3 mobos - which one?

[Guest]

Which mobo would you choose - and why? Should I buy a pc133 sdram mobo or a ddrram mobo?
I going to run an AMD 1333mhz, win 2000k

ABIT KT7A-RAID ATX Socket A / VIA / 6PCI-1ISA-1AGP / IDE100-RAID

ASUS A7V133 ATX Socket A / VIA KT133A / 5PCI-1AMR-1AGP/ IDE100 RAID

ASUS A7M266 ATX Socket A / AMD 761 / 5PCI-1AGP / IDE100 / NIC

 

[Ron_Jeremy]

Well, don't want to start any flame wars, so I'll give you my opinion (others will give their own).
I personally would by the ABIT board. Why? Easy, it's not made by ASUS. This isn't because of performance issues. I'm sure the ASUS boards perform well. It's because ASUS has the worst customer service & tech support of any company on the planet. Now I see you can't even contact them (email or by phone) from links on their site anymore. It's pathetic. They are also "famous" for introducing boards well before they should. Hence, it's common to buy a brand new "just released" board (like I did) from them & a year later it's on it's 5th PCB/BIOS revision. But, I have (unwillingly) become a master at configuring/flashing/updating BIOS Ugly, real ugly.
Considering I've owned a few ABIT BX based boards, I can tell you their tech support returns emails in about 2 - 4 days (usually - they can be slow too sometimes), or you can call them instead if you like. I find this to be way more valuable than the "2 points" higher the A7V might score over the KT7 in some synthetic Sandra benchmark.
If you want to go with AMD 761 based board though, I'd wait a month or 2.

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.

 

[Stick_e_Mouse]

Both Asus boards are great performers. The A7V133 is also very stable and has great overclocking abilities. Go for that if you want SD-RAM. For DDR support, the A7M266 is also a good choice.

Should you go for SDR or DDR??
It depends on you. If you want the latest technology so you can show off to your buddies, go for DDR, otherwise don't bother.

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[o1die]

I vote for Abit, simply because they are the only company that accepted my faulty board back for warranty replacement. The other board makers said I had to send their boards back to where I purchased them. Some venders only have a 30 day return policy, and one I dealt with went out of business. Abit will have an AMD 761 board soon, and may even have one with the new sis chipset. I would wait just a few more weeks if possible.

 

[camieabz]

I'd go for the non-via option.

<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

 

[Guest]

Thanks guys

Two more questions:

I've head that the ABIT have problems with Win 2k - it won't work proberly together, is that right or wrong?

The Asus av7 should quite noisy because of the chipset cooler - is that right?