Help me give Intel the boot!

[ninjazed]

I've got a P-III 733EB slot 1 processor on one of those confounded ASUS P3C-2000 motherboards. When I put my system together last March all was well with Intel and the world. I found out later in the year that slot 1 was going dinosaur as well as the dreaded MTH issue which was officially labeled "defective" by Intel and ASUS. Like an old dog I continued using the setup without a problem, for a while at least. As of late I'm experiencing all of the problems associated with this crap that Intel peddled. System hangs weren't so bad but it seems that my registry corrupts more often than I change skivvies these days. (That's alot by the way) To think I was planning on upgrading to a 933 slot 1 just to give an otherwise fine system a shot in the arm! I'm going to try to get the vendor to take the stinking board back and am already looking at Athlon T-Birds. Was my head up my ass or what? These AMD CPU's are a total bargain! Alright, enough whining from me. Any input please on my finalists this time? Gigabyte GA-7ZX, ASUS A7-V (I should have my head examined) or the Abit KT7 RAID. ASUS already seems like a loser with no ISA slot for my scanner but rates high on the tech sites. Gigabyte is recomended my AMD and Abit sounds good but what the hell is RAID anyway? Is it worth inclusion on my new 1.1 or 1.2 T-Bird Monster Box? Thanks for your input folks.

 

[spaceman]

i recently made the jump to amd less than a couple weeks ago tbird a7v rig,i had ZERO problems hooking it up.Just my take but i really like this motherboard.

 

[TonyT]

I use an ASUS A7V and, like ncircle, I have had no problems whatsoever.

In my opinion, unless you're running some sort of file server, you don't really need RAID support. What RAID lets you do is hook up multiple hard drives and have them be back-ups of each other. So, if you have data which is very important, you can have two hard drives hold the same data. Then, if one fails, the other drive kicks in like nothing ever happened. I don't think it's necessary for most home users. Of course, that's just my opinion.

 

[Pauli]

You're right that AMD systems are a bargain compared to Intel systems and you're making a good move. However, there is no way that your registry corruption problems can be blamed on Intel components or your Asus motherboard! More likely that is caused by your hard disk, overclocking, or OS or driver installation.

 

[Dee67]

I've been using intel since waaay back... got my first AMD PC (with asus a7v mobo) a few days ago.. and it's GREAT. it's fast, stable, CHEAP, and did I mention fast?

 

[loosbrew]

raid can also be used to increase the HDD performance, NOT JUST FOR MIRRORING!! there are a few states that raid can be set in and raid0 is using two HDD's as one to access the data from two different drives to essentially double transfer speeds...however it doesnt double the rate but i have heard of people reporting upto 80 mbps with two ata/100 drives in a raid0 config. but there is a drawback which is reliability, and data loss.
personally i never went with intel, i started with an amd k6-2 400 then went up to my recent tbird 900 on a kt7w/raid setup which works great, i even hooked my normal Diamondmax 7200rpm drive to the ata controller and saw a 15% increase in throughput. not too bad.

looooo

 

[TonyT]

Thanks for the extra info, loosbrew.

 

[Modus]

Definitely the MSI K7T-Pro-2A: cheaper and more stable than the ASUS and Abit boards. So reliable, in fact, that it powers the forums we're using this very moment. On AnandTech's 24 hour torture tests, it didn't crash a single time. Not once. That doesn't just make it the most stable Socket A board around. That makes it the most stable modern motherboard, period.

Microstar has surpassed ASUS and Abit in quality and is deliberately flodding the market with low priced motherboards to establish themselves in the techie mindset. I suppose it's clever, because they realize that once you win over the techies, the knowledge will trickle down to all those asking the techies for advice.

As for the CPU, the 1 GHz T-Bird and 800 MHz Duron just landed in the sweet spot a couple weeks ago. Those are the best buys.

But before you do anything, make absolutely sure it's not a software issue or a problem with some peripheral hardware. Also, do a little research on the i820/MTH recall and see if you're still eligible or the program is still running -- I'd hate to see that hardware end up in the hands of some poor schmuck who wasn't aware of its bugs

Modus

 

[formulav8]

Yeah the Microstar is very stable but its performance is the worst of the 3.

 

[ninjazed]

Thanks for your input. I have checked and re-checked the files and hardware on my system. It seems that over time, the more programs that get loaded on my 27GB hard drive, the more glaring the glitches become. Oh, by the way, I would never pawn this crappy board on some unsuspecting schlep. It just ain't ethical, ya know?

 

[Sharkmeat]

Why didn't you get a exchange for your MB when they (INTEL) put the info out??.You do have a screwed up board but it will work with the right tweak setup.and I don't have the info handy.Suggest to all for the first year of ownership of a board (any brand) keep a link to the home page of the board for problems and recalls.Some problem are self inflicted.

 

[Erasmus-X]

When shopping for motherboards, stability is almost always more important than speed. When comparing the Asus, MSI, and Abit boards (all using the same VIA chipsets), the performance differences are marginal enough to be neglible.

You can look at two of Anand's benchmarks:

Gaming Performance
Business Performance

Now tell me if a couple fps or a point really makes that much real world difference. I bet most of us (including me) can't even notice.

On the other side of the coin, a couple ounces of stability can make all the difference in the world when you're building a high-performance or overclocked rig.