What platform would you choose only picking from the current chipsets?

[|TOAST|]

Right now the P3 933 and the Athlon 1.2 GHz are comparable in price. After having used the newer VIA chipsets in systems I have built, I have noticed slow hardrive performance as well as new graphics cards (AGP4X) performing extremely slow and this is with the most current 4in1 drivers. I have, on the other hand found that the BX and i815 chipsets keep a computer running relatively more fast in all aspects. Now I know that getting another 266MHz out fo the deal is pretty sweet (chalk one up for AMD), but for this friend I am building the computer for I am concerned that the computer needs to run fast in all aspects and it seems that Intel wins that category. He runs huge matrices and large engineering 3D MATLAB, AutoCAD, and several other huge demanding engineering programs (which makes for a large adavantage for AMD processsor-wise since they are so FPU efficient). I think to put in a SCSI card and drive would not be bad, not to mention that 256MB PC133 RAM is a must and minimum. His programs he uses and codes often call for many minutes of hard drive caching for large calculations (which is why the hardrive speed is so important). I guess if he can afford SCSI then the Athlon platform is a good idea. Which motherboard would be best for that then (which chipset from VIA since hte AMD 760 isn't out yet)? MSI or ASUS, and which model?

On the other hand if, he can't afford that SCSI drive then I would recommend the Intel solution. Which chipset (i815 or BX) and which motherboard? Again, ASUS, and which model?

 

[ChipNOW]

If you must go with a VIA board go with the KT133A without a doubt... it is comparable to the KT133 non-A, but it supports 266MHz FSB Athlons, which account for about a 10% performance increase.
If he's doing that sort of stuff stability should be a main concern, so I'd reccomend the Microstar K7T-Turbo.

This said, the AMD760 should be out verrrry soon (if not now), but the difference in performance is neglible even with DDR, so I'd stick with my above choice.

If he wants SCSI, a better alternative would be EIDE RAID - you'd pay the same price as one SCSI drive than for two IDE drives striped on RAID 0, giving a huge performance increase... I'd reccomend the Seagate X15 ST318451LW 15000rpm drive if you MUST go SCSI, as it's not THAT much more than the standard 10000rpm drives. If you go IDE then the IBM 7200rpm ATA100 drives are easily the best choice IMO.

Hope this helps.