Newegg mobo/XP1800+ bundle $99!

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yodayoda

Platinum Member
Jan 8, 2001
2,958
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86
very smart. taking a page from fry's book. not a bad budget board and chip setup.
 
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Praxis

Senior member
Jan 26, 2001
446
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how does the Biostar KM400 compare to the ECS K7S5A Pro?
Click to expand...
I'd rather have the KM400 board for the extra $30. The K7S5A is a SiS735 chipset mobo, which is a little slower than a VIA KT266A chipset. The KM400 is pretty similar to the KT400 chipset, which is about 2 cycles more advanced than the KT266A, which is already faster than the SiS735. Of course, the difference in performance between a SiS735 and a KT400 is probably less than 10%, but it is still a consideration.

More important is that the KM400 will run a CPU at 166 FSB with no sweat whatsoever. I have an Asus KM400 board that cruises with an XP1700+ T-Bred at 166 FSB at 42C. under a full load. With a T-Bred XP1800+ you can almost certainly run the Newegg combo at XP2400+ speed just by moving a jumper or dip switch. Combine that with the additional speed that you get from a more modern chipset and you might actually be able to notice the difference without benchmarking the systems. The K7S5A comes with practically no overclocking options out of the box, though I understand that there is a 3rd party BIOS that will give you some wiggle room in that direction.

In terms of quality, well, ECS is the elite division of PcChips, which is pretty much bottom of the barrel, but that said, Biostar isn't a top tier manufacturer either and neither company is celebrated unduly for its customer support. It seems like the K7S5A Pro is a much better, more reliable board than the earlier revisions of the K7S5A, but I always feel a little quesy recommending the board (though I have built 4 systems with Fry's K7S5A combos & they all seem to be churning away). Likewise, I've had good luck with the half dozen Biostar boards I've used. Also, the K7S5A has a reputation for being picky about power supplies and RAM, while most VIA chipset boards will do fine with somewhat cheaper RAM and PS.

But the big kicker for the Biostar combo is that the KM400 comes with onboard Unichrome video. Sure, the video is pretty lame if you are a gamer, but it is just fine for web surfing and adequate for watching DVDs. I benchmarked my KM400 board and it actually benefits quite a bit from raising the speed of the memory (and practically not at all from raising the FSB of the CPU). My scores were in the region of 70%-80% as fast as for my Nvidia1 Asus A7N266-VM with onboard Geforce MX200 video, depending on how fast I pushed my PC2100 DDR. You'd probably have to pay ~$25 to get a video card with comparable performance to the Unichrome stuff on the KM400.

 
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onelove

Golden Member
Dec 1, 2001
1,656
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0
yah, bangup analysis, Praxis, enable your rating so we can give you 10s!

Nobody's really mentioning it, but worth restating that this comes with a RETAIL XP 1800 (3 yr warranty and a heatsink-fan).

Granted, this will all be way last-generation shortly with the Athlon 64, but c'mon now, we're talking about a $99 barebones deal for a pretty dang nice system w/ integrated video/sound/LAN/USB 2.0!/[EDIT: optional-maybe-not-on-this-board-SATA] This is a very nice deal (I'm much more enthusiastic about it now that I looked up the board).

http://www.biostar.com.tw/products/mainboard/board.php3?name=M7VIZ
 
C

clarkmo

Platinum Member
Oct 27, 2000
2,615
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81
Sata is optional and if the pics are to be believed, not available on this board.
Still a good deal.
 
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RobsTV

Platinum Member
Feb 11, 2000
2,520
0
0
Originally posted by: Praxis

More important is that the KM400 will run a CPU at 166 FSB with no sweat whatsoever. I have an Asus KM400 board that cruises with an XP1700+ T-Bred at 166 FSB at 42C. under a full load. With a T-Bred XP1800+ you can almost certainly run the Newegg combo at XP2400+ speed just by moving a jumper or dip switch.
Click to expand...

Actually that example may have more to do with the CPU than the motherboard.
The XP1700+ is well know for it's great overclocking, but unfortunately the same can not be said of the XP1800+.
Most XP1700+ "b" CPU's will easily hit over 1900MHz (XP2400+), while most XP1800+ CPU's rarely can hit 1800MHz (XP2200+).

Another problem with XP1800+ over XP1700+ is it's default higher multiplier.
Normal speed of XP1700+ is 133MHz x 11, or 1470MHz. At 166x11 or 1826MHz, no problem for XP1700+.
Normal speed of XP1800+ is 133MHz x 11.5 or 1530MHz. At 166x11.5 or 1909MHz, and XP1800+ "usually" croaks above 1800MHz.

So just because a CPU is rated stock as faster, does not mean it will remain faster when overclocked.
"Most" XP1700+ are fastest overclocking CPU's and beat most overclocked XP1800+, XP1900+ and XP2000+'s.
At overclockers.com, the XP1700+ average overclocking speed beats all CPU's XP2000+ and below, and beats the XP1800+ by around 100MHz.

 
W

ww4397

Golden Member
May 14, 2001
1,178
0
0
Gotta love those 1700+'b''s!!

I really liked the Celeron 533a's back in the day too.
 
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onelove

Golden Member
Dec 1, 2001
1,656
0
0
robsTV - I am loath to disagree w/ you cuz you definitely know your sh*t, but I'm not sure you got it right w/ your post above...
http://www.cpudatabase.com/CPUdb/
the JIUHB chips that seem to be getting sent out these days are awesome chips, almost regardless of the rated speed. The M7VIZ manual is useless re bios settings, but none of the reviewers of this board (7 on newegg so far) say anything about having difficulty adjusting chip speed. Curious if anybody here at AT can comment on the bios settings and whether the multiplier setting works in BIOS and if FSB is adjustable in 1mhz increments like my M7NCDP is (granted, different chipset, etc)...

There IS a jumper/switch described in the manual for "frequency selection" so that seems to indicate you can only make big jumps. Seems likely that w/ decent air cooling tbred "B" chips will likely make even these big jumps. All I'm saying is that one should not avoid this deal cuz its an 1800 instead of a 1700 - even in worst case scenario, you still got a great deal.
 
J

JustStarting

Diamond Member
Dec 13, 2000
3,135
0
76
same old story- summers over and I'm back to the boards. upgrading the backup rig from a CEL850 to:

Shuttle AN35N-Nforce2-Ultra 400
XP1900+ (Barton Later down the road)
512mb XMS3200C2
GF3Ti500

It'll prolly smoke my main rig in my sig, forcing me to upgrade that as well!!
 
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