ASUS Motherboards....which one? (1 Viewer)

[Rob FM]

I'm looking at putting a 1.7Ghz chip on a ASUS M/B.
Is my only option :
ASUS A7M266 ? it's $150.00
My local computer company says the A7V266 only supports up to 1.4 Ghz chips....are they correct?
So, is my only choice (in the ASUS) the A7M266?
Are there any other GOOD M/B makers..I don't mind spending extra money (up to $250.00)
Thanks for the help guys,
~Rob

 

[James St]

Rob, I have an Asus A7M266 and have been happy with it. The A7V266 which is rated to 1.4Ghz+ shouldn't have any problems running 1.7 cpu. The A7M266 is only rated 1Ghz+ and there are a lot of people running cpu's higher then that. You should also check out Abit and Gigabyte just to name a few.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

If you want Asus, check out the new A7V-266E. The A7M is old-hat now. The 'E' denotes that it uses the brand new KT-266A chipset.
[Edited last by Rob Gillespie on November 13, 2001 at 04:24 AM]

 

[Richard Cooper]

I've got the 266E, and apart from a dodgy temperature monitoring problem (trying to work out if it's hardware or not) it was the easiest install ever (and I've had some easy and some complete nightmare installs!).
I persoanlly like Abit, and detest Gigabyte. It may be a tad unfair to critisise Gigabyte, but I gave up after 3 attempts to get a working board (GA7-DXR).

 

[Rob FM]

Thanks guys, I'll heed your suggestions.
(I'm leaning towards the 266E...what the heck, it's not that much more than the A7M)
Well, off to "PriceWatch.com" to see if I can get a combo M/B - A.M.D. deal!
Thanks,
~Rob
EDIT: Ummm.... they only sell combos of a "SiS835" or a "830LR".... Pricewatch.com
SiS is a 'type' of board, right? -Is a 830LR M/B a brandname?
830LR
Is there something here I'm missing?

 

[Matt DeVillier]

Rob,
Pricewatch is not a good place to look for combo deals. the SIS835 you refer to is a (motherboard)chipset, and the 830LR is a model # of a motherboard made by PCChips (run far, far away from them). For a good price from a reputable vendor on a motherboard/cpu combo check out www.newegg.com and Link Removed
-Matt
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My DVD collection
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[Richard Cooper]

I swear I must be the ONLY person to have had a PC Chips mobo, AND a Cyrix processor (which was even overclocked from 233 to 266!) which was solid as a rock! They don;t have a good reputation. The one I had was right in the middle of the 'fake pipeline cache' fiasco- anyone remember that?

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Nah, you're not the only one Rich. I had a Cyrix 233 running on a PC Chips 'something' baby-AT mobo for two years before I even started to build my own. I sold it to my sister and it's still working fine today.

 

[Sam C]

I had a PC Chips that ran rock solid in the worst enviornment of them all ... In my car ... It was my first mp3 player and it was solid ...
Now on to the Asus ... I have one Asus in my home ... A P3BF which at one time was their primo board ... I have only had one issue and I'll tell you this ... You do not want to have to contact cu service for them ... Getting service was like Helen Keller trying to find a needle in a haystack ...
I also have Tyan & Intel M-Boards ... No problem on any ...

 

[Iain Lambert]

Its worth noting that if you want the A7V-266E to make absolutely sure its the E version. The original A7V-266 had the disaster of a chipset that caused it to get replaced by the E release. VIA took a lot of flak over that one.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Plus I heard that there is a version planned with onboard RAID. The current 266-E only has the two standard IDE ports.

 

[Rob FM]

Thanks for all the replies (and education) on this subject.
I had really wanted to stay with a name-brand motherboard, since that's the heart of the system, and much harder to change down the road than RAM or a chip or ???
ASUS is a pretty well respected M/B manufacturer, right?
I'd rather spend a few dollars more to get a quality M/B, than have a potential problem.
I'm gonna check out http://www.newegg.com
~Rob

 

[Rob FM]

Ha-ha-ha.. just when I think I'm done, I have one more question....
Newegg wants to know which "Chipset" I want to search by.
What's the one that has the items to fit my bill:
~AGP 4X
~AMD 1.7+
~1Ghz+ RAM
~PCIs
~USBs
~5.1 Sound card
(I won't be using any RAID type of set-up)
(I won't be using any multi-processor set-up)
850LR?
North Bridge?
Thanks,
~Rob

 

[Iain Lambert]

I'd recommend either the Apollo KT266A, or if you can find one the nForce IGP. As well as apparently being the fastest, the nForce has an onboard graphics component thats basically a GeForce2MX 200, except you take about a 10% performance hit for using the main memory rather than seperate memory on the video unit.
That should do you for most things, until the GeForce3 Ti 200 has been out long enough to hit a sensible price.

 

[Richard Cooper]

Yeah, the VIA Apollo KT266A (As on the Asus board I've got)
or the new nForce (what's teh name of their chipset?)
or maybe the SiS735 -anyone used a board with that on yet?
SamC: I was going to put my PCChips board in my car for the same use, but I kinda killed it testing some memory
Rob: The version with the onboard RAID will be designated (I think) the 266-ER

 

[PhilM]

I'm a die-hard Asus fan and the A7v 266E with raid is an excellant choice, very easy to OC, like most Asus', but i'm going to have to side with Iain, hold off and purchase the Nvidia's nForce, Nvidia actually worked with AMD during the manufacturing and works extremely well with the current crop of XP processors. besides that that board has 5.1 dolby on it already and a new dual mem arcitceture....simply awesome. i should work for these guys

 

[Iain Lambert]

One bad thing I've heard about the nForce however is that we may not be seeing many major board makers using it; its a great chipset, but nVidia want so much for it that its putting off many of them. The problem is that for most things the solution of a 266E and a GeForce card to the same total price is slightly faster.