CRAIGFIN

Can anybody recommend a motherboard that is compatible with an AMD Athlon XP cpu. Also is there anything I need to be wary off when fitting it, as the guy at PC World said if I wasn't careful I could end up frying the motherboard. He mentioned something about the BIOS setup.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Craig.

P.S. What is the Chipset??

[Edited by CRAIGFIN - 12/12/2002 9:36:26 PM]

super_si

Ive never touched AMD more intel mate, but i think you many need to list the speed your memory.

Si

J1nxy

I've got the Asus A7N8X Nforce 2 motherboard and a XP2700+ all work fine as long as you stick with decent memory like the Corsair XMS PC2700 of PC3200 you'll get on fine.

Steve

dfullerton

ASUS

planky

Soltek is a GREAT budget board and you can clock it.

All my computers run on soltek and theyve been 100% reliable with AMD chips.

Attu

Ive been using Soltek for a while now and havnt had any problems with then at all.
Ive got 2 puters running on them now.
Ive also built quite a few puters around NForce chips and they are very easy to set up...not tried an NForce 2 yet but im sure it wont be long.
As for setting them up it realy is a no brainer (probably why some one form PC World might strugle )
The mobo will recognise the CPU voltage and multiplier but you may have to set the Front side buss and ram speeds but as long as you read the instructions and take your time everything should be ok.
Make sure you get a good heat sink and fan and good DDR Ram and it should be ok.

Andy

NickAdams

iTrader: (5)

Asus A7V8X board highly recommended as it has features such as Firewire,USB 2.0,10/100/1000 ethernet,sound,DDR400 chipset,Serial ATA,Raid etc,etc....
Was up until the last month,in PC Pro on the "A List" (And has now been replaced by an MSI board which is over £150 though!!).I bought one and am highly impressed!!
Cheapest place to buy em is Scan and they do mail order too.
Just recently bought mine as well as XP2100+ processor (£80 ish for retail CPU which gives you AMD fan,3 year guarantee) and 256mb DDR400 memory (£65 ish)

Good luck

Nick

P.S: Asus have a good website for driver updates etc,etc......

ChrisB

More likely the CPU than the mobo. Need to use some decent Thermal Grease and a good heatsink/fan. Make sure it's all aligned properly or it's bye bye CPU.

CRAIGFIN

Thanks for the views guys, I've been on the AMD website and printed off a list of motherboards that AMD recommend and its 12 pages long!!!!. I have also been reading some online reviews and think I may go for an Asus board as they were constantly outperforming their rivals in benchtests.
Keep the opinions coming in as I'm not totally set on an Asus.

Cheers,

Craig.

Mark Underwood

I am using the Abit AT7-Max2. Got raid and its a fab board.

ChrisB

Asus, very solid, maybe not the best tweakers / overclockers board but will run and run.

We've used their mobo's for a good three or four years now at work and I can't remember when we've had to send one back.

Abit pitch more at the tweakers market but are still a good bet.

AlexM

The best/fastest chipset for the Athlon XP is currently the Nforce 2 platform. It spanks any of the VIA chipsets for performance, stability and features.

The best Nforce2 board is (currently) the Asus A7N8X Deluxe (around £120 inc vat), which incorporates a shedload of peripherals:

IEEE 1394
Six channel Audio with digital output
2x 1/100 Ethernet NIC
2x USB 2 4x USB 1 sockets
Serial ATA raid 0/1
200Mhz FSB support
CPU / Mem / AGP voltage control
and on and on and on..

There is a simplified version for £20 less, but you might as well get the full monty version.

Basically, add a video card (Geforce 4 ti 4600 or Radeon 9700pro, some decent memory (Crucial, Samsung or Corsair PC2700), and you'll have one hell of a fast PC.

Cheers,

Alex


[Edited by AlexM - 12/13/2002 12:56:28 PM]