Opininions About Gigabyte GA-7DXR+ Motherboard and System

[praetorius]

First, an apology. I've been browsing AT forums for awhile (but not the past couple of months), and I know you guys are 99% build-it-yourselfers I was planning on building my own, too, but my current system (old, old, old) has really been acting up lately, I haven't had much time on my hands, and I wasn't confident that I could solve all stability problems of a build-it-myself system rapidly. So . . . I bought a system from ABS today, and I'd like your opinion on it.

I noticed that ABS was offering GF4 Ti 4600-based systems today (they placed them on their site just this morning after a special shipment of 30 Nvidia GF4s came in yesterday). ABS expects to sell out all GF4 systems today, and won't be getting any more GF4s in for a couple of weeks. So it looked too good to pass up. The system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor

Gigabyte GA-7DXR+ motherboard with 1 GB ram. Don't know much about this MB. I realize this is AMD 761-based, not as high a performer as the Gigabyte KT266A-based GA-7VTXE+ (which I could have chosen instead). But I was concerned about stability (and it seemed that there were always "issues" on this forum with KT266A MBs). I know the MB offers RAID support (does anyone know WHICH RAIDs) and USB 2.0. Opinions?

Seagate 80 GB 7200rpm hard drive. ABS wasn't able to tell me if this is a Barracuda IV (I'm gambling that it is). ABS also offered various IBM, Maxtor, and WD drives, but (again) I'm concerned about reliability (especially of the IBM drives), and I haven't read anything bad about Seagate drives.

Enermax full tower case and 330W PS (again, ABS wasn't able to tell me if this is an Enermax PS or what the configuration of the case is). Is 330W sufficient for this combination? I probably won't be doing much overclocking.

Plextor 24x10x20 CD-RW and Pioneer 16X DVD ROM

Nvidia GF4 Ti 4600 video card

Soudblaster Audigy Xgamer sound card

Other odds and ends (and I'm using my existing monitor, speakers, mouse, andkeyboard)

Windows XP Home edition (I could have chosen ME instead, but again wanted maximal stability) & Office SBE.

Total price was $2087, including shipping.

Opinions?

Thanks

 

[praetorius]

 

[Athlon4all]

Not to dis-encourage you, but if anything, the KT266a board would've been better because the 7DXR+ AFAIK uses the infamous VIA 686b south bridge which has all sorts of problems which the 8233A sb that KT266A/KT333 uses solves. And, really, as long as they're setup correctly, AMD and VIA systems are just as stable as each other. Otherwise it looks like a kick a$$ system. Good choice on XP Home, and the HD. So, you've got a solid system, and one that will be upgradeable in the future. You made a good choice🙂

 

[praetorius]

Since the system won't be built until at least Monday, I'm sure it's not too late to change the specification. So, do you think changing to the GA-7VTXE+ MB is the better choice?

Thanks again.

 

[Athlon4all]

Personally, yes. AMD 760 was a great chipset, and beat the pants off all the Athlon DDR chipsets until SiS 735 came along. Plus, with the 266A, you aviod 686B's problems. So, yea I'd go for it.