What MB to use for Athlon

[Guest]

I'm building a new computer and going with the AMD Athlon 800 to 1ghz range, anyone know what MB has worked the best for these? I will be using an x-gamer sound card from Creative Labs, and a G-Force graphics card (haven't picked one yet). Mainly looking for a killer board that the athlon works great on... Is the Athlon Thunderbird a better processor? I'm comming from a intel P II so I need help Thanks in advance. If you need more info please let me know. Thx.

Hype

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Hype on 11/26/00 11:03 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

After doing a little research, how do you think the AMD Thunderbird 1 GHz, and the Asus A7V sound? Good config?

Thx

Hype

 

[JOJO]

either the a7v or the abit kt7 raid

i have the a7v and it works beautifully....but the more i think about it, the more i want the abit so i could have raid configuration

 

[Magneto]

Hi,
I've just built and Athlon T-bird system with the A7V rev. 1.02 m-board. I like it's features, and so far it's been working beautifully. One thing you do need to think about before buying this board, is: How many add-on cards will you be installing in the available PCI slots? The A7V's slots are shared with each other. The only slot that doesn't share an IRQ with another seems to be slot 3. So, if you put your sound card there, your video in the AGP (the AGP shares with slot 1 too), the rest of the slots are going to be sharing an IRQ with whatever else you decide to install. So you might want to find out if your addons will be ok sharing IRQs? Some do, some don't.
I'm on my way to re-install my sound card in Slot 3, because it's sharing an IRQ with my built-in Promise ATA-100 controller in the slot that I have it in now. Although I've had no conflicts yet, I'm sure there are a few waiting right around the corner when my hard drive and sound card both ask for help from the processor at the same time.
All in all, I like the board, and I'm happy with my choice.
Phil
Corpus Christi,TX

 

[Guest]

IF you are running Windowns 98 you should use 128 MG of ram. If you are running Windonws 2000, you should get 256 MG cause windows 200o utulizes more ram better. windows 98 was only made to run at 128 MG of ram at the most. hope this helps.

 

[LTJLover]

Both the Asus A7V and the Abit KT7 RAID are awesome boards for athlons. My friend has a KT7 RAID and I would suggest it. It has built in ATA100 RAID, active chipset cooling, 3phase power supply, 6PCI 1ISA slots, and an awesome softbios that lets you control every thing on the board. The A7V has jumpers and DIP switches, but is slightly faster in Toms benchmarks. As far as the Thunderbird goes, it is the chip to buy. Regular Athlons had an external cache. Thunderbirds have internal cache = faster.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[Grizely1]

"Windows 98 was only made to run with 128MB of RAM at the most"

Uh no sorry, where have you been the last... oh, THREE YEARS?!

 

[Guest]

I have both the Abit KT7-Raid and the Asus A7V.

My Abit Installation went without a hitch and has been working flawlessly.

My Asus A7V has been a nightmare - constantly freezing although the mouse pointer moved freely. I took all the components of the KT7 (including RAM and CPU) and put them into the A7V, but there was no change in outcome. I finally scrubbed the drive put in Windows Me and the board has been relatively stable. But does occasionaly freeze.

One of the biggest factors in a successful AMD installation is a good fan. I make my own by taking the rinky dink fan off that comes with the cooler and putting a 1 inch thick fan from an electronics parts store. Look at both Tom`s Hardware and AnandTech for fan ideas.

Regarding whether the T-Bird is a better processor, I believe both Tom`s Hardware and Anand Tech peg the performance gain at about 10 - 15%.

 

[Guest]

One board that hasn't recieved a mention here, that I think is worth a look is the Microstar K7T Pro2a. It doesn't have the RAID support but it does have the 686b southbridge giving it native ATA100 support. Most reviews are saying this board is super stable and is as good, if not better than, the Abit KT7 and the Asus A7V.

It cost a few dollars less also, which is a bonus!

Pirates4ever

My Toy: Abit Kt7-Raid, Athlon 800, 256 PC133 RAM, LeadTek Geforce SDR, SB !Live.