Need Help Please

[Guest]

Going by pricewatch.com, I'm looking for a new amd cpu/mobo set. The question I have is about the mainboard. Usually the mainboards advertised with the combos are

Chaintech/ECS/Amptron/Gigabyte/PC Chips

Now those are the first page mobo's...first page meaning cheapest. I was wondering if someone could comment from experience about any of these mobo's quality.

TIA


s0nikk
<A HREF="mailto: dopekwest@hotmail.com "> dopekwest@hotmail.com </A>

 

[Guest]

Sorry, I've never owned any of these. You might want to check for reviews on this site and places like <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com</A>.

Mike

 

[DSutcliffe]

I personally love the Gigabyte motherboard and use it in my home system (GA7ZX). No stability issues whatsoever and decent to high performance.

You will have to purchase an extra RAID or UATA-100 controller which will make the cost as much as or more than the ASUS and ABIT motherboards.

I have never worked with any of the other boards.

 

[Arrow]

I find Gigabyte to be decent.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>

 

[Guest]

I'm not necessarily gonna setup a RAID
please explain why i would need to buy RAID or UATA-100 controllers

I'm new to this...please excuse my ignorance

s0nikk
<A HREF="mailto: dopekwest@hotmail.com "> dopekwest@hotmail.com </A>

 

[Bubba]

My first ever build-it-yourself computer was with an Amptron motherboard. Bad, bad, bad. Please let me know if you buy this board so I can come over there and thump you on the skull (just kidding).
I also had a Gigabyte, ok but I like Asus boards the best.
Those cheap CPU/motherboard combos are cheap because they use cheap boards so they can make money. If you want a good board, you have to pay for it.

 

[Guest]

You don't need RAID, which is an option a number of people like. It can increase your hard disk performance, depending on the type of RAID you use. ATA-100 is the latest hard drive standard, although from what I've read, ATA-100 doesn't really perform much (if any) faster than ATA-66. Some may disagree with this. Your motherboard should support at least ATA-66.

Two places I've purchased motherboard combos from are:

<A HREF="http://www.pcnut.com" target="_new">http://www.pcnut.com</A>

<A HREF="http://www.outsideloop.com" target="_new">http://www.outsideloop.com</A>

Neither are the cheapest places, but the're good places to buy from and they have the latest stuff.

Regardless of where you make your purchase, I'd see if the place is listed at <A HREF="http://www.resellerratings.com" target="_new">http://www.resellerratings.com</A>. This site lists customer evaluations of online stores. It seems to be fairly accurate when you get a good amount of comments. I don't trust the ratings with not many comments.

I've PCs using motherboards from Soyo, Asus and Abit. The first two are Pentium III's and the Abit is the KT7-RAID (I'm not usng RAID). Because of problems I had during the initial installation, I consider the Abit to be the least reliable. However, it's performed stably since.

Mike

 

[Grizely1]

I like ASUS boards the best.... my friend has a Gigabyte, it's nice but not too spiffy, I tried an ABit KA7-100, nothing but trouble. My old ASUS board rocks! It uses the ol' Intel i440LX chipset. Still puttering away behind me @ 333MHz.

 

[DSutcliffe]

The base GA-7ZX only has ATA-66 controller built into chipset. Abit gives you a RAID controller plus ATA-66. ASUS gives you ATA-100 plus ATA-66.

Without an extra controller, you don't reap the benefits of owning an ATA-100 hard disk. That's why i suggested as I did.

I believe, but I could be mistaken, that the new GA7ZX-R comes with a RAID controller.