New Motherboard soon, 133A or DDR??????

[RickH]

Help? I have been waiting for the DDR socket A boards to arrive. My time is running out. The DDR boards out at the moment don't really appear that much better than the 133A boards. The first generation of the DDR board also may be prone to problems. Opinions?? Also what 133A board is best, Anand loved the MSI two months ago, over the Abit. Is the MSI Turbo better than the Abit 133A, ignoring cost?? Thanks. Rick.

 

[MCS]

You have already made one excellent point against going DDR now - first generation. The KT133A is a very stable and quicly maturing plaform, and is not much slower than DDR.

As for which is better out of Abit, MSI, etc that seems to be a personal choice. I like (and own) the Abit board.

 

[drjefft]

Which board? Yes there are some attractive choices these days. RAID or no RAID? The other question you may want to ask yourself is how important tech support & driver support is to you.

MSI is reported in these forums to be of little to no value tech support wise. Abit is said to be in extreme financial trouble and may not be in business by the end of the year. In fact the market watchers are reporting that the MB manufacturers will 'probably' under go some consolidation mid to late 2001, meaning that the large companies will be buying up the small companies.

Personally for me, I chose the Iwill KK266-R (the R is for the RAID version).
The reason for my choice was rave reviews, it has an ISA slot, the RAID controller is made by AMI, and this MB manufacturer has an OEM presence which means it will probably be able to stand on its own feet financially- unlike Abit! It has the 3 phase power configuration like Abit introduced last year, and the board layout (specifically the power connector placement) is very nicely done, along with 3 fan headers (connectors)on the MB!

The only neagtive item I could find about the board is the placement of the AGP slot... with a full length card in it, the DIMM slots are rather crowded and to remove a stick of RAM you will probly need to pull the AGP card.
Lastly the Iwill uses the A1 stepping of the KT133a chipset which is reported on these forums as well as other places to do the 266 FSB thing better than the A0 (initial/original) stepping of the chipset that Asus and Abit completely bought up upon introduction of the KT133A chipset.

I agree with MCS that first generation DDR/AMD760 is not yet ready for prime time. The boards along with their higher priced DDR memory are not worth the cost, bang for the buck wise to me or many other reviewers. I personally do not want to pay for bleeding edge technology that is essentially beta. I do believe that the DDR platform will have a place in our future, but not just now. I don't want to pay a premium price for the privledge to beta test the newest latest and greatest technology.

 

[RickH]

Thanks for your input. I agree that the 133A is the smart/cost effective way to go, but I tend to only upgrade every 1-1.5 years so what ever I buy I will have for a while. A first generation DDR setup could be full of problems. I have already given all my old machines (P 450, and two P 850s) to my wife, parents, etc. I may try to wait another month or two and see what turns up. I have had good luck with Abit, hopefully they will not get lost. The people who read these forms debate about the little things, the placement of a power connector for example. We are in the minority; most users would not even add memory to their computer with out the expert advice of the fellow at Best Buy. Rick.

 

[Biggs]

The current batch of KT133A are very matured compared to the newer DDR mobos. A well-tweaked KT133A system could be almost at par with a DDR system and is much cheaper to boot. The choice now is obvious.

 

[bevo]

Perhaps you should read about the inherent problems of both the Iwill and the KT133a's at http://www.overclockers.com/
Actually, both the FIC AD11 and the Asus A7M266 motherboards have been evaluated to be most stable.

 

[Geocross]

DDR really isn't all that more expensive, if at all. PC1600 RAM cost the same as SDRAM 133, the motherboards are about the same (some DDR boards are cheaper than KT133A boards), and the processor is the same. I say go with DDR, since that is the new wave and won't be obselete in 2 years. Plus, while benchmarks haven't shown DDR to be overwhelmingly better than 133, you better believe that pplications and games coming out in the near future will utilize Double Date Rate RAM. You might be able to save $10-20 bucks now, but what will you have a year or two from now?

 

[broadwayblue]

anyone have an eta on the asus a7v266 ddr board? assuming it reviews well i think that might be my next (first) motherboard.

 

[senior guy]

I've decided to wait for the ViaKT266 DDR boards. With that hot v-link bus that doubles the bandwidth between the n. and s. bridges, it should kick butt.

 

[RickH]

Any idea when the ViaKT266 DDR boards will be out?? Do you have any reviews?? R.

 

[IntelConvert]

A few manufacturers will have their KT266 boards out mext month (according to AcesHardware). No reviews yet (but I expect we will see the first one in a matter of weeks).