Allo.
Going to be upgrading the guts of my rig soon, and I'm digging up info in preparation. As all good married geeks do, I'll likely give the 900 Duron on ASUS a7a-266 to the wife to get her out of her slot A classic athlon 600, but I digress.
Looking to go up to 17-1800 Athlon XP, best price/performance point right now.
I've had good experience before with Epox (7KXA+) and ASUS boards, and MSI gets good print it seems.
What I need:
Athlon XP support (I strongly prefer AMD)
DDR support (2 sticks of 256 PC2100 crucial)
USB 2.0 support ( as many ports as possible, including good interface with front USB)
stable as a rock, reliable as death and taxes
Reasonable price (under 100 is optimum)
Reasonable future proofing (able to drop in a faster chip down the road)
I don't need:
overclocking (unless it's idiot proof that can be done with stock retail cooling)
RAID
tons of PCI slots, I only run NIC and sound in current system
Would be nice:
Available bundled (chip, HSF, mobo) from a reputable vendor like newegg or mwave at a reasonable price
on-board sound sound with an SPDIF out to run my 4.1 digital speakers directly (so I can toss SBL! 5.1)
on-board LAN
I play Dark Age of Camelot online, and Ghost Recon type games offline along with general surfing. I upgrade every 18-24 months. I don't need bleeding edge, just enough to be satisfied for what I use it for. I'm planning a GF4 card upgrade at 160-180 and aiming for a total of under 350.
Boards I am thinking of so far
Epox 8K5A2+
MSI Ultra family (I don't know the distinctions well)
Boards I've already nixed
the famed ECS board.
What board would you regulars recommend?
Thanks for slogging through this.
KF
Going to be upgrading the guts of my rig soon, and I'm digging up info in preparation. As all good married geeks do, I'll likely give the 900 Duron on ASUS a7a-266 to the wife to get her out of her slot A classic athlon 600, but I digress.
Looking to go up to 17-1800 Athlon XP, best price/performance point right now.
I've had good experience before with Epox (7KXA+) and ASUS boards, and MSI gets good print it seems.
What I need:
Athlon XP support (I strongly prefer AMD)
DDR support (2 sticks of 256 PC2100 crucial)
USB 2.0 support ( as many ports as possible, including good interface with front USB)
stable as a rock, reliable as death and taxes
Reasonable price (under 100 is optimum)
Reasonable future proofing (able to drop in a faster chip down the road)
I don't need:
overclocking (unless it's idiot proof that can be done with stock retail cooling)
RAID
tons of PCI slots, I only run NIC and sound in current system
Would be nice:
Available bundled (chip, HSF, mobo) from a reputable vendor like newegg or mwave at a reasonable price
on-board sound sound with an SPDIF out to run my 4.1 digital speakers directly (so I can toss SBL! 5.1)
on-board LAN
I play Dark Age of Camelot online, and Ghost Recon type games offline along with general surfing. I upgrade every 18-24 months. I don't need bleeding edge, just enough to be satisfied for what I use it for. I'm planning a GF4 card upgrade at 160-180 and aiming for a total of under 350.
Boards I am thinking of so far
Epox 8K5A2+
MSI Ultra family (I don't know the distinctions well)
Boards I've already nixed
the famed ECS board.
What board would you regulars recommend?
Thanks for slogging through this.
KF
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