Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (
More info?)
"Ben Pope" <spam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2m2umhFihas1U1@uni-berlin.de...
> ***** charles wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have come into the posession of an ECS K7S5A Pro
> > with an XP1800+ and 512M (2x256M) of SDRAM
> > on it. Problem is, the motherboard is blown but the
> > cpu and ram are still good. So my question is which
> > ASUS mb would you recomend that I use for the cpu
> > and ram. Reliability is the main factor. I would like to
> > dual boot it to XP Pro and Linux.
>
>
> Well I would probably recommend either VIA KT880 (A7V880) or nForce2
chipset
> (A7N8X-E Deluxe).
>
> Both Dual Channel.
> Both have a (working) PCI clock lock
I was hoping to use the 512M of ram I already have.
Both of the mb you mention have DDR, not compatible.
charles.....
> nVidia board probably has better sound output.
> VIA has integrated SATA, but the A7N8X-E does have SATA, but is limited by
> PCI bus bandwidth - only a problem with 2 very fast drives in RAID,
really.
>
> If SATA RAID is a serious features that you will use to it's full
potential,
> I think VIA has the better architecture.
>
>
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/chipsets/display/via-kt880_9.html
>
http://www.pctuning.cz/default.aspx?ArtID=19710&CatID=236&LayID=2&ChapID=559
9
>
> Not much in it. The nForce is maybe a smidgen faster. The VIA doesn't
have
> tweaked drivers, maybe.
>
> Now, with that out of the way, Linux Support: nForce2 must be pretty well
> sorted now, last time I tried it you needed to turn off ACPI and APIC to
get
> it stable, but as long as you know that, no problems. Might have changed
in
> the last 3 or 4 kernel releases. No idea about the KT880.
>
> So ther eyou have it. Not much in it unless you want Gigabit Ethernet or
> SATA RAID. However, this doesn't take into consideration Linux support.
> The KT880 is quite different from previous KT series chipsets, whether
that
> requires different drivers, and whether Linux supports it well is unknown
to
> me.
>
> Good luck.
>
> Ben
> --
> A7N8X FAQ: www.ben.pope.name/a7n8x_faq.html
> Questions by email will likely be ignored, please use the newsgroups.
> I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a String...
>
>