Looking to build athlon/tbird system, need mobo

[Alkaline]

I'm looking to put together a system for a friend who has some money and needs a new computer. I haven't been following the hardware scene in the past year and I don't have a clue what's good/bad anymore. What would be the best option as far as motherboards go for an Athlon or possibly t-bird system? I've heard that t-bird mobos are going to be unstable/unreliable because they are so new, would it be a bad idea to build a system around them? Any information is greatly appreciated =D
-Alkaline

 

[Insane3D]

The Socket "A" platform is stil a little new. I wouldn't say it is unstable, just immature. It really depends on how he will be using the new system. Is he interested in overclocking, or will this be run at default clock speed? I would highly suggest the Abit KA7-100 mobo, and either a T-bird 700, or a classic Athlon 850. The KA7-100 is, in my opinion, the best Athlon mobo out there. You get two extra IDE headers that support the new ATA/100 standard in addition to the primary IDE headers for a total of four, RAID support, AGP 4x and Fast Writes, and a ton of other features. It has six PCI slots, 1 ISA if you still have a 56k hardware modem like me, 1 AGP 4x slot. It also has four DIMM slots, 4 fan headers, a temperature sensor for the CPU, and the ATX power supply connecter is located in such a way that you can use very large heatsink/fan combos like the VOS32 without modification. It also leaves out the useless features like a AMR slot, and integrated video and sound. I got a Athlon 850 OEM and this mobo for $450 total. If he is into overclocking, I am running 1Ghz with only FSB bumping. The T-Bird will also run well on this board, but it supposedly does not overclock well. I have also heard there are problems with T-birds over 800mhz on these boards. I hope this helps.

 

[Alkaline]

Well I don't think he'd overclock it, the system is primarily for casual gaming (quake3, diablo2, hl) and other than that, there's no real serious processing going on.. I've read about KA7-100 and it was one that i was thinking about, the other consideration i had was an epox ep-7kxa which looked good on the few reviews I had read. so to recap, we might consider overclocking, but it's not vital (not a poweruser), and the choice between t-bird and regular athlon is basically 'oooh ooh new toys' vs knowing that something is tried and true..

 

[Insane3D]

I would go with the "classic" Athlon then. Like I said, I just did some BIOS tweaking and I am at 1ghz now...doesn't get any easier than that. I would suggest the 850 and the KA7-100 then. The extra IDE headers will give you the option of connecting up to 8 devices, so you have alot of expansion options. The other thing is that highpoint chip also supports RAID, he may not use that, but it is a pretty good bonus. Also, I am running rock stable at this speed. I have been running Prime95 for over a week, playing UT,Q3, etc, and surfing with no crashes or lockups. He will be very happy. I would also suggest getting some good PC-133 memory as the KA7 bios has alot of tweaks to get the most out of good memory. I think there are at least 4 or 5 memory timing adjustments to tweak out the memory. Good luck...

 

[Ulysses]

Alkaline:

The Abit KA7 mentioned above is a motherboard designed for a Slot A type processor and is based on the VIA Apollo KX133 chipset. The KX133 chipset is NOT compatible with the new Athlon/Thunderbird or Duron CPU's, according to AMD (that's the company that happens to manufacture the Athlon and Duron). You should only get that motherboard if you are going to use the old Athlon, not the new Athlon or Duron.

The old Athlon comes only in what is now an outdated format, the Slot A form. The new Athlon and Duron come in the new Socket A form (although some Slot A new Athlons made for OEM's may be available on the retail market - but are still incompatible with the KX133 chipset). In my opinion you should not get an outdated CPU like the old Athlon.

See:
http:// [url]http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=28&threadid=199398 [/url]

 

[Insane3D]

Ulysses- AMD may not officialy say the T-Bird is compatible with the KA7, but I have seen several sites who tested them on KA7's and they ran fine. They just don't o/c well in the KA7... I also wouldn't say that the Slot "A" mobo's are out of date, look at the BX chipset... Also, there was so much pressure on AMD because of the large overstock of KX133 chipset mobo's that AMD has agreed to make the T-birds in Slot "A" format until the end of the year at least. Also, ABIT is supposedly working on a "slotket" adapter to run T-Birds and Durons on these boards...

 

[Alkaline]

Thanks for all your help Insane and ulysses, it really helped me undedrstand a few things that had been puzzling me. I also talked to my friend and he said that he'd like to use classic Athlon, since it would save money and is probably more stable. Regarding the memory/overclocking tweaks that you talked about Insane, how dangerous are they to play with? If something is changed, would it make the memory burn out/no longer work? I'm cautious about doing that type of thing because I wouldn't want to mess anything up and have it no longer working. Thanks again
-Alkaline

 

[Insane3D]

No, worst case scenario, you would get memory errors or crashes in Windows. It will not actually harm your memory. If you tweak something too far, the KA7 bios will restore the previous settings on reboot, or you can hold down the insert key while booting up, and it will return to default settings. This beats opening things up and using the clear cmos jumper all the time. Good luck!