I finally got my new rig running after ditching an (inherently) bad 7350KDA from Leadtek (avoid that board unless you're feeling veery confident). Went to a local computer show this weekend and tried to find a KT266A board for about the same price. I saw an MSI board for some obscene amount of money and just about every vendor had a coupel KR7As and KR7A raids, but I didnt have a sound card and I didnt want to buy one right away, so I stayed away from those. I ended up with a Gigabyte GA-7VTXE, and couldn't be more impressed with it. I must have installed Windows 98SE 20 times trying to get that 7350KDA to work, but this baby worked perfectly right out of the box. My only complaint is the apparent lack of multiplier adjustments.. I heard someone say that they were in the BIOS but I haven't seen them. It doesn't matter to me, since I'm using a locked XP 1700+. The board is very fast and stable and comes with a windows utility that lets you tweak the FSB, which is a nice feature. I paid $110 for it, which is $25 more than I should have.. but hey, I needed a board.
Anyway, here are my new system specs:
Athlon XP 1700+ on GA-7VTXE mobo
256MB of Kingmax PC2700 DDR (which has 7ns chips and only works at 133MHz.. newegg screwed me over 🙁 )
TI-V77 HSF (Dr. Thermal, nice sink)
Radeon 8500 retail
WD 100G ATA100 HD (from the Sam's $120 deal 🙂 )
Cheap 8x DVD-ROM
CRAPPY AC-97 SOUND! WOOHOO! 😉
Gave me 8200 3DMarks, right out of the box. Which is good, because the one time I ran 3DM2K1 on the 7350KDA I planned to use I got 7000...
Just thought I'd recommend the board.. when I get some decent memory (hopefully I'll be able to get the 5ns DDR333 somehow) I'll let you all know how it overclocks.
And I'll try to get it running SETI soon. For the team 🙂
Anyway, here are my new system specs:
Athlon XP 1700+ on GA-7VTXE mobo
256MB of Kingmax PC2700 DDR (which has 7ns chips and only works at 133MHz.. newegg screwed me over 🙁 )
TI-V77 HSF (Dr. Thermal, nice sink)
Radeon 8500 retail
WD 100G ATA100 HD (from the Sam's $120 deal 🙂 )
Cheap 8x DVD-ROM
CRAPPY AC-97 SOUND! WOOHOO! 😉
Gave me 8200 3DMarks, right out of the box. Which is good, because the one time I ran 3DM2K1 on the 7350KDA I planned to use I got 7000...
Just thought I'd recommend the board.. when I get some decent memory (hopefully I'll be able to get the 5ns DDR333 somehow) I'll let you all know how it overclocks.
And I'll try to get it running SETI soon. For the team 🙂
