For the last three years I have been an AMD fan. I built my first AMD system three years ago and in fact, I am still using the same old Athlon Slot A CPU @ 700MHz on Asus K7V m/b and 256MB PC133 SDRAM (yes, there are actually people still using classic Athlon CPUs The reason for this as you can all understand was of course a tight budget. Times have changed and during the last few months I was thinking to upgrade, but because my system still satisfies my needs I tried to delay the upgrade as much as I could, in order to build a 'better' system. So I decided to wait until the Barton releases, and then build a super-system with maybe an Asus A7N8X Deluxe m/b, of course .. Barton, Corsair PC3200 XMS memory, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and so on ...!
Unfortunatelly, like most of you I was disappointed by Barton. On the other hand, I can't keep postponing the upgrade since my system seems to have serious problems keeping up anymore. That's why I am looking towards building a low-cost system right now, until Hammer is released (and then spend the big bucks I looked at another post and found some suggestions for ECS K7S5A, AMD Athlon XP 1700+/266 FSB, CRUCIAL 256MB PC2100 DDR. What I am thinking is if I choose this mobo, then future CPU upgrades will be limited only to Athlon XP 2400+ so I would prefer something that supports a 333MHz FSB (this must really be a system that can keep up until Hammer is out and widely available, so I feel it's not right to limit my upgrade options only to 2400+, sure 1700+ is ok for now but who knows what can happen in the next few months). Having in mind that I am an Asus fan (despite the extra cost) I thought of choosing Asus VIA A7V333 instead of ECS. What's your suggestions for a low cost mobo that offers 333MHz FSB support?
Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
Unfortunatelly, like most of you I was disappointed by Barton. On the other hand, I can't keep postponing the upgrade since my system seems to have serious problems keeping up anymore. That's why I am looking towards building a low-cost system right now, until Hammer is released (and then spend the big bucks I looked at another post and found some suggestions for ECS K7S5A, AMD Athlon XP 1700+/266 FSB, CRUCIAL 256MB PC2100 DDR. What I am thinking is if I choose this mobo, then future CPU upgrades will be limited only to Athlon XP 2400+ so I would prefer something that supports a 333MHz FSB (this must really be a system that can keep up until Hammer is out and widely available, so I feel it's not right to limit my upgrade options only to 2400+, sure 1700+ is ok for now but who knows what can happen in the next few months). Having in mind that I am an Asus fan (despite the extra cost) I thought of choosing Asus VIA A7V333 instead of ECS. What's your suggestions for a low cost mobo that offers 333MHz FSB support?
Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.