km266 or nvidia 220-D?

[JeannaDawn]

Hello everyone. I'm new here and hoping someone can help me out. I need a really good/stable integrated motherboard, but I'm having a hard time deciding whether I should get one with the via km266 chipset or the ASUS one with the nvidia chipset (a7n266-vm). The km266 one that I have my eye on is the microstar MS6390-L, although, there are a few others out there as well. I don't play any games at all. 3D graphics are not that important to me, but 2d are, as I use photoshop 7.0 quite a bit for abstract-type digital art (you can check out my site to see some of the stuff I do). I've done quite a bit of research, trying to decide which one of these to choose, but I'm totally undecided. Which one of these chipsets has the better memory controller? From what I've read, the km266 uses the same memory controller as the kt266a. Which are better graphics - ProSavage 8 integrated or Gforce2 integrated? Another consideration - I have heard that the nvidia drivers are a b*tch to install under win98SE (which i still use). I'd rather not have to go through a ton of drama trying to get drivers to work correctly. I just want to emphasize, that a non-integrated board is just not an option for me at this point. I need the graphics, LAN, and sound integrated. Any help would be extremely appreciated, thanks everyone!!!!

-jeanna

 

[JeannaDawn]

Guess my question was too "stupid" for this forum. Oh, I forgot, I'm just a "little woman", my questions are unimportant. Thanks a lot, guys :frown:

 

[Bullhonkie]

I don't have any experience with km266 boards personally, but if I had to choose between a km266 or nforce board I would go with the latter. I can't seem to track down any benchmarks of the integrated graphics in the km266, but I'm pretty sure the integrated geforce2 graphics are better. If you won't be using the 3d capabilities it probably won't matter too much though. The memory controller is kind of a toss up, if the km266 does use the same controller found in the kt266a then it might just barely eek out the nforce. The last few pages of this article might be helpful if that's the case. It's hard to compare though because that review shows the two respective memory controllers performing without any integrated graphics leeching off the same bandwidth.

I haven't installed nforce systems on anything except Win2k and XP so I can't comment on anything about 9x. However in my experience the nforce drivers have been extremely easy to install and I haven't run into any issues so far after having built 4 nforce boxes. VIA chipsets on the other hand I have had a few quirks with, but only with the KT133 and some earlier chipsets.

Hope this helps somewhat, even though it probably didn't give any kind of straight answer. No question is too 'stupid', the only stupid questions are the ones that go unasked. This forum just happens to get very little traffic compared to a lot of the others so it can be difficult to get a response to a question where the answer is not black and white and/or readily apparent.

 

[JeannaDawn]

Hey there, Bullhonkie, thanks for answering me! And, I'm sorry if I was rude, I'm act worse than my 2 year old sometimes, I swear! Anyhow, I think I'll probably get the Asus board and just use windows XP so I won't have any worries. Although, the version I have isn't a "payed for" version, so I don't know if it will even work. I wish I could just afford to go out and buy it, but I can't. By the way, anyone who wants to report me to Micro$oft, be my guest! I read the article here on Anandtech - the September one about the budget SOHO system (which is basically what I need) and that article is swaying me heavily in favor of the a7n266-vm. Extremely good article. I just have to wonder, now that it is November, if that is the board that would still be recommended. Really though, anything is going to seem better that what I have (had, actually), which was a FIC AE31 with the VIA KLE chipset. That board was quite stable, but seriously behind the times, I think - and it had no agp slot for future expansion. I'm thinking that I was majorly ripped off when I was charged 89 dollars for it just a couple of months ago. :disgust: I ended up giving it away to one of my friends, so hopefully he's happy w/it. I'm going batty without my own comp though!! :Q

Thanks again, Bullhonkie! Love the user name, btw

-jeanna

 

[Vette73]

The KM266 board WITH the 8235 southbridge is a good chipset. BUT the nForce one has better Video if you play games, and MIGHT have better sound. Depends on what they used.

Also the KM266 board might be cheaper, but I have seen some pretty cheap nForce1 boards.

 

[tart666]

I suggest Asus A7N266-VM for $69 shipped, micro-ATX

I was so impressed with these, I got 3. Can't go wrong at that price.

 

[tuan121]

gf has the asus and its a great board. depends wht you want tho, but i would get the nforce.

 

[RanDum72]

Unless you REALLY have to use SDRAM (in which the KM266 is a great choice), the current bargain champ for the features it has is the Asus
A7n266-VM. Abit also has the NV7m, which is a little pricier but offers the full-blown 420 chipset with dual-DDR memory bus. Sadly, its not as widely available as the Asus.

 

[tkistre]

I agree with most of the guys or gals here. I have built about 10 PC's using the Gigabyte 7VKML, which uses the KM266 chipset for customers. It is a great board and have had no issues to speak of. I have recently built 2 PC's using the same Asus board you are looking at. I did install WinXP on both, not Win98. They both run great. I believe the few extra dollars are worth it for this board, versus the KM266 boards. I could not state that one 2D video is better than the other, but the nVidia video is better if you decide to venture in a little 3D gaming. And the sound is better, if that is important. The Asus manuel is very detailed, more than most manufacturers.

From my standpoint, reselling PC's, although I have been very pleased with both, I prefer the Asus. I believe you get more for the money.

 

[mechBgon]

I have 19 of the A7N266-VM's in my work fleet and I like them. Among other things, they have a 3-year warranty. I've only installed Win2000 on them so far. nVidia did just release a new Unified Driver Package 2.0 for nForce and nForce2, and perhaps that has improved the Win98 installation process... anyone know yet?

For using Photoshop, I was under the impresson that lots of memory is a good idea, so you might want to start with one large 512Mb module. IMHO, Win2000 is better than Win98 at managing piles of memory effectively, and I can vouch for the driver installation being a snap in Win2000, so if you need excuses to upgrade, there you go

One of the things I found was that my KT333-based board, which is a cousin once removed of the KM266, was bottlenecking my SCSI card that hosts my hard drive. The cheap little nForce-based board gets about 25% more performance out of my SCSI setup, so nVidia is doing something right in there. Wish I had an nForce2!