My Motherboard seems to have gone

Can anyone recommend a decent replacement, it must support Athlon processors and DDR SDRAM

Cheers

Rob

 

The elite k7s5a range has both sdram and ddr - but make sure you have the latest Mb version as the version 1 doesn't work so well with Athlons xps over 1800+ speed.

 

Sorry to disagree with the above, but IMO that motherboard is not very highly regarded within hardware circles Not the best performing or RELIABLE by any means

An Epox 8K3A or 8K5A2/3 series in standard or + variants are very well regarded, are pretty cheap and very stable. the 8K5A2/3 are very, very quick boards.

You are going to get al sorts of different answers to this by the way

Cheers,

Nick

 

maybe worth checking out chaintech 7VJL Apogee (about £70+VAT). it was the editor's choice in PCW, november 2002 issue.

 

Gotta agree with Mr Footlong. I have an Elite K7S5A and it appears to be a bit flakey. Get an Asus/Epox.

 

I have an asus A7V266 and am very pleased with it. It supports SDRAM and DDR Ram. There is a bios update that will allow the +2200 to run on it.

However, there is already a 333 version and on Tom's Hardware they were reveiving a 400.

Buying a mobo used to be easy all I worried about was how fast a processor it could handle but now you have to think about memory speed too. Processor speed wars between intel and AMD now seem to be moving on to memory bandwidth skirmishes too.

As said above you will get a lot of advice about this one. All I can say is look for a well known brand in the hope that they support their products well with Bios updates when needed. And buy one that supports the fastest memory and processor speeds you can afford. This will allow you at least one easy upgrade in the future if you change your processor.

 

Elite MBs are the only ones I've had problems with and I've built loads of Socket A PCs.

Gigabyte, ASUS and Abit have been trouble free and usually provide much better documentation. It's just not worth saving a fiver or so on a motherboard, it's comparable to running your import on regular unleaded or putting cheap oil in yer engine.

Edited to add - I've built a few with a gigabyte GA7VTXE+ and run one of my own on this board with no problems. If you just want a board that will take DDR266 then this should be OK. It has onboard sound, USB1.1, ATA133, AGP4X etc. No good if you need an ISA slot though.

[Edited by Ken E - 9/26/2002 11:34:51 AM]

 

Never had any stress with Abit boards. Documentation is good , they are stable and easy to overclock (if that's your thang )


Steve

 

i always like gigabyte myself

never had a problem

 

We use lots of Asus here at work, very reliable but not allways the best boards if you like to tweak a lot.

Used Asus and Abit at home / privately, no problems again.

 

I have an Asus board just now, but will be trying the Epox 8K3A+ when I finally manage to get the right one

Heard good things about Epox, so I'll let you know how I get on with mine.

Stefan

 

Why the 8k3a+ and not the 8K5A2+?

 

strange - my K7s5a has never crashed - I agree it's not the fastest board but I only bought it for my "playing around" pc and it was cheap...

 

I wasn't commenting on from a speed point of view. You are one the lucky minority that have a good one of these

 

yeah - I know of a few people who have had the v1 m/b's and could't get the athlon xp's working over 1200mhz etc - as you said I must be lucky

 

Nick,

No particular reason other than the 8K3A+ has always got good reviews and I don't need 6-channel audio or a built in NIC that the 8K5A2+ gives you.

Other than those features, I didn't see any benefit.

Stefan

 

The performance is just slightly better overall and it has USB2.0 integrated too. Apart from that, the 8K3A is great too, as I had one