Any recommendations on a good DDR board?

[Kipper]

Okay...I've done some poking around and I've got a few boards lined up for the replacement to my now - dead 8k7a (second in a year). Unfortunately, most of them are EPoX boards, which I've now developed an aversion to.

The board needs to be compatible with:

1.33 GHz Athlon
Crucial PC2100 ECC
Alpha PAL8045 (not exactly a priority)

The boards I've thought about are:

EPoX 8k3a+
EPoX 8k5a2+
Abit KX7-333R
Asus A7V333
Asus A7V8X

Now the problem is that both of the ASUS boards won't support ECC RAM. I lean toward ASUS because of their 3-year warranties, which is definitely longer than I plan to use the board. The question is, will the machine read the RAM as ECC and reject it completely or will it hum along like regular DDR? Haven't gotten a real straight answer on this one...any help or recommendations appreciated. Should I go with a completely different chipset?

 

[Insane3D]

Epox 8K5A2+ or 8K5A3+ if you need four RAID ports. ECC should work fine, it just won't be taking advantage of the ECC functionality.


Also, Epox boards all have a 2 year warranty now. As I said in your other thread...don't let your experience with the 8K7A ruin your faith in Epox..that was just a PITA board. All their boards since have been stellar. For more info on the Epox boards, check out the thread up top of this forum..it has several review links and info for these boards.


One more thing, if you can save up another $50, snag one of those 1600+ XP's from Newegg. Throw in some PC2700 and you can run 166mhz FSB, 1.75ghz (2100+) with no additional voltage or cooling, and it will run cooler than your 1.33 Tbird does now.

 

[PUNKtotalled]

I would agree with Insane3D, BUT if you want more features like Firewire, SATA, Gigabit LAN, AGP8X... the A7V8X is a good DDR board. I currently run an ALPHA PAL8045 on mine. No problem at all.

 

[Kipper]

Just ordered the A7V8X...hopefully it will run fine and I won't have to RMA my processor too. :disgust:

Wish me luck.