Best 266MHz XP mobo?

[Guest]

So chaps.

Thinking about upgrading with a new mobo/cpu/ram combo and can't decide on mobo so i thought i'd start a discussion on the subject, i'm sure there are others in the same quandry.

Up till now, my 1st choice has been the GA-7DXR, its got lots of extras (including a dual bios, which is nice) and gigabyte have always been good to me.

I want something 266MHz compat (since its all getting pretty cheap and i can get the cpu and RAM for like £80!), but i want it XP compatible too for the future.

But then I hear about this new Nvidia nforce chipset. Although no mobo's are available in the UK yet with it, i'm prepared to wait if its worth it.

Then I start thinking about Asus for quality and my head starts hurting.

Be very interested to know what you guys think.

Cheers

<b>If it were up to me, twinings would make coffee</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by elphls on 11/07/01 02:41 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[o1die]

I'm using the shuttle ak31 version 3.1, and the performance is very good. I had to use the cmos jumper to get it to boot up with the xp, but no problems after that. It will run at 145 fsb, but with 2 different brands of ddram, I set it back to 138 for better stability. If I had the bucks I would get the Asus A7V 266-E.

 

[Guest]

Cheers, hadn't considered that one. Had a look at <A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/ddr266/a7v266-e/index.html" target="_new"> the specs </A>. Its got RAID, 100LAN, proAGP, etc.

The only thing that the Gigabyte beats it on is the dual bios. Maybe I don't need it, but i did destroy my GA-71XE six months ago, i think because of a faulty flash prog.

Cheers for the suggestion matey

<b>The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.</b>

 

[pvsurfer]

No arguement that dual BIOS is a nice feature (which only Gigabyte seems to offer), but at this point in time, KT266A is a smarter choice than AMD760. So why not consider <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/products/7vtxh.htm" target="_new"> this</A>?

<b>God bless the <font color=red>U</font color=red><font color=white>S</font color=white><font color=blue>A</font color=blue></b>

 

[upec]

There is a lot of manufacturer going to come out with their KT266A offering. I will wait for review from tomshardware before I decided which one to buy.

 

[DaveGOD]

my GA-7VTXH is on its way. i was thinking about the GA-7DXR too but i saw a horde of posts that had it in the title and i thought ah heck that...

7VTXH is only missing raid as i can see, and i read somewhere youre a lot better off getting a seperate Raid controller card (and i dont want it yet anyway).

edit:
"but i did destroy my GA-71XE six months ago, i think because of a faulty flash prog." - you might be able to fix that, if its an AMI bios DL the correct flash rom and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM, stick it on a floppy and switch on... should flash the bios, i had to do that on the comp im on now (see a post about a week or two ago by me "beep beep beep comp dead" or something).



"Bring out the dead..."
"I'm not dead yet!"
"Yes you are!"<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by DaveGOD on 11/08/01 11:03 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

pvsurfer: cheers, that's a good alternative. I'll check out if the bios updates are fixing anything important and if not, i don't need them or a dual bios. Flashing scares me since my "incident".

DaveGOD: I sorted it by sending it back to Giga-byte who replaced the bios chip and flashed it with the latest version for me. I'll remember that suggestion for (god forbid) next time though.

I am confused though by <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/products/7vtxh.htm" target="_new">the giga-byte specs</A>. I must be being stupid, but how come it supports a 266MHz CPU and the bus speed on this board says "FSB adjustable by BIOS up to 161MHz", is it just that i'm forgetting about the multiplier?

<b>The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.</b>

 

[DaveGOD]

im no expert but i think 266 is on the cpu, and the 160 is the mobo bus... different things. i was reading something recently thatd explain it well but no idea where... i think the 160 is normally 100? uh maybe lol

"Bring out the dead..."
"I'm not dead yet!"
"Yes you are!"

 

[IntelConvert]

...how come it supports a 266MHz CPU and the bus speed on this board says "FSB adjustable by BIOS up to 161MHz"

Before OC'ing, the FSB is actually 133MHz, but when 'double-pumped' (DDR) it becomes (in essence) 266MHz.

 

[Raskall]

Check out the <A HREF="http://www.abit-usa.com/eng/product/mb/kr7a-raid.htm" target="_new"> kr7a-raid </A> from ABIT. It's got some really nice specs.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, nice board. I especially like the 4 IDE ports. That means I can have my two HDDs, DVD and CDRW all on seperate IDE ports, that should speed up things a bit (especially on-the-fly burning).

I still don't quite get this FSB thing. So, the FSB is at 133, but because the mem is DDR, it goes at 266. But that just means the mem gets written to and from at 266, doesn't necessarily mean the FSB can handle 266 transactions between that memory and the CPU for instance.

Is my logic flawed?

<b>The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.</b>

 

[bgates]

The new 266A Abit board is a full $100 more then the others. Might as well just get an Epox then, since the whole idea of getting an AMD is to get max speed while saving $$$.

