Another "what mobo"...

[Guest]

I only research this stuff when it's time to build a new computer and it's been (don't laugh) 2 or 3 years, so it's way past time. I don't have a lot of spare cash now, so I'd like to keep it to only what I need it to do for now since in a few months, I'll be making a mac daddy computer for real data crunching. But first, this one needs to churn through a few hundred thousand records in MS Access without bogging down.

I was thinking:
AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz
512 MB RAM
40 GB HD

Questions:
What mobo - I don't want to get the DDR SDRAM for cost reasons, so I don't need one that will take it.
I'm not planning on doing any gaming, so I was hoping I could keep my PCI video card - will that work on new mobos or are pci and AGP mutually exclusive?

Thanks,
Ted

 

[Crashman]

Get the DDR board anyway, DDR is only around $65 for 128MB right now at Crucial!

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

 

[TheSandman]

Yes go for the ddr board the ram is real cheap right now and for the board the msi k7t266 pro starts at $145 on pricewatch.com

SANDMAN
LEAN MEAN KILLIN MACHINE

 

[Tempus]

that board sux. Don't buy anything on the KT266 chipset. If you must go DDR, get the Asus A7M266. Otherwise I recommend the KT133A with PC133 SDR SDRAM. The best one is the A7V133, in my opinion.

- I don't write Tom's Hardware Guide, I just preach it"

 

[blah]

"The best one is the A7V133, in my opinion"... hehe, and all I see on this board is "HELP, my A7Vxxx is blah,blah,blah,blah"... hehehehe

Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[Guest]

Go for the A7M266. It blows every other DDR chipset out of the water and DDR memory is pretty cheap. I just got mine a few days ago an no complaints. Other than having to spend money on the included on-board audio and AMR slot, the board is great.

 

[hatimh]

I'm looking for a similar set up but isn't the K7 Master S (tom's Power Box) better, or is it not available yet?

If it's not available yet or soon I'l just go ahead and buy the Asus A7M266

 

[Guest]

I've heard A7M266 doesn't allow changing the CPU clock multiplier. Is that true?

 

[hatimh]

Is the A7M266 using an AMD 760 chipset? AMD 760 is the better chipset to use for DDR Ram so which mobos use that chipset?

 

[Guest]

A7M266 is based on AMD760, yes. (To be more specific, they have the AMD's Northbridge; the Southbridge is VIA's, as is the case for all Socket A motherboards.)

However, I'm not yet convinced in AMD760 superiority. It might as well be the case, but I'm not sure to what degree the benchmarks in Tom's article are reflecting the difference in chipsets and to what degree they are comparing the memory used. It would also be interesting to test other KT266 based motherboards as they come along.

The more, the merrier!

Leo