What's the most stable mobo

[SebaVDP]

I am searching for a very stable Motherboard to put an AMD Atlon XP CPU.(with windows XP)
It's very impotant to be stable.
I will use it for Games(Quake,,Warcraft3,Diablo2 ,...), programming (c,c++,delphi,...) and programs (dreamweaver,adobe,...).
I have to use 2 screens.
I was thinking about an asus moterboard with a Nvidia nForce chipset(when it will be available).

What motherboard do I have to use.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by SebaVDP on 11/25/01 10:19 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[o1die]

You'll get at least 3 or 4 answers, strictly personal opinions. I would go with the abit kg7 with the amd 761 chipset for stability. I use the shuttle ak31 version 3.1, and like the extra speed.

 

[Ed_Phoon]

I will recommend Asus or Gigabyte motherboards of course.
Because I'm using it

 

[AMD_Man]

If you want excellent gaming performance and dual-monitor support as well as stability and performance, I would recommend a motherboard based on the Via KT266A along with a Radeon 8500 (a lot of people here WILL disagree with me but please continue reading). First of all, the VIA KT266A is currently one of the highest performing chipsets and it's currently being supported by all the major motherboard manufacturers, such as Asus, Abit and MSI. I'd go with the MSI KT7266 Pro2RU because it includes built in USB2 support. The Radeon 8500 is relatively stable now and will continue to improve throughout this year and next year as is the GeForce3 series. I'm recommending the Radeon 8500 (or 7500, if you can't afford the 8500) to you because it supports dual-monitors and it sports excellent 2D quality for long hours on a Delphi or C++ project (trust me I would know, I can sometimes program for hours and lose track of time and then I'd finish with red aching eyes). I'm betting Crashman and Matisaro would disagree with me but their opinions are also legimate.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[DaveGOD]

haha i bet crashman will disagree, oh yes lol. in a couple of other posts he REALLY seems to hate VIA chipsets because of their pants stability (gives a lot of reasons too), and pretty much everyone agrees VIA chipsets are less stable. however the majority of people disagree on the extent of the stability/compatability issues, and take a more moderate tone. This is also fair enough because for the majority of people they dont get much stability problem at all as the issues seem mostly related to specific other products.

Whilst I notice you specifically say nForce, i'll leave nForce reccomendations for others as I know diddly-squat (other than being dubious that youll find a dual-screen one, without another vid card).

For the alternative chipsets, i disagree about KT266A (dispite having bought one myself) as you specifically state stability and not speed. My take on it is KT266A is currently best for speed, and AMD 761 chipsets for stability. In honesty both differences are very small. There is also SiS 735 (er, i think) but AMD chipset has many more manuf's and of course hence much more supported + more choice. Therefore I suggest AMD 761 chipset. I like Gigabyte but suggest against GA-7DXR as I've seen a fair few posts about that board in this forum, uh, Abit KG7 (RAID option also) seems good but expensive. Theres a new board coming that supports PC2700 DDR apparently, but I'm not even sure about its chipset, nevermind stability. also slightly older boards are generally more stable as theyve had more time to work with them. again, this supports AMD761 chipset argument.

ohh and for graphics card an ATI one best bet proly for the dual-head, i cant remember seeing a GeForce dual head. Consider the Matrox G-something Dual-Head, although that wont be much good for gaming.

Uh, WTF am i writing all that for. well hope it helps


The more I know the more I know I don't know

 

[SebaVDP]

Is I will XP333 a stable mobo?
Is the ALi MAGiK 1 M1647 chipset a good one?

 

[Guest]

Stand clear from ALi a.k.a Acer Lab inc... I have owned 3 motherboards with this chipset and all 3 have failed in one way or another several weeks after being bought.

 

[Take_Out]

In looking for stability, one will generally go for the well-established, highly compatible, conservative, chipsets and motherboard manufacturers. Why even consider a Nforce when little is known about them? I personally would look at ASUS, Gigabyte, Epox and a few others known for stability along with chipsets such as AMD 761/760 or Intel 850 (although I hate RAMBUS) or Intel i845 that are established and comnpatible with a track record that is documentable from trusted sites.
My $.02, Good Luck, Take-Out

"We killed OUR Hitler" - attributed to Paul McCartney (If so, then well done, sir)

 

[Guest]

If you want the best bang for the buck with stability, I would suggest the ECS K7S5A w/ SiS 735 chipset. Its been tested and benchmarked on several sites as being the best performer. I have never owned one myself, so this is only by what I have read. I saw on at my local PC store for 130$ canadian, so thats about 80$ american.

 

[AMD_Man]

That's extremely expensive! I can get the ECS K7S5A for $100CDN or $66USD.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Guest]

What part of the country do you live in, because that was a quote I got from the local pc store, but they aren't the greatest... Either way that board would be a good bet to go with. My friend is getting one this week to replace his MSI K7T266 (the via chipset for HD support sucks for windows 2000 on this board).

 

[stable]

Well, unlike some of the other posters, I actually read and re-read your description and wanted to hit you with a couple of questions.

1) You mention gaming and XP in the same post. I love my XP, but I'm hearing from some of my gamer customers that they like having thier Windows 98 Boot disks around for playing games not supported under XP. You may want to keep that in mind. I have a good hack for running no-cd Diablo II and LOD under XP and it works great (even if it did move my SAVE folder to under my personal profile. I guess XP was worried that someone else would log in and try to use my characters, god forbid).

2) If you are going into dreamweaver, adobe or other multi-thread supported software, I would highly recommend a motherboard with DUAL CPU's, even if you only use 1 of them initially. In this case, I would stick strictly to an AMD chipset for performance and stability. I can't speak for everyone in the group, but when I'm compiling, I love the performance gain of the dual cpu configuration. Of course in a dual CPU config, you can forget about running Windows 98. My question here is how much compiling or rendering are you doing compared to other things?

