Buying Advice - Tbird Solution?

[UILanMan]

I know a lot of you have had some great/awful experiences with different boards, and I was hoping to tap some of your knowledge before I went out and upgraded. I've been following the forums for a while, reading up on reviews, and I think I've narrowed it down somewhat. Most likely this machine will be for gaming/professional apps, and will have Win2k installed. I currently have 4 Micron PC133 256mb CAS3 dimms in my machine now, and would like to use them so the KT133a chipset is looking good. I plan on buying another IBM 45g ATA100/7200rpm drive, so the boards with RAID solutions look nice. That pretty much narrows it down to two then I guess:

Abit's KT7-Raid and Iwill's KK266-R. Everyone seems to have good things to say about both these boards, but as of late, I seem to be catching a few threads of people having problems with the Highpoint drivers in Win2k with the KT7. What brand controller is on the Iwill board?

Also, I'm planning on grabbing a 1.2g Tbird - as far as overclocking goes, which board do you think would provide the better capability (I plan to buy one of the better coolers from Tillmann's latest cooling article).

Sorry for the length of this message! Any suggestions?

 

[mercutio11]

I see a lot of comments about IWILL KK266 mobo.. Just let you know that it has multiplier problems...
I recommend A7V133..

 

[UILanMan]

<< I recommend A7V133 >>



Ah! You're absolutely right.. I got so involved in a couple threads I forgot about the A7V133 supporting RAID as well.. thanks for the heads up.

 

[Biggs]

<< I currently have 4 Micron PC133 256mb CAS3 dimms in my machine now, and would like to use them so the KT133a chipset is looking good. >>


The KT133A chipset supports a maximum of 1.5GB of memory. Most motherboards come with 3 DIMM slots supporting a maximum of 512MB per slot. The only one I know that has 4 DIMM slots is the Epox 8KTA3. The catch is that you have to use a single-sided stick for banks 4,5 and 6,7 and the maximum limit of 1.5GB still remains.



<< What brand controller is on the Iwill board? >>


The IWill KK266-R uses an AM1(American Megatrends RAID) controller which is capable of RAID 0, 1, 0 + 1.

As of right now, with many issues concerning the IWill KK266-R, I'd recommend the Asus A7V133.