OT-Motherboard recommedations?

O

ozias

Spaceman
Hi all,(not sure if this should be in the Tech Support forum or not, if so I appologize for placing it in the wrong forum.)

What motherboard do you recommend? I have a MicroStar board now and was leaning toward the the Soyo K7-VTA Pro, with an AMD XP1800.

That board does NOT support DDR Ram, but how much of a difference does DDM make compare to SDRAM? Is it twice as fast or 15-25% faster?

I am using a 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 series video card and have no problem with any games, but of course the 3dfx is no longer made. I see some of the newer Geforce 4's have DDR memory onboard their video cards, and was again wondering how the DDR memory stacks up to the regular memory found on the other video cards, such as the Geforce 3Ti series. I've seen some benchmarks, and the GF3 competes with the GF4MX cards and is a lot cheaper.

I also have a Gig of RAM on my mobo now, but it is the SDRam, and I would hate to find out that DDR is twice as fast for about the same money.

I guess if you had no limits on money what would you recommend? If you only had $350 what would you recommend? This is including the AMD XP1800.

Thanks for any input you can give.
 
first off, the Geforce4MX are crap, they dont use DDR and are based on Geforce2 tech, the GeForce4 TI cards are the hard core ones that use DDR. also the GeForce 4MX are cheaper than the Geforce3 Ti Cards that I have seen, by alot. GF3TI cards still are in the 200 USD range/high 100's whereas the GF4MX are much cheaper, in the low 100's but they suck

By definition DDR runs 2x as fast as SD ram.

The Soyo Dragon is a great board, and I got an Athlon 1800+ its a good chip.



For 350, your options are...hmm. well the XP1800 is about 150 give or take so you are down to 200 so that is your moboard right there. and you will have some left

if it is 350 and the chip is already bought then you can buy a MoBoard and then probably either a GF3TI200 (a good card for the price) the GF4TI4200 (best card for its price but still more expensive than the GF3TI200) or any of the MX
 
Whatever you do, do not buy a board with anything VIA on it. Not one with just a North Bridge, not one with just a South Bridge, and certainly not one with both. Other than that, you probably can't go wrong.
 
I would suggest getting Abit's KR7A-RAID. I have the KT7A-Raid and I'm completely in love with it. I had used serveral deference MBs over the years and until Abit's new MB lines, there was always some issue I had. Abit has the best Fan base support.
http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/kg7kr7faq.htm
Newsgroup:
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit

With all do respect to Kris, VIA is a great chipset. The problem is with MB manufactures. Some of these manufactures will use cheap parts. Abit builts a high end MB. They are more expense but, you know the old saying. "You get what you pay for."

VIA has been kicking Intel butt. VIA chipset have been leading the industary. They were the first to offer DDR support.
 
Originally posted by Happy
they may not be as good as a real GF4, but they are better than a GF2, or as good as a gf3.
Click to expand...


Not better than the GF3TI by any strech of the imagination. Go to Toms hardware and look, you will see that in their tests GF3Ti are better than any cards out there except for GF4ti
 
Originally posted by Johnl12
With all do respect to Kris, VIA is a great chipset. The problem is with MB manufactures. Some of these manufactures will use cheap parts. Abit builts a high end MB. They are more expense but, you know the old saying. "You get what you pay for."

VIA has been kicking Intel butt. VIA chipset have been leading the industary. They were the first to offer DDR support.
Click to expand...
I think they were also the first to offer data corruption when copying from one hard drive to the other if your sound card is active. Do a Google search, their KT133 and KT266 and series are plagued with awful, awful bugs. I could make a better chipset out of cardboard and copper wire and duct tape. Don't buy anything with VIA on it.
 
Originally posted by KrisV
I think they were also the first to offer data corruption when copying from one hard drive to the other if your sound card is active. Do a Google search, their KT133 and KT266 and series are plagued with awful, awful bugs. I could make a better chipset out of cardboard and copper wire and duct tape. Don't buy anything with VIA on it.
Click to expand...
That problem was related to the SBLive Platinum series cards and the 686B Southbridge. When CL created these cards they didn't test them with VIA's KT133 chipsets. VIA and Award have since devolpe a solution to this problem. It's also worth noting that the new Audigy cards don't seem to have this problems. So there:p
Read all about it here.
http://www.viahardware.com/686bfaq.shtm#_Toc518065962
 
Thanks for all the input everyone. It gives me some stuff to think about before I buy a motherboard.

Thanks again,

ozias
 
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