I need your help deciding on a motherboard. I am going to take the plunge and switch from Intel to AMD. I upgrade my machine once a year. My current machine, an Intel P3-533 on a TYAN 1854 board is not that impressive to me. After reading every review I could find, I still find myself wondering which MB to buy for the Athlon.
Here is what I can tell you so far. I am going with the 900MHz or 1GHz Athlon. This I know for sure. I don't play many games, use the machine for business applications 95 % of the time. I am running Windows 2000 Pro, and would like to continue running this OS.
I have 256 MB (128 MB x 2) of Kingston PC-133 SDRAM that I will take from the P3-533 and add to the Athlon box. SoundBlaster Live - Value card, Nvidia TNT/2 16MB AGP card, NetGear FA-311 NIC, and an Adaptec SCSI/2 card for my CDR. Dual Maxtor 20 GB (ATA/100, 7200) HDD's.
I don't really care if the MB has on board audio, I will continue to use my SB Live.
Here are the 3 boards I have narrowed my decision down to:
AOpen AK73-1394 / Asus A7V133 / ABit KT7A-RAID
Right now I lean toward the ABit because of the RAID 0,1,0+1 but I don't have to have RAID mirror. The Aopen has a Fireware controller onboard, not that I have any Firewire devices, and the Asus seems to get the best performance reviews, for gaming anyway, which I don't care about that much.
Can you folks tell me what you would do, and a quick explanation of why.
Thanks in advance for your help and opinions !
Andrew
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A currently un-happy P3 owner ! My P2 was faster...
Here is what I can tell you so far. I am going with the 900MHz or 1GHz Athlon. This I know for sure. I don't play many games, use the machine for business applications 95 % of the time. I am running Windows 2000 Pro, and would like to continue running this OS.
I have 256 MB (128 MB x 2) of Kingston PC-133 SDRAM that I will take from the P3-533 and add to the Athlon box. SoundBlaster Live - Value card, Nvidia TNT/2 16MB AGP card, NetGear FA-311 NIC, and an Adaptec SCSI/2 card for my CDR. Dual Maxtor 20 GB (ATA/100, 7200) HDD's.
I don't really care if the MB has on board audio, I will continue to use my SB Live.
Here are the 3 boards I have narrowed my decision down to:
AOpen AK73-1394 / Asus A7V133 / ABit KT7A-RAID
Right now I lean toward the ABit because of the RAID 0,1,0+1 but I don't have to have RAID mirror. The Aopen has a Fireware controller onboard, not that I have any Firewire devices, and the Asus seems to get the best performance reviews, for gaming anyway, which I don't care about that much.
Can you folks tell me what you would do, and a quick explanation of why.
Thanks in advance for your help and opinions !
Andrew
---------
A currently un-happy P3 owner ! My P2 was faster...
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