Hi people, I'm building a couple of PC's. Problem is I can't decide on a mobo, which would also dictate my cpu choice (less of a concern for me). To tell you the truth, if Intels BX chipset supported AGP4x it would be a no brainer for me. BX is still the "compatibilty" king. Unfortunately I'm a forced to chose from newer chipsets from Intel & VIA that I really believe are not clear & decisively superior to "good old" BX in EVERY WAY. Considering the age of the BX chipset, I find this really dismaying. I also have become very accustomed to literally plugging in any PCI card I need & having it work without problems. Now the 2 VIA chipset boards that I thought about using are out of the question (even though they are "good" boards) because I find they are pretty much all the rage in the forums (not only here) regarding problems/incompatibilty issues. Also, I think Intels 815E chipset betters BX in only some parameters, while is inferior in others. Am I totally out of line with my opinions/thoughts or is there some validity in my ramblings?
Thanks to anyone that takes time to repond & I wish everyone a very Happy New Year!

I think the 815E betters the VIA chipset for the PIII in all areas, unless you want dual processors, which the 815E won't do.

Suicide is painless...........

I cant argue with you on the BX chipsets, I think theyre pretty special too, Yes everybody is talking about k7 boards and T-Birds,and there does seem to be compatability issues, but they seem to be pretty well documented, I have 3 friends who have Athlon systems, and none of them have any probs,I also think that theres life in Intel yet, It wasent that long ago that they were the only one, and I think that made them complacent, there may not be a lot thats good coming out from intel at the moment, but as Jack Palance said, "Day aint over yet"


So long and thanks for all the fish

Well, you just sytematically eliminated every chipset out there. the bx is good, AGP 4X is way overrated hardly anything uses it. Run 3dmark 2000 once at agp4x and then at agp 2x and you will see what I mean. Yeah, there are alot of threads out there about the via chipsets, but you have to eliminate alot just to the fact these are the motherboards that first time system builders are using. Your not going to see alot of people that use the I840 and rambus in here ( does anybody for that matter) so who's to say if they too have issues? the biggest reason you see so many post on the via chipset is not really the fault of the chipset at all. For instance browsing this forum you will see alot of post's on the ASUS a7v. What people fail to understand is the way in which that boards assigns its irq's to certain pci slots and also shares them with its onboard devices. If these people would simply read the manual 3/4 of thier probelms (if not all) would have been avoided.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

btw the fact that the bx does not support AGP 4x is not an issue to worry about however, the fact it does not support a 133 mhz front side bus while keeping the pci bus in spec is more of the problem.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!