AMD XP Board?

[Guest]

I am currently looking for a mainboard for an AMD XP system. I have looked at the IWill XP333, and a few others, but I am having quite a time narrowing down which board performs the best.

I want DDR333 and ATA133 support, which limits my AMD options considerably. Can anyone recommend which board would be best for those specifications?

Thank you.

 

[FatBurger]

The XP333 is the only one that would fit the bill. I'm not sure why you think ATA133 is important, though.

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[pastorjay]

I just got the gigabyte 7vrxp. Great board! Asus also has the kt333 board out now, as well as MSI. Just look at pricewatch.

 

[FatBurger]

They don't natively run the RAM at 166MHz, and I don't believe they have ATA133, either. Those were the two requirements.

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[pastorjay]

My gigabyte has ata133 support as well as raid. I am fairly positive that the Asus and MSI boards do as well. My gigabyte has a bios setting for the mem setting. These are sweet boards!

 

[FatBurger]

Can it run the RAM at 166MHz with the CPU at 133MHz?

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[pastorjay]

Yes, it sure can!

 

[FatBurger]

And what memory bandwidth scores do you get in Sandra? Just curious.

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[Rob423]

dragon+ is a good XP board...

Once you go AMD, You never Go back!!

 

[Jablumen]

I have ordered the Gigabyte 7vrxp as well and expect delivery in the next day or so. I can't give you my Sandra score yet, but you can check out THG's <A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q1/020220/kt333-14.html" target="_new">here</A>.

John

Ain't this fun!

 

[Guest]

wait a month and KT333A will be released, it will support agp 8x and be better

 

[cellbiogeek]

If you're thinking about getting the XP333 I would first go to amdmb.com and check out the forum for Iwill boards. Iwill has yet to work out the bios for complete stability for this board.

 

[pastorjay]

Rumor has it there will be no kt333a. Also, AGP 8x is useless at this time, there are no video cards that use it yet.

 

[IntelConvert]

A friend of mine just received his Gigabyte GA-7VRXP, so I went over to check it out. That is one fantastic board when you consider the features you get for the money!

ATA133 IDE, Promise ATA133 RAID controller, Realtek 10/100 LAN, Creative (CT5880) Sound, USB 2.0, and Dual BIOS. He paid $138 for it at Newegg.

 

[FatBurger]

You're right, that's not bad at all. Too bad the performance isn't any better than KT266a, but it's not really any more expensive.

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[texas_techie]

RUnning the memory and fsb asynchronously doesnt do you any good. Your memory is puking out info at 166, but is returning to the CPU 133mhz...
Read over at anandtech, poke around the web... from what I have read, unless you get the fsb to 166, running the memory at 166 is pointless.

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[Jablumen]

Got my 7VRXP board w/XP1800+ yesterday, configured it and installed Windows XP with only one hitch (some rather poorly worded instructions for creating the driver diskette needed to install Raid 0 - my first RAID experience). When I get back home tonight and have access to my driver disk again, I'll post the right way to do it in case anyone else is having this problem.

Right now, I'm running the RAM and CPU synchronously at 133 Mhz (Ram at CL2.5), as I am still using my 2x256 MB Crucial PC2100. If others get better results as high quality CL2.0 PC2700 or PC3000 DIMMS become more plentiful and maybe come down in price, I'll consider upgrading the RAM. For now, however, it doesn't seem to me worth another $150 to $160 squeeze out less than a 5% performance gain. Heck, I wouldn't even have purchased the new board and CPI if I wasn't getting flakey performance out of my old MSI KT266/T-Bird 1.33 (if anyone wants this stuff cheap, let me know - otherwise it's off to EBay).

Will try more agressive memory timings and run some benchies after a burn-in period. So far, all looks good.

John

Ain't this fun!