 

[Raskall]

Here's a short explanation of the DDR thing... Normally, memory sends signals at a rate of one per clock cycle. This is refered to as SDR (Single Data Rate). DDR is an old technology that's just now being applied to the desktop computer. With DDR (Double Data Rate) the memory sends signals on the rise AND fall of the clock cycle. So even though the clock says 133MHz, the memory is operating essentially at 266MHz. Does that clear up the confusion a little bit?

 

[Guest]

Just seen a post on the cpu area slating the KT266A.

I'm swinging back toward the 7DXR. The <A HREF="http://www.epox.com/html/english/products/motherboard/ep-8kha+.htm" target="_new">Epox EP-8KHA+</A> seems good, but i've had no experience with Epox boards and it just doesn't have the features of the gigabyte. Plus, i'm still concerned about <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new">this post</A>.

<b>The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.</b>

 

[Raskall]

I would tend to agree with you on shying away from the Epox. It really doesn't have all that much to offer anyway. Have you looked at the Abit KG7-Raid or KG7-Lite? Those are both great boards also. They're using the AMD761 chipset though instead of KT266A. I personlly like having onboard RAID. It realy speeds things up.

 

[Guest]

Raskall: IC, that makes it more clear. But i'm still dubious. I can't see how it is an advantage to have the mem running at 266 when it can't be used at that speed cos the buss is at 133, the CPU can't tell it to execute 266 operations a second, so what's the point?

Thanks for the ABit tip, I'm edging toward the <A HREF="http://www.abit-usa.com/eng/product/mb/kr7a-raid.htm" target="_new">KR7A-RAID</A> now, looks like a heck of a board!

<b>I never <i>was</i> that good with hardware theory</b>

 

[Guest]

ps.

Has anyone actually <i>got</i> one of these mobos and is running XP on it? It'd be nice to know that they are currently compatible as i've seen a few stories of incompatibility. They seem like individual mobo unit problems, but just in case. Anyone?

<b>I never <i>was</i> that good with hardware theory</b>

 

[Raskall]

A little more on DDR. Maybe this will help a little more... This is where the North and South bridge come into play. The North bridge is the one your CPU and memory is on (also called frontside bus). By speeding it up, you're letting the CPU move the information from the L1/2 cache (which is just temporary storage)to the main memory. Normally, there's a bottle neck when the CPU has done tons of calculating, because it needs to wait for clear cache to store the results of calculations in. So by speeding up the FSB, the cache can move stuff to memory faster, preventing the CPU from needing to wait for cache to open up.. Clear as mud? =)

You can't go wrong with Abit. Enjoy your upgrade.

 

[Guest]

Ok, I think I see. So the CPU works at 266MHz, the mem works at 266MHz and the FSB is (in old speak) a 133 (which is what the manuf quotes) but it actually <i>is</i> 266, because its able to shift data twice in every clock cycle?

So why don't the manuf start quoting FSB speeds of 266?

Cheers for the luck

IF(fix_car)<=£400
fix_car;
buy_mobo;
ELSE fix_car;
cry;
END

<b>I never <i>was</i> that good with hardware theory</b>

 

[Raskall]

Lol, that's a nice little function... The reason they don't say it's a 266Mhz bus is that the bus is still only clocked at 133Mhz. So is the the memory and CPU technically. If you imagine the clock as making a sign wave (up down up down) normally the CPU just sends stuff to momory on the "up". With DDR it's sending stuff on the "up" and "down", but the clock is still beating at the same pace, hence it's still 133Mhz.

IF(fix_car)<=£400
fix_car;
buy_mobo;
ELSE buy_mobo;
buy_more_memory;
walk_to_work;
END

 

[Guest]

LOL, 10 miles is walkable, but i'm not sure i'd keep this marvelous belly!

<b>I never <i>was</i> that good with hardware theory</b>

 

[bgates]

Yeah, the Abit board looks good...but as I said before, it's like $199. Search for it on Pricewatch.

If you're gonna spend that much, might as well get a nForce board that comes with the best sound card out there. Not like you can hear much difference with it though, but still...it's one less thing to buy.

yea.

 

[mbetea]

i have the gigabyte ga-7vtx-p w/ xp1700(volcano 6cu). it's a nice setup, i like it. the only thing i would like is a bit more features in the bios, more contorl over pnp, acpi. personally the only board that looks to be coming out or is out with the kt266a that i would take over this is maybe, maybe asus's a7v266-e. but this is setup fine, so i ain't gonna touch it.

well if luck is a lady, it explains why i have no luck :frown:

 

[Alexis]

Bgates: If you're gonna spend that much, might as well get a nForce board that comes with the best sound card out there. Not like you can hear much difference with it though, but still...it's one less thing to buy.
I'm waiting for people to say me that, nForce finally doesn't differentiate a great deal from other chipsets, to spent my money on Abit. But I hope to be wrong
A.

 

[Guest]

What is the difference between kt266a and nforce chipset? which is better?
for the kt266a, my choice is Abit or Asus.



I know Intel is good, but I have no money. So I love AMD.