Need help choosing new DDR mobo

[kodiferous]

With 266 being fairly new I guess I need some help picking a new motherboard. I'm somewhat out of the loop I guess you can say since I havent built a system in over a year. Here's what I'm looking for:

Chipset for AMD Thunderbird (I'm not sure if there is a DDR chipset that can handle the Thunderbird?)
266 MHz DDR SDRAM support
3 DIMMs preferred
ATA100 IDE controller
5 PCI slots (Can be shared with something else like ISA or one of those half slot things)
No onboard audio (but this is not a big deal)

If any of yall out there can think of a motherboard that would fit neatly into that category please let me know. Also let me know if I've requested something that doesnt exist so that I'll know, like the T-bird thing. I'm not concerned about overclocking too much either but having the option would be nice. I'm just not sure what boards out there right now are tried and true and I need a little advice. Thank you.

 

[Insane3D]

OK, there are two chipsets that support DDR for the Athlon (Thunderbird), one is from Via and one is from AMD. The DDR chipset from VIA is the KT266, and it is still having some bugs worked out, so a motherboard based on this is not a good choice right now. The best performing boards are based on the AMD 761 DDR chipset. There are two front runners with this chipset, and they both perform similar. The two boards are the Epox 8K7A/8K7A+ and the Gigabyte GA-7DXR. There is one thing you should now about three DDR slots on a AMD 761 motherboard. There is only one board with more than two slots right now because there is a timing issue with more than two DDR DIMMS on all AMD 761 motherboards. The Gigabyte board has three dimms slots, but if you are going to fill all three, you need Registered DDR ram in all three. Crucial sells it and it's only a few dollars more than the regular unbuffered DDR ram. It's not a big deal, just something to keep in mind when you buy your DDR memory. Both boards use the Via 686B southbridge, and it supports ATA100. Pretty much all the new boards have ATA100 standard now. The GA-7DXR has 3 DDR slots, 5 PCI slots, 1 CNR slot (useless), and 1 AGP 4X slot. The Epox 8K7A has 2 DDR slots, 6 PCI slots, no CNR/AMR slots, and 1 AGP 4X slot. Neither board has a ISA slot. Both boards allow for overclocking, and have multiplier adjustment, voltage adjustment, and FSB adjustment, so if you choose to overclock, you will be able to. Both boards do come with onboard sound, but it's easily disabled on both boards. Basically, either one will do the job, and they are both very fast and stable. I personally prefer the Epox 8K7A, but that's just my preference. I have no problem recomending both boards. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask..


One more thing, the Gigabyte GA-7DXR also has onboard RAID capabilty, and the Epox 8K7A+ version also has onboard RAID capability. The regular Epox 8K7A does not have RAID and is cheaper than both of the other boards. Good luck!

 

[robo555]

The Epox 8K7A/8K7A+ is a good board both performance and price wise.

 

[Dan]

kodiferous: I sifted through the choices just you are doing now and concluded that EPoX's Epox 8K7A+ was the right mobo for me. I've got one on it's way from newegg.

 

[Planktune]

The Ali Magik chipset is also a good choice

 

[kgraeme]

An example of an Ali Magick chipset board that is well regarded is the Iwill KD266.

 

[zogg]

I have the ALI Majik chipset on the Asus A7A266
Its a pretty good board but I dont like it as much as the via KT133a...

the asus a7v133 doesn't use ddr ram though but it is very easy to overclock.
I built one for a friend and got a stock 1 gig thunderbird axia stepping, 200 bus to hit 1490 and could went higher but he has a retail heatsink ad fan and no extra cooling in the case so I left him at 1.33 gig on 266 bus.

I built another one for a friend and got around th same results but this time it was a Abit KT7a mobo with 1.13 gig axia 266 bus...it does 1.49 gig with ease and thats without tweaking the front side bus up. Which can go to around 155 MHz i hear with the right ram.
Il like the abit board because of the soft menu 3 and award bios.

 

[kodiferous]

Ok, thanks a bunch guys I think that helps out a lot! The Epox looks like it might be the board for me. One last question just to clear things up for me. As far as AMD processors go what is the difference between Athlon and T-bird and does this Epox board support both types?

 

[TheTeacher]

AMD Athlon K7 Thunderbird is the full name. Athlon is the K7 varity. Like the Athlon K7 Classic Slot A, and the AMD Athlon Thunderbird.