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Please recommend a good non via chipset mobo for me!

chechi

Banned
Ok, heres the deal, I have the asus a7v133 mobo right now, trying to sell it for $85 shipped. But nobody wants it so far. Anyways I want a non via chipset mobo. One that supports ddr, or both. I was looking at the ECS K7S5A. But I hear people having major probs with it. I have a AMD 1.4 T-Bird, with 512 pc133 ram. Also something that my Visiontek Geforce 4 Ti-4600 will fit into. Its a huge card. And finally nothing to expensive. I am on a budget. Please help me out and recommend something. Thanks
 
The only other board I can think of is the Iwill xp333 with the ali magic one chipset. I have no experience with this board. My old shuttle ak31a worked fine for me for 4 months, until I switched to the P4 1.6a. I like via better than sis or ali, cause they come out with more driver upgrades faster than the other two.
 
I get the infinate loop bug, and its because of a combination haveing to do with the via chipset and geforce cards. So I need something new, and something that supports ddr as well.
 
I agree that the ECS K7S5A board can be a little flakey. It's a shame that it is so cheaply manufactured. Apart from that, and the fact that there aren't enough BIOS options IMO, it's a nice board, especially for the price.

Personally, I would go with the Iwill XP-333, even if you're not overclocking. A lot of people praise it for it's high stability, and it seems to have fewer compatibility issues than VIA.

Of course, as with anything, your mileage may vary 😉

Good luck in your decision!
 
The K7S5A is not a "bad" as you may have heard. Granted, it can be picky about the PS you use but it is one fast board when it is configured correctly. You see a lot of negatives because of the sheer numbers that are sold and of course this is one of the places that folks come if they have a problem with their board (whatever brand). Kind of like a Doctor's office; how many "well" people do you see in there?? 😉 Because you have a 1.4, you would need to be sure and have a good PS for it though. That CPU is the most power hungry. Look at it like I've seen many do before: it can be a "budget" alternative to get you by until you find the perfect motherboard that you are looking for. But be careful, many end up just keeping that "budget" alternative. 😀
 
The ASUS A7A266-E is a nice board, also based on the ALi Magik1 c0 stepping chipset.
 
I would have to also say XP333 or K7S5A. I have the K7S5A (in fact in this computer) and I have no problems with it what so ever and it definetly performs great. I also just built a computer with the XP333 for a friend and I must say I'm VERY impressed with it. But if you are really on a budget then I would say the K7S5A for 2 reasons. 1.)Well, it's cheaper (about half the price), true you don't get as many options for overclocking (more like none) but for about $50 what do you want? 2.)You can use your 512 pc133 with it and not have to worry about buying DDR like with the XP333. If you can spend some more money then I guess you could go with the XP333 but honestly I could recommend both.
 
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