Need mb that kick ass

[Guest]

Hi

Need help on deciding which motherboard to buy.

First of all should I buy a DDR based mb?? - have been told that the performance gain compared to a mb with VIA's KT133A is very small.

If yes - which DDR mb is best ?? Tom's hardware speaks highly about Microstars K7 Master but also EPOX 8K7A + should be really good....help me !!!

Am buying at least a 1200 MHz Athlon Thunderbird and need my board to be very stable but still with excellent performance. I'm going to work with programs (graphics, developer platforms) that really use a lot of ressources.

Which mb should I buy ? K7 Master, Epox 8K7A+, ASUS A7M266..(another one)..????...and should I buy a DDR-based mb??

Please help me.

 

[o1die]

If you read through some of the earlier replies in this forum, the Epox is highly rated. The 8K7A starts at about $120 (pricewatch). I have an Fic ADll board with the AMD 761 chipset, and have had no problems. My 1.2 will run at 1380 (with the right heatsink), and DDR memory is almost as cheap as pc133. In a few weeks, boards should be out with the new Sis chipset, which is a little faster than the AMD 761, but initially, they will probably cost a little more.

 

[FatBurger]

My vote would have to be for the brand-new (came out yesterday?) Abit KG7(-RAID). It has the AMD 761 chipset. Close second would be the Asus A7M266, same chipset.

Abit doesn't have an Ali Magik board, I wonder why?

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[LTJLover]

The decision to go DDR is really up to you. At this point, the DDR solutions are similar in price to SDRAM ones. I upgraded a couple months ago, and back then it was a better choice to go SDRAM for price/performance. I use the Abit KT7A RAID with 2 IBMs RAIDed. It is a sweet setup and can match most comps out there, but if I was goin to upgrade today, I would go with the K7 Master and DDR. If you want, you can wait about a month or so to see what the new offerings from Sis and Nvidia can do in terms of performance.

Basically you can go with the Abit KT7A and PC150 CAS2 SDRAM for a slightly lower price or K7 Master (Epox) for slightly better performance. I doubt you will be able to notice the actual performance difference of the two however. I have heard bad things about the Asus A7M266.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[FatBurger]

What things have you heard about it? You sure they weren't talking about the A7A266? I've heard of reliability problems with that.

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