Quickie: 'What mobo for a Duron?' and a question on GByte Ati cards

[bacteria]

So what's a cool cheap mobo for the duron? That ecs k7s5a or what-was-its-name with the sis735 chipset still a good mobo? I don't want to spend mucho dinero on a new box, and my old celeron533/bx is becoming quite outdated so I thought going with a duron now and maybe further down the road changing it with an athlon. Hmm.. and what about a power supply.. will a 235W cut it for the duron? I want some stability (this celery is pretty solid in win2k). I know it's kind of an ultimate cheap rig question and contrasted with all the threads about the XPs and P4s perhaps it seems kinda dull but any help will be gratly appreciated.

And one Q on those Gigabyte videocards with ATi chips on them.. do they use the rage theater chip for the TV-Out (when present) or some third-party chip (like on those geforce cards). Again thanks in advance for any help I might be getting from you guys.

 

[CrazySaint]

Check out the Shuttle AK31A motherboard, it has the KT266A chipset, and is a good solid board, it runs for about $60. If you would like a board with RAID, USB 2.0 and near-Audigy level sound, try the Abit NV7-133R based on the nForce 415-D chipset and runs for $90. If you aren't gonna load up your box with a half-dozen drives, then that 235w PSU may run it.

 

[rocketbubba]

I know this may be old-school, but the most stable mobo I've ever seen for a Duron is the Iwill KK266 series. The oc features are sweet. Nice solid board and you can get them cheap now. Just my 2 cents.

 

[rocketbubba]

By the way, I ran two Durons - 600 and 1000 - with a 250w psu, so I would imagine a 235 probably would work ok so long as you're not planning to oc and load the case with fans! Good luck.

 

[Adul]

235 shoud work assuming it isa good power supply.

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: rocketbubba
I know this may be old-school, but the most stable mobo I've ever seen for a Duron is the Iwill KK266 series. The oc features are sweet. Nice solid board and you can get them cheap now. Just my 2 cents.

"Iwill" and "stable" don't belong in the same sentence

Cheap? Go for Biostar or ECS

 

[bacteria]

about the Iwill I haven't seen any Iwill boards around here - I'm not in the US.
as for a kt266 chipset mobo.. I don't know about via, haven't really used them. how are they stability wise? are there many hassles to go through to bring a via system on par with intel stability? no one mentioned that sis735 board - is it that bad? I'm not looking for top performance, just something to run the duron with decent speed. I don't think I'll really notice any notice between the kt266 and the sis, so if the sis is less problematic (read: don't have to install drivers for agp etc.)...

anyone know about the tvout chips on the gigabyte ati boards?

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: bacteria
about the Iwill I haven't seen any Iwill boards around here - I'm not in the US.
as for a kt266 chipset mobo.. I don't know about via, haven't really used them. how are they stability wise? are there many hassles to go through to bring a via system on par with Intel stability? no one mentioned that sis735 board - is it that bad? I'm not looking for top performance, just something to run the duron with decent speed. I don't think I'll really notice any notice between the kt266 and the sis, so if the sis is less problematic (read: don't have to install drivers for AGP etc.)...

anyone know about the tvout chips on the gigabyte ATi boards?

Well, the ECS K7S5A is good board, if used with quality (not necessarily high-watt) PSU and RAM. The board is quite reliable, but RAM and PSU picky. RAM should also be brand name, LOL . Or if you want a mATX form factor, the Chaintech 7SID is about as cheap as the K7S5A, and offers the same features, except the SDRAM slots if you don't need them anymore.

All those VIA moboards, IMO, aren't worth looking into. But if you can find a decent KT266A board I don't think you will be disappointed. Personally, I have yet to hear of a single bug in the KT266A (save for the infinite loop error with nVidia cards, PCI latency glitches and a couple of others).

As for the Gigabyte ATI-based card, they're almost as good as ATIs own. I doubt you will notice any difference at all.

 

[bacteria]

many thanks for the reply!

I'm glad to hear that gigabyte ati cards are good, but what interests me the most is whether the tv-out chip is the same as in ati cards (the rage theater I think it's called). thing is that I want to use the pc for watching dvd-s on a TV and I heard that ati's cards have pretty good tv-out signal (I've had pretty bad experiences with the TV-outs on a couple of nvidia tnt2 cards..).

that chaintech board you mentioned also uses the sis735 right? but it doesn't have SDR slots?

 

[ElFenix]

k7s5a or shuttle ak31a. the shuttle should be a little faster.

 

[murphy55d]

epox 8k7a. tough to beat the stability of AMD 760.