What Motherboard for AMD XP1800 ? 4

[kwunder]

Having loads of hassle with a Jetway 663AS Ultra Motherboard. Can anyone point me in the right direction for a GOOD motherboard for an AMD Athlon XP1800 ?

kwunder

 

[paparazi]

Top (fastest) DDR boards at the mo for the XP have the Via KT266a chipset (NOTE* a) NOT just KT266.
Toms hardware recently reviewed 13 of the best!

http://www4.tomshardware.com/mainboards

Soyo SY-K7V voted winner
Soltek SL-75DRV2 close second
ASUS and Chaintech also there abouts. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[lizzard394]

Shuttel AK31 266 A and 4 gigs of ddr ram

 

[dakota81]

There are a few places where you just cannot go with an unknown brand when putting together a computer - and the top piece of hardware in my opinion is the motherboard. Do yourself a favor and spend the extra couple dollars to get a board from a big name company, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, FIC, Epox, a company along those lines.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

*Diehard Abit fan alert*

I got an Abit KG7 RAID, just before Xmas, with an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4Ghz).

For stability it's the best board I ever owned - it hasn't crashed once in the 3 weeks or so I've been testing it - and I've really been hitting that baby with the DVD-Ram drive I got to go with it. Not a single coaster.

It's not a new board, or even the fastest board, given the Via KT266a chipset on rivals, but I've always been a fan of stability - and this AMD 761 combined with the Via 686B Northbridge "feels" rock-solid.

I just upgraded my existing motherboard in a dual-boot WinME/2k machine. A foolhardy move in days of yore, but Windows ME was fine about it - just installed the new drivers and off I went. W2k required an install over the top of the existing installation, during which I had to install the RAID drivers, but this was smooth and took just under an hour.

Check the specs

http://www.abit.com.tw/eng/product/mb/kg7.htm

There are loads of reviews on this board - but no fireworks, just a good, solid, powerful workhorse - this baby takes up to 4Gb RAM. It was worth losing my old BX6 (until I get a new case for it!).

My $0.02

 

[CitrixEngineer]

...looks like I was right not to go with the Via 266a chipset, judging by this report;

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/23502.html

 

[JimEkleberry]

kwunder, that really depends upon what you are looking to do with your system and many questions that need to be answered. What is good for me may not be good for you.

1. Are you an extreme gamer/tweaker, software engineer, web designer, what?

2. Do you want built-in or onboard sound, networking, and/or video or do you already have or intend to get these separate components?

3. What type and speed of RAM do you have or are intending to get?

CitrixEngineer, since the data bus currently isn't even maxxing out the Ultra ATA/66 spec yet you don't have to worry about the 133 spec. The problem will be fixed before you need it.

 

[kwunder]

Jim
I will use the system for games, but it's primarily for music (WAV & MP3) editing & Digital Video editing. I have 512mb SD RAM (hitachi) and the video capture device is a firewire card. This is where my problems began, as the system keeps crashing whilst compiling video clips into single movies. I took it back to the seller, who ran loads of tests, all but one of these test resulted in the system rebooting itself without warning, of freezing completely. The only time it worked was when my HDD (Western Digital Caviar 7200 high performance 40GB) was put into an ancient celeron (333mhz), where it compiled the video clips without a problem. His conclusion was that the mobo was incompatible for some reason. He has now ordered an ABIT mobo (unknown model) to try, but I'm still not sure.

What do you think ?

kwunder

 

[paparazi]

Depends on if you want to keep all that SDram or go DDR.
An option might be to go with one of the boards with dual SDR and DDR slots, at least this will enable you to go with your exsisting SDram and upgrade later.
But personally I would go DDR on a KT266a board.
I have read what Citrix Engineer wrote about the 761AMD via combo, but he has to remember the only reason for the AMD north bridge being there in the first place was a poor performing KT266, now we have the a version the south bridge Via has it's perfect partner. All the Motherboard manufactures carn't be wrong! and neither can the reviewers who all say this chipset is KING in the performance stakes as well as Stabillity. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[JimEkleberry]

If you are using a Western Digital drive with a motherboard with the VIA chipset, contact Western Digital's Tech Support. They need to send you a special IDE cable (should be free of charge) to resolve the issue of which you speak.

In addition and in agreement with paparazi there are a few boards out there that have SDRAM and DDR memory slots. This would allow you to use your existing memory while still providing an upgrade path to DDR later. I believe the ECS K7S board is very good for this but am not sure at the moment.

I do have to agree that with video editing you should move to DDR memory. You will most definitely notice a difference.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

JimEckleberry, I'm not sure what you mean by "CitrixEngineer, since the data bus currently isn't even maxxing out the Ultra ATA/66 spec yet you don't have to worry about the 133 spec. The problem will be fixed before you need it."

I have seen benchmarks showing data burst rates in excess of the ATA/66 spec on existing ATA/100 boards (as one might expect).

Of course, for Sustained Transfer Rates, you are quite right - 40MB/s is about the best that the fastest that IDE can manage.

The 266a is proven to be slower for disk transfer than the 266 or even the old 133 Via chips. Even the Intel chipset beats it hands down. This chipset even slows down SCSI. Look at the benchmarks at

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/5.html

This is not to detract from the excellent performance in other areas of the 266a chipset, however - just to point out that it is not yet the top dog that it undoubtledly will become.

I would not touch a board with this chipset, beacuse, IMO, disk performance is absolutely key to a stable, fast system.

Quote "it is not clear whether new drivers will be enough, or whether it will need a redesign of the chipsets." (from The Register).


BrZ - you've got a Radeon 8500? >envy<

 

[kwunder]

Just had a look around in the BIOS and noticed one setting that was different to my old setup, where everything worked OK. It was :-
HDD S.M.A.R.T Capability ....DISABLED

whereas it was ENABLED o n my old system.
Could that make a difference ?

Also some other settings I was unsure about were :-

ADVANCED DRAM CONTROL

P2C / C2P Concurrency...Disabled
Fast R-W Turn Around....Disabled
I/O Recovery Time.......Disabled
CPU to PCI Postwrite....Enabled
PCI DYNAMIC BURSTING....Disabled
PCI MASTER 0 WS WRITE...Disabled

Anything not right here ?

ALSO... Found that the power supply is a ADVANCE300ptf 300W output.

kwunder