COMPATABILITY WITH MOTHERBOARD

[Guest]

I want to build a Cylone PC for CAD with following Specs. In which I am not sure wheather the Graphics Card
will give its optimum performance with the Mother Board, any experience bad or good would be appricated.

Motherboard
Option-1--- CUV4X-D (ASUS)---VIA AP133A DUAL FCPGA 4GB ATX 5PCI AGP4X UDMA66/100
133MHZ
Option-2-----VP6 (Abit) -- -----VIA AP133A DUAL FCPGA 2GB ATX 5PCI AGP4X UDMA66/100
133MHZ
Option-3-----GA-6VX7-4X (Gigabite)--VIA AP133A FCPGA 1.5GB ATX 4PCI AGP4X UDMA66/100
133MHZ


Graphics Card----Elsa Gloria II

 

[VayVay]

I would stay away from anything with a VIA chipset, aside from the numerous compatibility problems reported, the memory controller on a VIA based motherboard does not perform as well as an Intel based chipset. I would reccomend something with an 815e like the Abit SA6R or the new ASUS dual 815 (I don't remember the model at the moment). The only shortcoming is if you need more than 512MB of RAM. In that case there is no clear path to choose. You could go with a P4/i850/RDRAM combo and take a price hit, you could live with the problems of a VIA board, or you could wait for the AMD 760MP boards to come out and go dual Athlon.

The specs on the first dual Athlon board to come out are impressive, Dual Athlon (up to 1.7GHz), up to 4GB DDR RAM, 1 AGP Pro 50 slot, 5 64 bit PCI slots, Dual 10/100 Lan, dual channel SCSI (don't know which version), and ATA 100. The only drawback I can see is it's AMD (just an opinion, but not nearly as bad as having a VIA chipset) and it requires a special 460W power supply.

Hope this helps.


-Jason

 

[Guest]

The reason for selection VIA is that there is no solution available for PIII with 1GB RAM and AGP 4X, in intel chips. The Athalon solution is also not viable as it is not supported by the software I inten to use.
I need to buy a board from the chioces I quoted earlier, another board under consideration is Microstar 694D-ProAR.
Kindly help in selecting new board, experiences good or bad may be referenced.

 

[VayVay]

I thought that might be the case. I run Lightwave and have many of the same considerations to contend with whenever I have to put together a new system. I would still stay away from VIA though. It seems you need a high end system and VIA is NOT the way to go for that. I don't know about you, but I can't afford to put up with stability and compatibility problems on my work system. I have had a VIA motherboard and I had nothing but problems with it. Even when I could coax stability out of it (seldom), It never performed as well as my BX based system, even though on paper it should have been better (ATA/100, AGP 4X, 133MHz FSB, etc.). I personally would bite the bullet and go for a P4 with a 750 motherboard, probably an ASUS P4T, The reviews I have read on it have been excellent and it seems to be the best board out there for the P4 currently. I know it's a bad situation but that's the best choice IMHO.



-Jason