MOBO Upgrade Advice, HELP!!

[Choppedliver2]

My sister has a pc i built for her a couple years ago. It has an Abit KT7A mobo and 1.5 Gigs of Crucial pc133 SDRAM, and an Athlon 1Gig processor.

She wants me to speed it up without spending a lot of money. I dont want to buy new ram, but it is PC133 RAM and all the new mobos are going to use pc2100+ DDR SDRAM. So if i get one of those i have to buy new ram, mobo, processor. If i stick with SDRAM, i only have to swap mobo and proc.

Does anyone know a modern mobo that supports pc133 sdram and a decently fast processor? Any other recommendations?

 

[Bonesdad]

Biostar M7VIG Pro. $59 bux at Newegg...will take SDRAM or DDR RAM (but not both at same time). CPU is good to AMD 2600+ I believe. Excellent stable board with onboard 6 channel sound, onboard video (uses system memory) and onboard LAN.

Also ECS K7S5A, much maligned, but I never had a problem with any. Also up to 2600+ and has the same memory options as the Biostar. I prefer the Biostar personally tho. Pop a 2400+ CPU on it for about $90 and you have a new system for about $150. What wattage power supply does she have? Should be 300W min.

Consider a Via KT400 chipset mobo plus a stick of 256MB DDR PC2100 and a new processor also. Should bring you in well under $200.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Bonesdad
Biostar M7VIG Pro. $59 bux at Newegg...will take SDRAM or DDR RAM (but not both at same time). CPU is good to AMD 2600+ I believe. Excellent stable board with onboard 6 channel sound, onboard video (uses system memory) and onboard LAN.

Also ECS K7S5A, much maligned, but I never had a problem with any. Also up to 2600+ and has the same memory options as the Biostar. I prefer the Biostar personally tho. Pop a 2400+ CPU on it for about $90 and you have a new system for about $150. What wattage power supply does she have? Should be 300W min.

Consider a Via KT400 chipset mobo plus a stick of 256MB DDR PC2100 and a new processor also. Should bring you in well under $200.

The MSI Turbo 2 is still kicking around. Supports XP2600+

 

[Choppedliver2]

thanks for the suggestions bones. Ill have to check those out.

Im not going the ddr route because of the amount of memory i need. i already have 1.5Gigs of PC133, and she NEEDS that much. Actually she could use another 512.

does the msi support sdram too?

 

[Choppedliver2]

doh!!! the biostar only supports two sdram slots. i have 3 sdram sticks

 

[Choppedliver2]

d@mnit, so does the ecs board. I looked at the MSI board and it says supports 1800+, and honestly i hate the kt133a chipset which is what the abit board has. i have never had so many problems with usb, sound crackling, etc. Honestly i will probably never buy another via chipset. Id go SIS before id go via again, nforce2 would be nice if it had sdram support. i really like those two you suggested bones but they only support 2 slots of ram for whichever type ram you install

 

[cmdrdredd]

most mobos have 4 slots MAX for any memory whether it's DDR/SDRAM or just DDR alone.

looks like you'll have to buy new memory or deal with 2 sticks

 

[Choppedliver2]

what happened to the good ole days of 8 or even 16 slots on a mobo... so they were only 256k 30 pinn sims lol

 

[Choppedliver2]

does anyone have any experiece with the el cheapo pc3200 DDR generic stuff off pricewatch.com? I mean if you dont plan on overclocking or running crazy memory timings, shouldnt you be able to buy the cheapstuff and run a completely stable system? If i did that i could maybe justify buying memory, mobo, and cpu. but then im stuck with 1.5 gigs of crappy ole pc133