New System - motherboard

[TheParmster]

I am going to build a newish system, reusing a lot of old parts. I'm thinking 1.4 thunderbird, and an A7M266. I'm going to pick up quality ddr RAM, and a new hard drive for ease of installation (a 60gxp). I'm wondering about the a7m266. Will it support palamino in case in another year or so I want to upgrade? I'm not going to bother with RAID, so I decided not to deal with an abit. By the time i order, in mid-july, the 1.4 thunderbird should be significantly cheaper, but the board hard drive and ram will be staying around the same I believe, so I was thinking of ordering them now (coordinating like 5 shipments never works out as expected.) Any thoughts?

 

[Boonesmi]

any of the current socketA boards will support the palomino

i have nothing against the a7m266 board, its a good one, the problem is its difficult to find, and because of that the price is very high

a7m266 is based on the amd760 chipset, you can easily find other motherboard based on the same chipset and they will have similar performance to the a7m266 and cost a whole lot less

epox 8k7a
gigabyte 7dx
msi k7 master
etc etc

 

[TheParmster]

I've had problems with stability with the following companies though : Abit, Microstar, and even Supermicro. I am shooting for stable, and I've heard how stable Asus is. (I haven't been too lucky with motherboards) I definately want to have the amd 760 chipset, and I'd rather drop like 50$ extra right now than have my computer down for 2-3 weeks in the middle of a semester of school. (I'm shooting for the AMD760 because it pretty much seems like the way the BX was). I figure that 512 mb of ram is more than enough, which is what the 2 slots would allow.
I don't know how stable gigabyte and epox may be, til recently though I hadn't heard of epox, and not much of gigabyte. I don't see myself purchasing any other chipset, because ALI just seems kinda out there as far as compatibility and all (It's just a prejudice, just like I wouldn't buy SiS)and we all remember how wonderful the past SiS chipsets were with their combined one chip design. I've heard stories of how just putting in a modem, a standard 3com modem caused BSOD's on a clean install, so I will shy away from them. So that leaves Abit KG7 or Asus A7M266, and not having had asus, I havent had it crap out on me.
Well, thanks for your input

 

[bevo]

Only one amd chipset currently has native bios support of the Pally, k7master...Also, In another year you will not be thinking of a Pally.

 

[Buz2b]

The ASUS board is a good one. You can find them if you look. I had no problem finding one when I built my new system. Good, stable board. Go for it!

 

[heffe734]

ASUS good and stable...but so is epox 8k7a...epox is cheaper...go epox!