As for your dual screen scenario, I would look to a product that can really leverage your AGP bus and my personal opinion is the ATI card with a Radeon just isn't it. Reading up on Tom's tests results here will give you a better indication and some side by side comparisons. I would probably go with the Matrox card since many gamer and programmer customers alike have been raving about it, not just in terms of price, but rather video quality and performance.

In summary, if you are a serious web programmer or data compiler, you are really going to want the dual CPU option, even if you don't use it from day 1. If you are doing split screen dual panel, you are going to want a video card that has the horse power to let you multitask without sacrificing performance or video quality.

Just my two cents.

Steve Benoit

Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[AMD_Man]

As for your dual screen scenario, I would look to a product that can really leverage your AGP bus and my personal opinion is the ATI card with a Radeon just isn't it. Reading up on Tom's tests results here will give you a better indication and some side by side comparisons. I would probably go with the Matrox card since many gamer and programmer customers alike have been raving about it, not just in terms of price, but rather video quality and performance.

Are you kidding? All Maxtrox card have extremely poor performance although they do have top notch quality.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[SebaVDP]

I have already Windows XP prof
And I am happy about it. I can play every game I want.
And I will never put windows 98 on it.

I use very much several program at the same time(ex. microsoft visual studio and photoshop).
I never use 3D program --> so I don't have big redering.
It's always little pictures.
So I don't think I need a dual processor.

for the dual screen I will see that problem later.
But I am thinking to put 2 3D cards (g-force3(agp) and g-force2mx(PCI)).
the second screen will only be use for the tools of the program.So only one has to be powerfull.

Seba

 

[Guest]

This is good news to me...

I'm using Windows XP and I just ordered an Athlon XP 1700 from Outpost (special offer at the moment). It's bundled with this motherboard and I was about to ask here if it's a piece of junk but it looks like it's not! The price for the Processor and the MB is 199 dollars.

Concerning the processor, I'm getting the 'Retail Version with Heat Sink Fan' but I see a lot of stuff about Athlons overheating: does anyone know if the fan supplied is going to be sufficient or do I need some kind of extra cooling? I'm using a Dell Dimension P3 800 at the moment and there are no heat problems.

Any answers appreciated...

 

[stable]

The long and short of it is, No, you don't need a different cooling option for the CPU. Actually, using the retail boxed version is the best solution as this is the only way to obtain a factory warranty from AMD. In the case of retail units, you are covered for 3 years and this includes the heatsink fan bundle. Remember, if you use an OEM cpu (non-retail boxed) it has no factory warranty... period.

The other issue here is case cooling to extract the heat out of the system. The best option is to have an AMD thermal type power supply (which simply means the power supply has two fans, one fan to blow out the back, and another fan inside the case that draws the air up and out through the back of the power supply). Finally, if you have other hot running components in your system (like hot drives) you may want to consider a rear panel fan, again to draw heat out through the back of your system.

Steve Benoit


Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[Crashman]

ALi does make the most stable chipset. While the stability of the XP333 has not yet been proven convincingly, the earlier KA266 was a stability champ! So I expect good things from Iwill on the XP333. It's already outperforming the middle of the KT266A pack MSI board (and it's a tight pack). I might be building an XP333 system myself!
The ECS K7S5A has a VERY HIGH stabiity if you get one with no defects. My suggestion is, if you choose this rout, assemble it and torcher it to make sure there aren't any defects, as some guys spend weeks trying to figure out their board only to find it was defective to begin with. I think their defect rate is about 1 in 10, but could be as high as 1 in 5 from reports I'm hearing. But a non-defective unit is a great solution, and they are warranteed.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Guest]

Hi Steve,

Good to hear about the guarantee on the retail boxed Athlon, though I don't know if it'll be valid here in Japan: I'll see when it arrives.

I think I already have a thermal type power supply, - there are two fans on the back, - one of which is on the power supply itself (sucking air into the case) and the other below it (blowing out). Good to be aware of it...

My system is fairly empty so far and doesn't run hot at the moment, but the 80GB hard drive I just ordered might change that.

Thanks for the helpful reply!

 

[dhlucke]

If you get a good ECS K7S5A it's great. Can't offer a single complaint yet. Would be nice to have more overclocking features, but for $60 it's a great deal.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[mbetea]

hehe, matrox card for 3d, hehe..he. i'd love to see that! owning a g550 i can say the quality and 2d performance is great, and for me, that's all i need.

 

[mbetea]

If you are going into dreamweaver, adobe or other multi-thread supported software, I would highly recommend a motherboard with DUAL CPU's, even if you only use 1 of them initially

dreamweaver is multithreaded? must have missed that on the user board. maybe generator (server-side app) or ultradev. dual setup for web work? maybe if you're working extensive databases.

I would look to a product that can really leverage your AGP bus and my personal opinion is the ATI card with a Radeon just isn't it

hmm, that has always been a key point of the matrox cards. they are not a bandwidth hog, but offer great quality and <b>2D</b> performance. dualhead for a gamer, either get a top of the line agp card and a good pci card. or get a new radeon (8500 or 7500) for true multi-display support.

 

[SebaVDP]

Now that I read all this stuff
I am thinking about the EPOX-8KHA+ with a VIA chipset
It is rcommended by AMD.
Some people say that VIA is realy BAD some others say now it's no problem.


Do you think it's right or am I really wrong?


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by SebaVDP on 12/02/01 06:01 AM.</EM></FONT></P>