13 Boards with KT266A and nForce 420D @ Tom's Hardware

[NFS4]

Booyah!

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/011126/index.html

 

[AMDPwred]

Man, what a review! Nice find NFS

 

[dvander64]

I agree. I found that review most informative, I think i'll pass on this generation nforce boards after seeing that review. Thanks for posting the link.

 

[damocles]

Conclusion: KT266A Trounces nForce 420D - Soltek is Front-runner

The Soltek is an ideal pick for any hardcore overclocker. Even at higher clock speeds (overclocking) and aggressive memory timing, the board runs much more stably than, say, the much-hyped Epox EP-8KHA+.

Heh, and people were blaming this board for being slow in his XP review

 

[AGodspeed]

Tom must be on crack or something. The nForce boards he tested were within 1-2% of all KT266A boards except one test, and he concludes that:

KT266A Trounces nForce 420D.

I swear to god, Tom must be smoking something. Someone please explain exactly how the KT266A "trounces" the nForce 420-D boards. I'd really like to hear a logical argument.

 

[HamHam]

The question for me now is to get the Soltek or Shuttle mobo for christmas. In other reviews wasnt the shuttle doing good?

 

[human2k]

hmmm...........why does the shuttle AK31A perform near the bottom of the pack...........did he configure SPD timings manually like how anand did?

 

[John]

<< Tom must be on crack or something. The nForce boards he tested were within 1-2% of all KT266A boards except one test, and he concludes that:

KT266A Trounces nForce 420D.

I swear to god, Tom must be smoking something. Someone please explain exactly how the KT266A "trounces" the nForce 420-D boards. I'd really like to hear a logical argument. >>



Price vs. performance

KT266A
Shuttle AK31a = 80
8KHA+ = 105

nForce
MSI420 = 187

 

[Grendel99]

Anyone else notice that all the test in Q3A were 16 bit? And what are DIE cables? Is that a new technology?

 

[pay]

<<

<< Tom must be on crack or something. The nForce boards he tested were within 1-2% of all KT266A boards except one test, and he concludes that:

KT266A Trounces nForce 420D.

I swear to god, Tom must be smoking something. Someone please explain exactly how the KT266A "trounces" the nForce 420-D boards. I'd really like to hear a logical argument. >>



Price vs. performance

KT266A
Shuttle AK31a = 80
8KHA+ = 105

nForce
MSI420 = 187 >>



Lets not please start about another flame about Nforce vs. VIA, we all know the nForce has more onboard features FOR the people who need them

 

[Kurupshin]

<<
Lets not please start about another flame about Nforce vs. VIA, we all know the nForce has more onboard features FOR the people who need them >>



True, to some extent, but considering all those features on the Nforce are useless to most of us who already have GF3/Radeon and Audigys and GTXPs, there is no reason for any of us to get a Nforce. BTW, you need 2 sticks of DDR RAM to make the Nforce good I'm still thinkin on the Asus A7V266-E, because I trust them the most for stability. Who knows, but I wouldn't be surprised if a Soltek board was cherry picked. Not that the others weren't, but in General Asus has been the most reliable boards, for me at least.

 

[XMan]

Price vs. performance

KT266A
Shuttle AK31a = 80
8KHA+ = 105

nForce
MSI420 = 187

I'll pay a little more for stability, thank you very much. I've spent at least 100 bucks on aspirin with my KT133A.

 

[odog]

i'm eyeballin the chaintek board.....

i've already decided not to get a nForce board(speed oc,ing and price)

at this point it's a tie between the the chaintek, soyo, and soltek, at least for me it is.


also any board i get has to be compatible with the Alpha 8045...

 

[Pabster]

AGodSpeed wrote:

"I swear to god, Tom must be smoking something. Someone please explain exactly how the KT266A "trounces" the nForce 420-D boards. I'd really like to hear a logical argument."

