Eye Tyrant
First Post
Thanks again guys, and yes Irda, RAM is definitely on the list...
Help me find a new motherboard
- Thread starter Eye Tyrant
- Start date
Psionicist
Explorer
Irda Ranger said:
Are you kidding me? ASUS used to be good. Now, they are not. They make messy, overpriced boards with low quality components and sell them with their brand name they have gotten from making quality motherboard before. Have you seen the voltage regulation on recent ASUS boards? What the heck is up with that? The voltage plane is NOT where you cut curners, which ASUS apperantly does. Recently they have been using these small FETs and a couple of... what? Three-four? larger caps (say 3300uF)? You call that stability? The P4 VR spec specifically states there should be atleast 7 big caps there. It's the same with Athlon boards. They cut corners and make worthless crap that, although work, is not engineered properly.
Shame on them.
To answer the thread creators question, I'd suggest you to upgrade the whole system -or- get an older KT266A board or so cheap from ebay or refurbished from newegg until you can upgrade the whole thing.
Irda Ranger
First Post
Psionicist said:
Are you kidding me? ASUS used to be good. Now, they are not.
</SNIP>
Shame on them.
To answer the thread creators question, I'd suggest you to upgrade the whole system -or- get an older KT266A board or so cheap from ebay or refurbished from newegg until you can upgrade the whole thing.
Well, it is clear that Psionicist has kept up on this more than I have. I will admit that I am basing that on past experience, and I have not personally reviewed any ASUS boards lately. That's why I recommended the Ars forums. Great place for up to date stuff.
As for the recommendation, its a good one. If you have the money to get RAM, I would upgrade the RAM and the Mobo. If you don't want to upgrade both, the KT266A was a good chipset. Maybe Psionicist can give you more specific recommendations as to makers and models.
Irda Ranger
Psionicist
Explorer
Irda Ranger said:
Don't sweat it, it's just that I get a little bit over myself in hardware discussions.
If we compare Asus with say Supermicro or any other server motherboard manufacturer... Asus motherboards are engineered to work and have great performance. And they succeed with that. However, they underdesign their circuits. Of course the motherboard will work, but in case of ripple or anything that can cause a singel field effect transistor or cap to die, the whole system will probably fail to boot.
Supermicro on the other hand (as well as Intel), usually overdesign their boards, which is the opposite of above. Compare it to an airplane with 2 vs 4 rotors (more expansive but more safe), or something like that.
As for motherboard recommendations, there are lots of great and cheap Athlon motherboards today. I can give you two recommendations.
One, you get a good board that's perfect for your setup, that's fairly cheap, have good performance and will work just fine until you upgrade your whole system. I can recommend Abit KT7A (or KX7). It's based on the KT266A chipset for PC2100 DDR RAM.
On the other hand, you can get a very powerful motherboard that you really don't need with the current CPU and RAM, but that will get you headroom for future CPU and RAM upgrades. I can recommend Epox 8RDA+ based on the nvidia nForce 2 chip.
If I were you, get the Abit motherboard, save your money and build an Intel Pentium 4 setup when you can afford it. They have better second hand value (so you can sell it after a year or so without loosing that much money) and you cannot really go wrong with the intel chipsets. They are stable as ****!
For the record, my current toy is an P4 2.4 Ghz overclocked to 3.2 Ghz, with DDR at 450 Mhz or thereabouts, seated on an Abit motherboard (it7-max2 v2.0). This thing FLIES!
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Eye Tyrant
First Post
Hmmm.. Thank you all, Psionicist, Irda... I would very much like to upgrade the entire system, but don't hink that is feasible just yet... I'm just trying to get things stable on my machine, this Abit board nixes all gameplay with it's VIA chipset, not to metnion one of the DIMMs is dead. My WinXP wants more RAM, so that is a necessity for sure... really all I need is a board that will accept my video card/sound card and chip, and then go get some more RAM and I should be good... Does this sound right??
Eye Tyrant
First Post
I'm looking at this right now... Any more thoughts? Is this gonna be a good direction to go? Of course I'll switch to DDR RAM (at least 512mb, probably a gig though)... Thoughts comments? If I'm not mistaken, this will allow me to use my Athlon CPU, but be able to upgrade that later...
Asus Board Specs
Asus Board Specs
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Psionicist
Explorer
Eye Tyrant said:
That's a pratty good choice. Asus older boards are very good indeed.
Eye Tyrant
First Post
I guess my question should be, with this board and my chip, along with about 512mb DDR 2100, should things be able to function properly? Remember, it's only a gig Athlon T-Bird...
I have around $200-250 to blow on getting things stablized... What would you do with my current configuaration?
I have around $200-250 to blow on getting things stablized... What would you do with my current configuaration?
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Psionicist
Explorer
Ristamar said:
Do you know what you are talking about, or have you just chosen one brand that "rocks" because the hardware scene is to big for you to monitor?
Jesus.
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