Any Suggestions? Gigabyte, ECS, or EPoX for Athlon XP?

[nyrangerz1]

hey everyone,

im building my first system soon and ive decided to go w/ an Athlon XP 1800+ and i have everything decided except the motherboard. i am very torn on this subject. i have it narrowed down to three motherboards:

Gigabyte GA-7VRXP - i like this board for all the on-board features that it has like the sound and nic and the usb 2.0 is a nice addition. the problem i have w/ this one though is that ive heard bad things about voltages...but i hear theyre also problems w/ the geforce4 and im gettin and ati radeon 8500 so i think it wont be a problem

EPOX EP-8K7A+ - i like it because its very similar to the gigabyte board w/o the voltage problems...but its also a little skimpy on the onboard feature (but it makes up for it w/ the 6 pci slots...) ive read many very good reviews bout it though...im leaning towards this board but im not totally sure...

ECS K7S5A - I hear this is a very good and stable board, and its pretty cheap too...my only qualm is that it needs a good power supply and i dont want to spend that much

sooo those are my options...any suggestions, comments, anything? i dont need the features on the ggiabyte board, but i would be fine w/o them...

thanks!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-benny
new to this whole computer business thing hehe

 

[Gog]

I'm usually a Gigabyte guy but I would have to recommend you go with the Epox in this case...

A friend of mine was in the same situation and decided to go with the Gigabyte from all the 'great' reviews it had... the first one he received had problems detecting his drives when RAID was disabled... he RMA'd it and got a second one which had stability problems working at 133 mhz bus speed.

He then decided to go with the Epox and has had no probs with it... windows loads fast (in about 23 secs for him), its stable, performs solidly and has standard features. Plus the version without integrated raid can be had for about $80, you can't beat that.

BTW, the best forums for discussing AMD mobo's is AMDMB.com... I highly recommend it if you ever run into problems or are deciding on which board to get.

 

[RandomFool]

Pretty much all my friends bought the gigabyte board and everyone of them had problems so i'd stay away if i were you. Sad really i wanted that board.

Anyways if i were you i'd go with the Epox boards it seems solid and there don't seem to be any huge problems with it. I just ordered mine today.

As for the ECS board i don't know much about it but i have an ECS k7vza and it's really stable and runs well.

 

[glenn1]

I'd toss the Soltek Purple Ray into your mix as well. Great little board.

 

[Mark0999]

This isn't a bad choice either...

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/chipset.asp?chipset=via_kt333

 

[TurtleMan]

Hmm im in the same situation with you too.. Gigabyte does seem like a very good mb, from all the reviews that i read,
but again, with all of u saying it has a lotta problem, what version of board are they getting, was it 1.0 or 1.1, and what BIOS did they flash with, bc from what i read, version 1.1 is alot stable than 1.0, and with the newest BIOS from them, it slow down the system and creat some problem, again that's from what i read. Epox does seem pretty nice too, but just some people are having problem with it too, there is a thread contain all the gerat review on KT333 board, at www.madonion.com under thier forum of motherboard..

 

[RandomFool]

The 7vrxp just seems to be problematic. It seems like a bad batch of rev. 1.1, mostly with a lot # ending in "e". Alot of people out there have a lot # ending in "d" and say the board is great and it probably is. Some people claim that their board runs great even with the "e" but they usally seem to have their setting turned down to get it that way ex. agp 1x, 100mhz fsb and the such. Bios version from what i know doesn't seem to matter. I know a couple people who had this board and had problems with it, that's what made me decide not to buy it. They all got rid of the board in favor of the epox, which i also bought. Well i'm tired and i'm going to take a nap.

 

[Heinrich]

I bought the EPox 8K3A+ and installed it with an Athlon XP 1900+ and all the drives and arctic silver - I had never done all that from scratch myself.

It booted the first time I hit "on" and has only locked up once when I removed my Bus Master drivers trying to update them.

 

[robertjamestroll]

Gigabyte. Their board is extremely good.

 

[Heinrich]

nyrangerz1,

According to my philosophy you are buying your motherboard to tie all your peripherals together stably, efficiently, and quickly. Yes, extras like NICs and sound are becoming "standard features" among motherboard companies. But that's not the primary function of a motherboard. You want speed and stability. Get sound out of your sound card. Get network access from your NIC. And get speed and stability of making all that work together from your Epox 8K3A+