AMD Budget Mobo's, Which One?

[ethlax18]

Hey all, I'm building a semi-budget system for a friend of mine. They don't really do any gaming or anything intensive like that, just the web and word processing. I've settled to go with an Athlon XP, either the 1800+ or 2000+. I've been looking at some mobo's and have narrowed down a list, and was wondering if anybody has had any experience with any of these boards or if they know if any of these are crap or which ones whould give me the most bang for the buck (prices from newegg). I decided to go with integrated video to keep costs to a minimum.

Biostar M7VIG-Pro (kt266) $60
Asus A7N266-VM (nvidia 220) $72

I've heard a lot of good things about the Asus board, but am a little concerned the chipset might be a little dated, thats why I'm also considering the Biostar (with the 8235 NorthBridge). Has anyone had any good or bad experiences with either, I'd especially like to hear about the Biostar as I haven't heard much about it.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Kenazo]

I've got the A7N266-VM. it's a decent little mobo, but it really does not like generic ram. Or at least not the generic ram I had. Runs my crucial fine though.

 

[mechBgon]

The integrated video on the A7N266-VM is much higher in performance than the Savage8 on the Biostar's KM266 chipset. Still not great, but higher. A7N266-VM gets around 1700 in 3DMark2001 with a ~1700+ CPU. The Savage8 gets around 600. Owie! Ok, so that's with a lesser CPU, but it's still pretty evident that the video is the limiting factor there.

I have some of the A7N266-VM's at the office and they are really reliable. With a proper AGP card you would have a pretty decent gaming rig too. 18 A7N266-VM's so far They have the same 5.1 audio processor as the new nForce2 boards, onboard LAN, and a three-year warranty. Fastest CPU for these is the AthlonXP 2600+ with the 266MHz bus (no support for 333MHz-bus models).