Athlon system question

[Guest]

Ok so Im thinking of putting an Athlon system together and I have a few questions.
First off here is the list of stuff im thinking of getting.

-Athlon 900 socketA
-Asus K7V Mobo
-128 MB of Micron PC133 SDRAM
-Asus V7100 GeForce2 MX 32mb
-Diamond Max Plus 20gb 7200rpm ATA100


Is there a difference between socketA and slotA? If so which is better?
Does anyone see any problems with any of these procucts or compatability isues? Things I should look out for?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

socket A athlons are faster and cheaper (need I say more?) than slot A athlons. You'll need Asus A7V to use socket A athlons coz K7V is for slot A if I remember correctly.

 

[jeffg007]

If I was you I'd get the abit kt7-raid and it will support t-bird socketA. Also I'd get an ibm deskstar 30g hard drive. The IBM is a much better Component.

Jeff

 

[Guest]

is that drive ata100? and does that mobo support ata100?
If i remember right the A7V has an onboard ata100 card

 

[Guest]

I just built this system myself last month for a good friend of mine.

Thunderbird 1 gig CPU
Asus A7V Mobo <-- Fastest Socket A board around and also allows for 4 ATA100 devices and 4 ATA66 devices.
256MB PC133 133MHz SDRAM 168pin DIMM (Micron)
Asus v7100 Pure GeForce2 MX 32MB
IBM Deskstar 30.7GB 2M Cache HD (I agree with jeffg007)

Most important thing I believe is cooling.
The CPU, Video card and IBM deskstar all get very hot during heavy loads. A Good heatsink and a 6000+ rpm fan combo with a few 80mm fans should help this situation out.

There is an issue with the Promise ATA100 onboard controller, (Not sure if it still the case or not) but that can be overcome with the newest bios update, newest mobo drivers from Asus and the newest driver for the Promise controller.

Once you get this baby up and running, give me your address and get some insuance.

Good luck!

 

[Guest]

THnx for the info... but I think I might go with jeffg007 on the abit... i just did some checking on it. I like the fact that it has the multiplier ( and apperantly all i have to do is make sure the 2 connections are connected on the chip) which the asus needs a mod to get. As well I didnt realize it had the Highpoint for ATA100 devices and the RAID option was probably the clincher.

Anyone think im making a mistak here? It seems the Abit has way more to offer than the asus.?

 

[Guest]

ABIT Roks. Go the KT7. BTW, all new ASUS mobos don't need a mod to change the multiplier, they just used dipswitches instead of the multiplier! AND THE ABIT IS FASTER!!!!! (With the UL Bios anwayz)

 

[Guest]

"Is that drive ATA100?"
I don't know that, what I do know is that IDE drives can't really make use of ATA100 properly yet. Their access times and rates are substantially slower than the rate supplied with ATA66. It's the in-drive cache that supplies the really high data rates and that currently maxes out at around ATA66 data rate (66Mbs - that's 66 mega-bits per second, somebody correct me if I'm wrong here). ATA100 is the way to go, but don't read too much into it for the moment until IBM, maxtor etc. get a wee bit better than their already impressive performances. Though I do agree with the man, the IBM drive is very nice indeed, I have an ATA66 26G IBM drive that runs like a dream, literally (it's dead quiet as well as being dead fast).

"does that mobo support ATA100?"
the Abit does support ATA100.

"If I remember right the A7V has an onboard ATA100 card"
Almost right ;-), is has an extra chip that gives ATA100 support.

You were thinking of the RAID being a big swing factor for getting the Abit. It might be a good to note the to take advantage of RAID you need at least two (preferably identical) hard drives to go into your machine. Both the Abit and Asus motherboards are at the top of the performance, stability, and extras tables. All the reviews I've seen point to the Asus being the better performer, (I bought it myself for that very reason!), but the Abit is very good too. The Abit is better for the overclocker in you as you don't have to use dipswitches for the clock mutiplier as you do in the Asus (though the electronic engineer in me wants switches to play with!) but as far as I'm concerned (and Dr. Tom for that matter) I think the Asus has the edge if you don't care about RAID because of its performance.

Hope that helps,

Fat Chucky

 

[Guest]

Yup, quite right.

The reason that slot A was used was the original Athlons having external (and slower) L2 cache. the slot A cartrige was a chunky item that looked much like the things you have to put in an N64, but with a dirty great heatsink and fan attached to it! When AMD incorperated the L2 cache onto the chip of the Thunderbird and Durons (stepping their clock rate up to that of the processor for much better performance) it got rid of the need for the clumsy slot design and they could go back to the preferred ZIF (zero insertion force) socket design. Intel did exectly the same when the they moved to their fc-pga (flip-chip pin grid array) socket 370.

History lesson over!!!

Fat Chucky

 

[Guest]

If you want info on motherboards go to:
<A HREF="http://arstechnica.com/guide/mobo/mobo-1.html" target="_new">http://arstechnica.com/guide/mobo/mobo-1.html</A> for a very good article on motherboards ant how to choose one.

Fat Chucky