Choosing a new motherboard for an old Athlon XP

[holyghost]

I have an old Athlon XP1800 which the motherboard is not working. Currently I am trying to find a new motherboard which could best fit the old cpu. I am using 512MB PC2700 DDR. Can anyone suggest me a most suitable & stable uptodate motherboard for this cpu? TQ

 

[crazyeddie]

You might take a look over at http://www.mwave.com for the BIOSTAR M7NCD-ULTRA NVIDIA nFORCE2 ULTRA 400.

Biostar makes good, cheap, stable motherboards. MWave has this one for $60 and it should support your CPU and RAM just fine.

 

[Fern]

Shuttle AN35N-Ultra. Pretty good nForce2 mobo. I got mine for about $50.

Otherwise an NF7 or something from that series.

 

[Peter]

Best bargain: PC-Chips M811U, uses old KT266A/8235 chipset. Performance choice: M848A, SiS 748/963 chipset.

 

[holyghost]

Thanks for the feedback. But What I can find now is Asus A7N8X E/X, Abit NF7-S/S2 & MSI K7N2 Delta2-FSR. Which is better in performance & stability? I also want a simple overclocking program like the Soltek's Redstorm so I can see how far I can push my XP1800 to.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: holyghost
Thanks for the feedback. But What I can find now is Asus A7N8X E/X, Abit NF7-S/S2 & MSI K7N2 Delta2-FSR. Which is better in performance & stability?{snip.}

I've had at least one each of those three. The Asus is rock steady, no problems, no headaches. I got the "wrong" Abit NF7, the -S2 -- junk. The MSI is not quite as nice as the Asus, but the price point was much lower than Asus' when I was collecting my Socket A parts. I've tended toward conservatism with regard to OC, and just paid the extra cost of the XP's with higher PR's when I wanted to go faster.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: holyghost
Thanks for the feedback. But What I can find now is Asus A7N8X E/X, Abit NF7-S/S2 & MSI K7N2 Delta2-FSR. Which is better in performance & stability? I also want a simple overclocking program like the Soltek's Redstorm so I can see how far I can push my XP1800 to.

I think all these are perfectly fine as fas as stability goes. From there I believe the better performer of the bunch w/b the Abit NF7-S v.2 (not the confusingly similar-named NF7-S2, which is to be avoided. It lacks too many features).

The abit is a very OCer friendly mobo. You'd be able to push your XP1800 as far as you wanted/could from within the "SoftMenu" section of the BIOS.

Fern

 

[fbrdphreak]

If you want a super-budget AXP board, check this out:
MSI K7N2 Delta-LSR Refurb @ NewEgg
This thing is $37 shipped and has SATA. I bought one for my parent's desktop to replace the crap-@$$ KT133 board and I will be testing the system with a 1GHz Duron tonight (just received the board yesterday and I want to make sure its not DOA). I'll let you know how it goes

 

[Peter]

PC-Chips M811 currently goes for 17 euros here in Germany (that'd equal a US price of around $20). Still, Newegg want $26, still a bargain. Note these are new, retail pack. They're being cleared out because they don't run Semprons (lacking the required FSB333 support) - the good thing about this being that this is about the last board on the market that still can run 1x/2x AGP cards. So if you got old socket-A processors and graphics cards waiting for a new home, this is your deal.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-185-010&depa=0

 

[Peter]

holyghost, regarding availability, it'd really help a lot if you told us your location, wouldn't it?