm). Not all nForce2 (do note the all important 2) come with onboard gfx and even if they do (GF4MX) it doesn't mean no AGP slot and can be disabled.

As for mobo choices chipset is by far the most important factor. nForce2 are tops esp the Ultra400 ones (400=certified 400FSB, ultra=Dual Channel DRR). However any nForce2 chipsets are top performers and should all offer great tweaking options, even non Dual Channel DDR ones are still fast, stable and great! If you're looking for something cheaper then SiS746FX (333FSB) is as cheap as it gets. Good but lacks any tweaking (o/c'ing) options so be more careful about CPU selection. The SiS748 is the same but offers 400FSB. KT400 are much like SiS746FX but should come with plenty more tweakability. KT600 give you 400FSB.

[WoLFe]

Thanx for that austin, i was thinking of the motherboard below :


http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=43223

Can you tell me what onboard goodies that comes with?

I'd rather it didnt come with a geforce 4 mx intergrated, but onboard sound could be good..that sound storm...better than a old sound blaster live for 5.1? the live drivers cause me a few problems on xp to...

[directhex]

you're running an ALiMAGiK1-based board? run out and buy nForce2 NOW

--jo

[WoLFe]

Originally posted by directhex
you're running an ALiMAGiK1-based board? run out and buy nForce2 NOW

--jo

A what based board?

[Austin]

That's the chipset (the ket part) that your current mobo uses.

http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socketa/a7a266-e/overview.htm

As for the link, I advise against Ebuyer but many people get on fine with them, they may have improved your choice. The Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 is one of the top nForce2 mobos and hence one of the top SktA mobos. This and Abit NF7-S v2.0 are the 2 top mobos. So yes, it's good! £86 is a decent price for it. You should get certified 400FSB, Dual Channel DDR (reqs 2 sticks and boosts perf 5%), PC3200 (DDR400), 8xAGP, ATA133, SATA150, USB2.0, Firewire, locked PCI/AGP, full Soundstorm nVidia audio, great LAN/NIC and all the tweaking options you're ever likely to need. No onboard gfx and it shoudl easily work with your current Athlon (anything > 1ghz). If you want to check out alternate suppliers I find www.dabs.com and www.komplett.co.uk best.

nForce2 mobos which use MCP-T or Soundstorm are WAY better than SB Live and have the lowest CPU usage going! Very capable sound only really bettered by the expensive professional soundcards. SB Live was notorious for causing problems, it used serious amounts of the CPU and totally hogged the PCI bus ... plus it wasn't that good even when it did work. Audigy are better but still largely inferior to MCP-T / SS audio.

[Stringent]

Go Intel .... Abit IC7-G



Just being different.

[WoLFe]

Originally posted by Austin
That's the chipset (the ket part) that your current mobo uses.

http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socketa/a7a266-e/overview.htm

As for the link, I advise against Ebuyer but many people get on fine with them, they may have improved your choice. The Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 is one of the top nForce2 mobos and hence one of the top SktA mobos. This and Abit NF7-S v2.0 are the 2 top mobos. So yes, it's good! £86 is a decent price for it. You should get certified 400FSB, Dual Channel DDR (reqs 2 sticks and boosts perf 5%), PC3200 (DDR400), 8xAGP, ATA133, SATA150, USB2.0, Firewire, locked PCI/AGP, full Soundstorm nVidia audio, great LAN/NIC and all the tweaking options you're ever likely to need. No onboard gfx and it shoudl easily work with your current Athlon (anything > 1ghz). If you want to check out alternate suppliers I find www.dabs.com and www.komplett.co.uk best.

nForce2 mobos which use MCP-T or Soundstorm are WAY better than SB Live and have the lowest CPU usage going! Very capable sound only really bettered by the expensive professional soundcards. SB Live was notorious for causing problems, it used serious amounts of the CPU and totally hogged the PCI bus ... plus it wasn't that good even when it did work. Audigy are better but still largely inferior to MCP-T / SS audio.

Thanks for your help!

But i only have a standard 300watt power supply, that came with my mesh about a year and a half ago, maybe i should get a new power supply?

[directhex]

the Asus A7A-266 series runs the Acer Laboratories Incorporated ALiMAGiK1 chipset, a SDR/DDR combo chipset that makes grown men cry and women miscarry.

[directhex]

a new power supply would be a good bet - more for a reliable brand and solid voltages than the watts (which you'll have enough of). most people like antec, enermax & hiper.

--jo

[Austin]

Thermaltake also have a quiet series which is meant to be very good too. A good branded PSU (see above recs) even at 300W should eb enough but 350W+ is wiser in the long term. An unbranded 400W+ PSU is generally way worse than a good branded 300W ... esp if it came with a case. This may not solve any problems per se but it is very wise to protect and feed your components.

[WoLFe]

You guys are to damn helpful!

I'll take note of those power supply brands, and i found the nforce 2 on komplett.co.uk

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?a...0&GrpID=9&s=sr

Shall i go for it?

one last thing, just how hard is it to install a motherboard? my brother used to work at school fixing and building pc's, so surely if he has moderate skill, a motherboard i am quite familuar with will be a fairly straight forward task to install the motherboard?

(its just me being paranoid.. )

[eldren]

At that price, you could also look at the Abit NF7-S v2:
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?a...0&GrpID=5&s=pl

Most people here would recommend it, though I'm perfectly happy with my Gigabyte GA-7NNXP (Somewhat more pricey, though).

As for the power supply, hold off on buying a new one for now. I'm running my rig (XP1700 DLT3C @ 2.3GHz @ 1.7v, DDR400) off a generic 300W supply (Hey! You try finding a brand-name PSU in this country) and it's perfectly stable.

As for the difficulty of installing a motherboard, it's fairly straight-forward. Your new board ought to come with a guide to installing it. Still, it might be a good idea to keep your brother around, just in case you run into problems.