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Good board for XP 1800+ w/ PC133

S

swematt

Junior Member
Hey people,

I'm moving away from my Intel P3 machine, and I got a decent price on a AMD XP 1800+ so now I need some help on the motherboard choice.

I have 512MB of Crucial PC133 that I want to hold on to for now. Especially with memory prices going through the roof lately.
I have a 300W power supply that I planned to stick with, but I'm willing to bite the bullet and upgrade if it will be nessecary.

I want a board that's overclockable from the BIOS, preferebly in 1Mhz increments a'la the Abit SoftMenu III.
I don't need sound, RAID or NIC onboard. It might be nice to have the choice of upgrading to DDR in the future.
Then again, I'm thinking - maybe it's better just buying something cheap that will do for now - and buy a new board that will support DDR when that time rolls around.

What chipset should I be looking for if I want XP support, stability and decent speed?

KT133A, SIS 735 or ALi Magik1?

Help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks,
Matt
 
Your overclocking requirements, unfortunately, can't be satisfied by K7S5A (which is the best bang for the buck, bar none.) You might try Leadtek's SiS 735 solution -- 7350KDA -- which does have 1MHz adjustments.

Otherwise, you're left with VIA-based KT133A.
 
Pabster,

Thanks a lot for your comments.

I took a quick gander at the Leadtek webpage. Seems like the 7350KDA only takes DDR SDRAM - so that would leave me S.O.L there.

Like you summarized, I guess I will have to stick to KT133A. Although that kind of smarts, it would be nice to have something more exciting that a year+ old chipset in the new mobo. 🙂

Right now these are my prime candidates: MSI K7T Turbo2 (MS-6330 V5.0), Abit KT7A rev 1.3, and the Asus A7A133.

I did consider the K7S5A at one point, but the limited overclocking & rumored power hunger (needs really beefy PS) I read about at ocworkbench kind of scared me off. Even though the price makes it very tempting.

How is the SDR (PC133) performance difference like between the SIS 735, KT133A and the ALi Magik1?
Anything I need to worry about?

Thanks,
Matt
 
SDR, yes, I forgot ... sorry 😀

K7S5A offers the flexibility of either PC133 or DDR.

As far as performance, SiS 735 > KT133A > MaGiK 1. The first two are very close, but anyone who has used both can attest that the SiS 735 is noticeably "snappier", no doubt due to the incredible 1.2GB/s of bandwidth between bridges.

I can't really recommend any of those KT133A boards. I had 2 KT7As for a brief time, which gave me nothing but trouble. The 686B VIA South Bridge is absolutely terrible. YMMV, but I'd seriously consider SiS 735.
 
I agree with Pabster,
The K7S5A is the best choice at this time. I realize there isn't a bios for it that has many overclocking options, but I've used CPUcool with it since I purchased the K7S5A in August and it provides quite a few options. I've run a 1.4T-Bird@1.54ghz(146.6FSB) and a 700 Duron@7x133=931mhz using CPUcool. I have it as my second rig now so I'm using a 300w PS with a combined output of 165w instead of the PS I was using which had a combined output of 200w and now the 700 Duron will only go to 124FSB, so unless your 300w PS it's providing atleast 180w+ combined output it will likely limit your overclocking with a high end XP anyways. Ofcourse it's just my opinion and not written in stone 😉
 
Thanks guys,

It seems like the ECS K7S5A is the prefered weapon of choice here.
Like I said, at the price it is going for it sure is tempting... I guess I can live without "real" overclocking for now.

Is the ALi Magik1 really as bad as everybody makes it out to be?
Asus has some semi-low cost options using that chipset... The plus being the Asus name, plus overclock capabilities.
Could anyone point me in the direction of some performance comparisons with KT133A, SiS735 and the ALi for SDRAM?
I know the SiS kicks ass with DDR... but I wonder how it is with SDR.

Matt
 
I went ahead and ordered the K7S5A this morning for ~$66 shipped 2-day FedEx.
Here's to hoping it will be a choice I won't have to regret... 🙂

Thanks for pushing me in the right (hopfully) direction.

Matt
 
swematt wrote:

"Here's to hoping it will be a choice I won't have to regret..."

Don't let the select few here who enjoy bashing ECS and/or SiS dissuade you. At $66, you can't buy a better price/performance ratio. There's plenty of members' here to help you should you have questions or what not.

Keep in mind the vast majority (the vocal few) who do this bashing don't even own (and never have) the K7S5A. So take it all with a big grain of salt. 😀
 
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