Recommend a Mobo for AthlonXP + SDR

[Woodchuck2000]

My little brother is doing an upgrade on a shoestring (or more to the point, I'm doing it for him) and he wants to re-use his SDR RAM. He's planning to get an Athlon XP 1600+ and a motherboard.

So far, I've looked at the Elite K7S5A
and the Shuttle AK32A

Both of which would fit his needs nicely. Has anyone got either of these boards? Anyone got any comments about which board is the better buy?

 

[Vette73]

What do you have now and what do you want. Also what is the full budget???

 

[Woodchuck2000]

The current setup is:

Duron 850
Aopen AK33 (KT133a)
512Mb Crucial PC133 Cas2
Radeon 9000 Pro 64Mb
20Gig ATA33 Hard disk
SBLive! Original.

I figured that the best bang for the buck would be to get a motherboard and CPU and leave the RAM, since it's pretty good as SD-RAM goes and the budget (<£100) doesn't really allow for more than 128Mb DDR.

Cheers in advance etc...

 

[tchybrid]

hmm, well check to see if the MB he has right now will support the Athlon XPs, there might be a BIOs update out that will allow ur brothers MB to support the Processor. if you can't do that, the Budget Solution i can think of is a MB with the SIS chipset that allows for SDR and DDR ram to be used. so if ur brother wants to go DDR in the near future, he can do so without much of a problem.

i think its a ECS mb and such. hope this helps.

 

[pukemon]

Well with the ECS K7S5A your mileage very much varies. The good thing is that many people have the board and can help you troubleshoot the many "quirks" associated with the board. If you order from a reputable place (like Newegg) take note of their return policy.

The Shuttle AK32A uses the KT266A and has DDR slots only. The AK32L uses the KT266 and has both SDR and DDR memory slots.

 

[Peter]

K7S5A actually is completely un-quirky. It's a high performance board (there still are slower ones that came out MUCH later), pushing especially the SDRAM hard (but not beyond spec). So if your power supply is adequate and your RAM really is OK, you'll be fine with it.

But I second that you should first look whether your existing board takes the CPU upgrade.

 

[eGAK]

I did not fiind support for the Athlon Xp on the AK33, AOpens English website.

You may consider the 1 GHz 200FSB Thunderbird, attempt to run it at 1.33 GHz & a new hard disk to take advantage of the on board ATA66.

 

[KGB1]

I'd look into a MSI K7T Turbo 2 motherboard (KT133A)

Supports Athlon XP 2600+ (133FSB) Its future proof and and is pretty cheap.

I really dont trust ECS.. just look in this forum for the past months.. people have too many issues with it...
not saying people usually dont have issues with any hardware...

The Shuttle would be okay too.

But MSI is my pick.

 

[harbinger52]

I 2nd the K7T Turbo 2

 

[Iron Woode]

Woodchuck2000:

are you sure that the board is the AK33?

If so then it is a KT133 chipset, not KT133a. No 133FSB support.

Your best bet is either the ECS or MSi Turbo 2

 

[Woodchuck2000]

I may have gotten confused... It's definitely an AK33, I could have sworn it used the KT133a but I'm probably wrong.

I'll have a look at the MSI board - It'd be nice to have a board that also supports DDR though as his PC tends to get upgraded incrementally...

I can't find the MSI board for sale at any of my favourite retailers (here in the UK) so I'm leaning towards the ECS board... Does anyone know what the performance difference between KT333 + DDR2700 and SIS735 + PC133 given everything else is constant?

 

[Peter]

Anywhere between nothing and 10 to 15 percent, depending on what the application is.