Yep, Dr. Pabst gets a little carried away sometimes. My favorite was his characterization in his test of the 2GHz P4 against the AMD AthlonXP 1800+ -- when the 2GHz P4 compressed an MP3 file one second ahead of the XP -- it was "destroyed" by the P4... LOL.

I think we can agree that KT266A and nForce 420-D are pretty much neck-and-neck. The nForce 420-D offers an integrated solution for those who want it. It also presents a viable option to OEMs, although I'm a bit disappointed with both of the nForce boards Tom looked at.

 

[XMan]

I think we can agree that KT266A and nForce 420-D are pretty much neck-and-neck. The nForce 420-D offers an integrated solution for those who want it. It also presents a viable option to OEMs, although I'm a bit disappointed with both of the nForce boards Tom looked at.

My thing is this . . . on my new rig I'll need a network card, a sound card, a RAID card, a PCI modem, and a FireWire card. Add in a slot cooler, and that maxes out most setups with six slots taken up. With an NForce board, I can ditch the NIC and SB Live, and have room to grow.

 

[|TOAST|]

LOL Xerox Man!! I couldn't agree more and I built those systems for friends with Asus and MSI boards... I can't stand hearing about their obscure problems with those and trying to help them because I want to make it a decent investment for them (too bad they have SBLive! cards and too many other things eating up all their IRQ's).

[edit] (talking about your post above for the KT133... I got headaches and they weren't my systems) [/edit]

 

[Snoop]

<< I think we can agree that KT266A and nForce 420-D are pretty much neck-and-neck. The nForce 420-D offers an integrated solution for those who want it. It also presents a viable option to OEMs, although I'm a bit disappointed with both of the nForce boards Tom looked at. >>


My feelings exactly. Though, I think the performance of the nforce board will continue to improve, and in a month or two, probably surpass the kt266a's by a noticable margin.



<< With an NForce board, I can ditch the NIC and SB Live, and have room to grow. >>


And the best part is, no more creative labs junk

 

[XMan]

[edit] (talking about your post above for the KT133... I got headaches and they weren't my systems) [/edit]

Tell me about it. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to reflash the BIOS of my 8KTA3 because it puked it up and refused to boot. And no, the CMOS battery is not, and was not, dead.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

from newegg:
SHUTTLE AK31A $80+7
Gigabyte GA-7VTXE $99+7
MSI K7T266 PRO2 $104+5
EPOX EP-8KHA+ $105+7
Gigabyte GA-7VTX-H $120+5
SOYO K7V DRAGON+ Plus $146+4
Asus A7V266-E $161+0

do you guys think Asus is worth the double price of Shuttle?

which e-tailers have soltek mb?

 

[Rahminator]

I'm very happy with my Shuttle. After manually adjusting memory settings in BIOS to optimal performance, this board flies with excellent memory and cpu scores. I am overclocking XP 1600 and I'm at 1612 MHz and the board passed memtest86, 24 hours of Prime95 torture test, 50 iterations of SiSoft Sandra burn-in and a few iterations of 3DMark2001.

 

[damocles]

Soltek dimished their presence in the US a couple of years ago and are only now starting to rebuild it. In NZ you can usually get a Soltek board for about the same price as an Epox, but Solteks are much more common

 

[JavaMomma]

you can get the soltec boards up here in Canada cheaper then the Epox by a bit...

 

[Ionizer86]

With an NForce board, I can ditch the NIC and SB Live, and have room to grow.

In that case, you should also look at the Soyo K7V Dragon +. It looks pretty good, and it has integrated LAN and 6 channel hardware sound as well. Although it lacks integrated video, it's a bit cheaper than K7N420 Pro.

 

[Poontos]

<< you can get the soltec boards up here in Canada cheaper then the Epox by a bit... >>


Where?

 

[AGodspeed]

I'll pay a little more for stability, thank you very much. I've spent at least 100 bucks on aspirin with my KT133A.

LOL LOL!!! I hear ya.