motherboards

[Jumby]

Two questions: what are anyone's preferences between Asus A7A266 and A7V133? Second question...why would Microsoft not have either on their list of XP compatable motherboards?

[ranchdog]

Jumby...

The A7A 266 has more to offer as it will support DDR or SDRAM. The drawback with this Mboard is the AliMagic chipset. It didn't benchmark very well against other chipsets. (VIA, Sis, AMD, etc.) But that don't make it all bad.

Being in the market today for a new Mboard one should choose a unit that does support the new Palamino CPU right out of the box. Then a person could use the Athlon/Duron or the Palamino chip.

Asus doesn't hold hands with Micro$oft. It's all politics.

Luck.


------------------
......Indecision may or may not be my problem......
...... Kickin' A Rock....

[This message has been edited by ranchdog (edited 10-14-2001).]

[This message has been edited by ranchdog (edited 10-14-2001).]

[Jumby]

Yeah, I would like to have the VIA chipset and the DDR. What's a guy to do? And I'm thinking by the time I need a new processor (after this one), the Palamino will be outdated (or the processor at that time won't work in the board anyway). I"m definately not married to the Asus board, but it seemed to have good grades. What do you think of Abit? Like the KG7?

[ranchdog]

The KG7 will support the Palamino out of the box. Those who use the KG7 speak well. The Soft Menu system in BIOS beats flipping dip switches on the Mboard.

Abit has IRQ issues and seems not to play well with Sound Blaster. But there isn't such a thing as a perfect Mboard.

For being stable, etc. the MSI K7T266 is as good as it gets. And it'll take a Palamino.

Luck.



------------------
......Indecision may or may not be my problem......
...... Kickin' A Rock....

[diurnal]

dont worry what microsoft says as long as asus says it supports xp, then it does support xp.

------------------
Sledgehammer will save the day!

[yawningdog]

The reason some manufactuers dont stamp approval on some products is that soooo many combinations exist and it's impossible to test them all for compatibility and performance.

------------------
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the net, and he wont bother you for weeks.