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Best Processor and Motherboard for $350 Please advise

R

Rabbit

Junior Member
Looking for the best I can get and where for $350
I will buy memory but have the rest of the components. Overclocking would be nice but not necessary.
 
Get a A7V or KT7, then buy the fastest T-Bird you can afford with the left overs.
 
I agree. You're probably looking at a Thunderbird 800 if you buy one of those motherboards, and you'll still have a little left over to make sure you get high-quality RAM! 🙂
 
I agree with bigsmooth. i got that an 800 t'bird with an asus and i'm happy. stable and i'm probably going to overclock pretty soon just for jollies
 
i dont think the i815 is worth the extra cash. You can probably get an msi-6309 and a p3-700e for $280 and have extra for ram.
 
Why isnt i815E worth the cash? With Asus or MSI, you get 1MHz increment, you get ATA100, you get better frame rates in games, better memory performance, and a better all around chipset than VIA 133A. The comparable KT133 is just as expensive, so we'll give i815E that.

If you had to get VIA, dont get MS-6309, get P3V4X, which is in a totally different league.
 
the p3v4x is a great motherboard to get. It is very cheap and you can get a p3 700 with it and then you have a lot left over for better ram
 
hey, nothing wrong with abit motherboards though, i have an abit be6-2 and it is one of the best boards i have dealt with
 
"nothing wrong with abit motherboards though"

Hehe... a lot of things are wrong with Abit boards, it just hasnt happened on you yet. I would recommend stay away from the Abits. If you're gonna get BX, get Asus CUBX and MSI BX Master, they're better than BE6-2. Dont get the SE6 either, it's no match against CUSL2 and 815E Pro.
 
Nothing about YOUR board in particular. Im talking about Abit in general, they have been in my experience, crap. They're low quality and unreliable, unstable as well. Did I mention they have the highest RMA rates, and I have been hearing a lot of problems with them on forums and messageboards alike. Check Anand's reviews, Tom's, as well as Kyle's, Abits never made a good impression on them(except the KT7-RAID). As good as Abit is, Asus and MSI are better, I take them over Abit anyday.
 
abit motherboards suck. I stopped buying their garbage during their heyday when they were the only company with softmenu. Had an IT5H short out (he'll it was already bad enough that it had linear voltage regulators the heated up like hell). Then my px5 was a POS, it couldn't take 2 dimms and run at 83mhz and it was even a known issue and it was an "overclockers" board. I also had an ax5 and well that POS had a DOA parallel port. The only board that i think should be considered great is the bh6.
 
unfortuenetly I agree... i own a BM6 and its crapping out on me. I have owned an MSI 6163 Pro mobo and it was good... it crapped out on me also =(. Anyway, Abit has always had a reputation as being a second/third class MOBO manufacturer. Softmenu is the only reason they are/were even considered a player in the MOBO market... if you want to call them a player that is... how many OEM systems do you see w/ Abit boards? ..... zip.
 
Biggest problem I personally have with the Socket 370/Slot 1 boards is you know that they will probably be obsoleted within a month or so- you will have an extremely limited upgrade path
 
i am sure the slot 1 boards will be a lot harder to find, but socket 370 doesn't seem to be going, and why does it matter if you are looking to buy a 700e and overclock to around a ghz, why would you want to upgrade anytime soon?!?
 
Hmm I dont know what you guys are talking about-just built a system with an abit se6 and it is as good as any if not better-I work with asus boards all day (thousands of them at my current work) and if you want to talk about QC issues then talk to some of the other NASA hq techs they will all say asus is the bottom of the barrel, we have nothing but problems with their motherboards


just goes to show you no company is perfect-I have yet to have a problem with abit, although I work with them on a much smaller scale than the asus boards we deal with. I wouln't have any qualms recommending the se6 to anyone I know, and my other friend who is a tech also at nasa and has built over 300 systems on his spare time alone also just built an se6 system and said it was one of the best and easiest boards he worked with.

abit caters to a more specialized crowd, which is why they would never be considered for an oem system. If anything a retailer wants a board that the end user cannot update or modify. How do you think they make their money? by selling a system that can be easily updated and worked on by the end user? no way.

Most end user/oem systems come with either really no name boards so that the user cannot find updates and have to go to their reseller for service, or they are proprietary(sp?) and have no updates, or standard intel components are used. We are currently working on phasing out the ASUS based systems now with either standard intel bx boards or we are swapping the whole machine out for compaq midtower systms at work.

Abit in my opinion makes a fine product now, when the bh6 was around and a few boards after that they were kind of crappy with alot of problems, but I think the company has comae along way in the past two years-their manuals are top notch, their cs is getting better, and in my case (about 6 systems based on abit boards, with the exception of my bh6) I have yet to have incident on any. They are the easiest to configure out of what I have worked with.
 
My thinking was based on the fact that the 1.13 PIII is as far as it will go. I wouldn't care to bet one way or the other on whether or not the .13 PIII's (assuming they will be made) will be supported on current boards- or even that they will be a Socket 370/Slot 1 form factor.
Also wouldn't surprise me if within 6 months you'll be seeing complaints about " my slow 1 ghz- should I upgrade to 1.5, or spend my money on the the new 128mb video card?" 1 ghz is fast for now- we'll see if it still is 6 months from now
 
the .13 p3's will most likely be socket 370. Slot 1 is very iffy about that. And besides, why would intel want to screw us over again with a coppermine with a different connection. And since intel tried to put out the 1.13 ghz coppermine on a socket 370, that leads me to believe it will be socket 370.

that's all for tonight. gotta get some sleep
 
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