which mboard is the best for athlons (1100)

[metamp]

which matherboard is the best choice for Tbird 1100 ?

 

[girish]

asus A7V

 

[JoeHead]

agreed

<b> Fragg at will!!! </b>

 

[LTJLover]

I think the Abit KT7 RAID is the best, but the Asus is a close second. Much nicer setup in the Abit. Soft bios, 6 PCI 1 ISA, active chipset cooling, 3 phase power, RAID onboard.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[Grizely1]

Agreed Jon, although the KT7 does seem to be a bit picky..

 

[Kodiak]

I think it basically goes like this: If you get one that works, ABIT KT7-RAID is great -- it has plenty of features, arguably better jumperless system (SoftMenuIII), more slots (1 more PCI and 1 more ISA), PLUS you get built in RAID...
except... they are notorious for having a noticably higher percentage of factory-defective boards. It's not a huge deal, you can either get your dealer to test it (if you buy locally or have yout computer assembled by a pro), or you can exchange it yourself... trick is knowing when the problem is the motherboard.
ASUS A7V is still an excellent board, although it doesn't offer RAID or any ISA slots. It does offer AGP Pro instead of regular AGP of ABIT (which I'm not sure any card uses anyhoo... so its a moot point), but they are arguably more reliable out of the box.

So basically, you can't go wrong
I was making up my mind between the two when I decided to buy 2 30GB drives and put them in RAID 0 -- this made ABIT prime choice for me personally. If you don't care for RAID now or ever in the future, it's 50-50

Hope this helps somewhat
Good luck,

 

[LTJLover]

Like the Asus isn't. I think the pickiness is inherant in the KT133 chipset. I think I have seen more problems involving the Asus posted in this forum than in the Abit. I think the bottom line its...both boards will run into certain problems...have you ever been able to slap a computer together and expect it run perfectly fine on the first go around? After a bit of troubleshooting you can work out the bugs on both. Having built several comps myself, I expect a little fuss, but overall I think the features of the Abit give it a slight edge.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[Grizely1]

Building computers for a living, i find that some boards based on the same chipsets are pickier than others, etc.... But the KT7 (in my opinion) is the one I would buy, because of SoftMenu. Although It doesn't have ATA100 support and I hate controller cards...

 

[Guest]

Certainly NOT a7v!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Try Abit or MSI.

 

[Grizely1]

I have to disagree. The A7V is a great board. The MSI is, frankly, a piece of crap.

 

[Guest]

Sorry, but the a7v is a piece of crap. I've been dicking around with it for over a month (now my warranty is up) and it is totally useless for any work. I can get more done on a 486. It crashes all the time. It's been good for about a week and a half, now it's back to crashing. I have replaced EVERY component and the results are identical. I have scrubbed the hard drive and installed ME from scratch - identical results. The CPU temp doesn't exceed 49 Celsius averaging around 43. There are 2 fans in the case, 300w power supply, but it crashes all the time.

You come up to my place, I'll give you the board for free.

I first bought a KT7-Raid. The install went smooth and it never crashes and runs great. The a7v was a mistake and it's a piece of garbage. I will try the MSI KT7 Pro next. 2 of my good servers are running MSI and they work all the time, never crash and are running AMD K62's. I have another on an MVP3 G2 and it runs great. My BP6 server is another story.

 

[Grizely1]

Well big deal, you got the 1 in a thousand board that had a manufacturing flaw. Just look at Tom's guides, you'll see which one is better.

 

[Guest]

Yes it is a big deal when your out $250 for a board.

Regarding Tom's guides, they are just guides. You can have the best numbers but if the board is unstable it just as well may have the worst numbers. It's also good to see what other reviewers (not just Tom's) think of the boards and you can get a better perspective.

It's interesting to see that perhaps the most complaints or problems on this forum are about the a7v.

 

[Grizely1]

That's because 95% of the poeple on this board <i>has</i> an A7V.