New Mobo for me! expert opinions please.

[lhgpoobaa]

finnaly gettin around to a major upgrade.
not too sure which motherboard to choose for my new system.

im running win2k, and will mostly be using it for GAMES, movies, music encoding, cdburning, netsurfing etc
For me what i value most is STABILITY followed closely by PERFORMANCE. bear that in mind when replying. (why i moved to win2k)
im gonna get a nice Athie 1200C, ofcourse with the 133mhz fsb.
NOT running anything special like twin monitors or raid arrays, just the usual hard disk, backup hdd, cdrom & burner.
other components to be
gigabyte G.A. 660 plus graphics (yes i know its slow but it will have to do)
sound blaster live player
internal modem
sony 52x cd
ricoh 32x12x10 7125A
ibm 60GXP

not interested in DDR.

*i also might want to fiddle with the multipliers sometime a little later

which of the following motherboards is best for the above setup, bearing in mind any conflicts stability/compatibility issues?
Asus A7V-E
Asus A7V133 raid
Asus A7A266
Abit KT7A
Gigabyte 6VXC7-4X+
Epox 8KTA3
MSI K7T Pro 2A
MSI K7T AMD
MSI K7T Turbo
Iwill VA133

and please, stick to the post at hand. i know my graphics card sucks, and i know the pros and cons of sdr vs ddr etcetc
Thank you all for your input.


This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!

 

[Guest]

Although I am not positive, I believe the Iwill VA133 is a Socket 370 motherboard meant for PIII and Celerons.

I think you meant the IWILL KK266.
This is the motherboard I have running a 1.0ghz AXIA 266fsb o/c'ed @ 1.4ghz.
This motherboard is definately stable with good performance and also not incredibly expensive compared to the ASUS and ABIT mobos.
So I reccommend this board to fit all your needs with room to spare.

<font color=blue>"640 Kilobytes of computer memory ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

A7A266 all the way for stabiity. It performs within a few percent of the best (AMD760) boards, but with the right BIOS is the most stable and compatable platform for the Athlon.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[lhgpoobaa]

isnt that one only DDR though?
DDR is to costly for me At the moment.

This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!

 

[upec]

It supports both DDR and SDR. It has 2 DDR slot and 3 SDR slot.

 

[Guest]

If your thinking of overclocking later i would highly recommend the Abit KT7A-Raid, or just the KT7A, Abit has always made great bios menus to change voltage and multiplier settings with. Also you might look into the Asus A7V133, this board is not as goood as the abit in gaming, but beats the abit in winbench, and everyday applications.

 

[jmycal]

check crucial's website, you'd be surprised at the prices. ddr is no more expensive than sdram.

life is what happens while you are making other plans

 

[Crashman]

It uses both DDR and SDR, it has two sets of DIMM sockets. IF you need new memory and live in the U.S., DDR is cheap right now at Crucial. But this board also supports SDR if you already have it.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[lhgpoobaa]

well... is the A7V133 the same as the A7V-E?
cauz the places round here dont seem to advertise A7V133's

This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

That may be... but im not going DDR and net shopping for a few reasons.
1. i still have to pay in american at almost a 2 to 1 ratio
2. i dont trust the transport
3. they will probably tax it at our end. have done that before!
4. im not a complete peformance freak
5. my old system already has 196mb of PC133 in it (running at 66mhz) . all i have to do is whip it out. and maybe buy another 128mb stick to get 320mb.
maybe in a years time i will go DDR with, by then, one of those kick ass integrated northbridge/southbridge boards or nforce.


This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!