FIC AZ11E for AMD T-bird - Comments/Suggestions?

[NOC9006]

Hello,
I am building a new PC and I pretty much have my mind set on the T-bird 850. I have been reading reviews and watching the forums about motherboards. I do not plan on Ocing my processor. I just want to get into some higher end games and surf the net.

So my main question is does anyone have any experience with the FIC AZ11E mobo and how it works with the T-birds? I have built several other machines with K6-II and the FIC 503+ boards and they seem to be very stable. Would you suggest something other than the FIC mobo? I am looking at the AZ11E over the AZ11 due to the UDMA-100 support, will a UDMA 100 HD help me gain much performance over a UDMA-66?

I am open for suggestions on other CPU and mobo combonations if anyone wants to give me thier 2 cents

Thank you.
NOC dude

 

[lister75]

Hey NOC,

I've been using a variety of stuff, I had the FIC VB601, and I recently made the move to a AZ11...which wasn't that great. It was stable and all but didn't have any of the performance tweaks. Anyways, I gave that system to my sister and built myself a 1GHz AZ11E...and this system is NICE! The AZ11E is extremely stable and the performance is great.

From my experience I think it is a great choice. My second choice would be Gigabyte.

Late!

 

[Bestill]

I just built a new system using the AZ11E and Duron 750 and it's been running well. I have had it lock up twice on me though, but I'm not sure if it is a fault of the motherboard or a fault in one of the other components in my system. You can read more about it here FIC AZ11E Lock-Up. Overall though, it's been awesome for gaming. No lock-ups whatsoever and outstanding performance. FIC also includes a lot of goodies (software and cables) with the motherboard to make it a great buy. It tends to be priced about $20-30 cheaper than the Asus or Abit boards and it includes support for UDMA100--a serious performance booster. Also, if you don't plan on overclocking, all the more reason to get the AZ11E. Most tech reviews give the AZ11E a good rating except for overclocking, and that's only because you still need to move manual jumpers in order to change the clock speed, multiplier, etc. If you haven't seen Anand's review, you can check it out here AZ11E Review.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[NOC9006]

Lester and Bestill,
Thanks for the info and your advice! I am glad to hear that you have had a good experience with the AZ11E. I have read 2 or 3 reviews on it and like what I hear, so I think I will be going with that board. I am just going to wait a few weeks and see if the prices on the processor or the boards come down a little.

If anyone else has some more info for me. SHOOT!

NOC

 

[NOC9006]

Does anyone else have any experience with the AZ11E mobo? or any other suggestions?

 

[SACANDAGA]

Does anyone else have any experience with the AZ11E mobo? or any other suggestions?

A friend of mine has this board. He bought it because of positive reviews and is not really happy with it. It has a tendacy to reboot itself once in a while. The video performance of this board is also not good. (Thats why there cheap)

I would suggest getting an AsusA7V133 That's what I reccomended to my friend. I helped him set it up a few days ago and he is very very happy. I know its more money but it well worth the expense.

 

[billyjak]

I have the AZ11 board and it is one stable board.
It dosen't have the tweaks of the AZ11E though.
I have my Abit KT7 Raid board back so I'm not using it now.
I had it installed with the promise ATA 100 controller in it and it ran flawelessely.
This board did not crash once in the 30 days I ran it. This is rare.
I was hesitant in buying it, but the board proved me wrong, I updated the Bios and my memmory timings were increased, not to far off my Abit boards benchmarks.
Iv'e read stories about FIC in the past, but they have adressed these problems in a positive way. Seem to be more quality oriented now.
Good Luck

 

[NOC9006]

>>>BUMP<<<

 

[controler]

I have the AZ11E. Its a nice board, just not all the features for overclocking. It is very stable.. at least pretty stable. I ran Windows 98, which is a crappy OS as it is, but occasionally I would have problems. Not too much though, overall it was a scable board for the 2 months it was run. I would suggest it to you. Ultra ata/100 doesn't improve overall hard drive speed much over ata/66 because the fastest ide hard drive now reads at about 40MB/s. Its a nice feature to have though :/

 

[SVTSnake]

I just built a Duron 700@900 with this motherboard for my Wife! The board is rock solid! It hasn't locked up once, and has been on for about a month straight without a reboot. I was skeptical at first as I try to stay with big name board manufacturers, but this board gets my thumbs up!

 

[infojunkie]

I have the az11e with duron 750. When I tried to tweak memory settings like 4-way and cas 2, my machine wouldn't boot. The bad part was that I had to clear CMOS to get the anything working again, imagine that. Even the power button wouldn't work. I had to use the ps switch and reconfigure every BIOS setting. If anyone has a work around, I'd could sure use it.