Help me find a new motherboard

[Eye Tyrant]

I am looking to replace my motherboard here in the next week or so. I haven't kept up with these things over the last year or so though and I need a little advice in finding a new board.

System Specs:

Abit KT7a Raid (Which has never liked my Video Card)
Athlon 1Ghz
192mb Kingston SDRAM (PC133)
Hercules Prophet GeForce II MX 400
Sound Blaster Live!
Western Digital 20Ghz HD (ATA 100, I believe)
DVD, CD Burner, and 1.5 too of course

Now, my board needs an upgrade, and I plan to get some new memory (probably DDR, I guess).... Hit me with some advice folks!!

 

[gariig]

Are you getting a new chip? I don't think the newer boards are compatible with the older Athlons. However, the bang for buck board right now is the Epox 8rda+.

Gariig

 

[Eye Tyrant]

I wasn't really planning on a new chip, but I guess I could look into it...

 

[Hollywood]

Getting a new motherboard won't gain you anything really unless you are planning to upgrade your CPU and memory, or your current motherboard is broken. And unless you are getting more memory, i.e. upgrading to 256 which is min. for Win2k/XP and is a solid amount of WinME, going to DDR memory won't get you much in terms of performance with your current CPU.

Generally, you don't upgrade a motherboard unless you are upgrading the CPU and memory. If so, Epox 8rda is a good board, boards by Asus are really solid too. Abit board can be a bit fickle at times.

 

[Eye Tyrant]

Yeah, my Abit board is broken... It will not play any games for me... Apparently a problem with my Video Card and the VIA chipset... I've never been able to hammer it out, so I figured just getting a new board would work, along with some memory... But perhaps now, maybe just a new "old" board and the new memory??? Any suggestions for an Asus board that I can use this Athlon on and just upgrade to about 512 mb of RAM??

 

[Eye Tyrant]

Yeah, my Abit board is broken... It will not play any games for me... Apparently a problem with my Video Card and the VIA chipset... I've never been able to hammer it out, so I figured just getting a new board would work, along with some memory... But perhaps now, maybe just a new "old" board and the new memory??? Any suggestions for an Asus board that I can use this Athlon on and just upgrade to about 512 mb of RAM??

 

[Irda Ranger]

Yeah, with your present CPU and RAM, there's not a whole bunch you can do.

Think about an upgrade path when you buy a new motherboard. It may not like your CPU and RAM, as they are a little old. Especially the RAM. RAM is cheap though.

There are several sights I would look at.

PriceWatch ... if you aren't using this site, you are paying too much. Watch out for fly-by-night vendors though. Check out vendor ratings at the various rating sites.

ArsTechnica ... check out their Complete Do-It-Yourself System Guides. They are a good benchmark for what is good and reliable right now. Also, ArsTechnica has a user forum that with a more active community than even ENWorld. Search around the forums for some advice, I guarantee you will find some good input. It doesn't cost anything to use the forum, but you might need to register.

AnandTech ... this is a great site, and they often run head-to-head motherboard competitions for speed and stability.


ASUS is definately my favorite motherboard maker at the moment. I find that Abit tries to puch the envelope a little too much, and ends up making slightl unstable boards.

The NForce2 is the best Athlon chipset on the market right now. The built in GPU is better than the video card you have right now as long as you have two sticks of RAM (it uses one of the memory channels as the Video-RAM). If you want to save a little money, go for an older NForce board. Its onboard video and sound are comparable to what you have now, so you could free up a couple slots, and you would be guaranteed interopability.

ASUS makes great boards of both generations. MSI is good too.

Ok, I guess that's enough for now.

Irda Ranger

 

[Eye Tyrant]

Thanx Irda, I ahd looked at the Asus with the on board GPUs... I think I may just go that route. But what about my Athlon, is that going to cause any problem? Can I continue to use it or do I need to upgrade that as well?

 

[Irda Ranger]

The Athlon will work fine, you just won't be able to use the faster system bus available on the newer motherboards.

All motherboards for Athlons nowadays support 266 Mhz FSB, and a lot of them support 333 Mhz FSB. If whatever motherboard you buy doesn't automatically realize you have an older CPU, you may have to to go into BIOS and choke back the FSB to 200 Mhz.

Other than that you should be good.

You really should upgrade your RAM though. I would suggest 512 MB if you want to run WinXP.

Irda Ranger

 

[jdavis]

Information site
http://www.motherboards.org/
Information site
http://www6.tomshardware.com/


This site sells tons of different motherboards, good place to compare them at.
http://www.insightcomponents.com/ic/index.php

Good prices
http://www.tcwo.com/