Best Budget Athlon Motherboard?????

[Pabster]

Candoman wrote:

*Me shudders horribly* Yes, you're right, I never owned it

No surprise. 99.9% of the negative comments on this board are from people who neither own one or know anything about them.

 

[Rhodent]

I appreciate the competitve nature here and eagerness to help. But you guys are scaring me over this board. Any other opinions here?

 

[ToBeMe]

<< Sorry, you'll have too choose the 'Socket A', 'VIA' and click on the GA-7ZMMH. My best wishes. >>


Yes.......that may be a "sorry" move....LOL!.... Translated from German from yesterday.........

• VIA found the problems with PCI transfers using VIA Chipsets has been acknowledged. The Taiwan semiconductor manufacturer wants to create as fast as a remedy as possible.
  
  "We are already operating on a solution. " said VIA's marketing manager Shane Dennison.
  
  It acknowledged thereby about what several knew for approximately two weeks: VIA's chip-corrodes from the KT133&Aacute; to the current P4X266 and KT266&Atilde; and has difficulties with high load on the PCI bus.
  
  Even the old MVP3-Chipsatz for the Socket 7 fights with the problem.
  
  The major occurs when (among other things) a fast fixed disk floods the system bus with data.
  
  It does not matter whether ATA/133-Adapter or SCSI RAIDs are used by PCI card.
  
  Chip performance from SiS or Intel are faster with the same tests by up to 42 per cent over their VIA counterparts.
  
  Any modern mass storage systems are thus overwhelmed by VIA Chipsets.
  
  Beyond the hard disk mass-data transfer problems of the VIA Chipsets, there are also compatability problems with various software/hardware packages used.
  
  It is likely VIA will attempt to resolve these problems once again through BIOS Patches and a new 4-in-1-Driver Package.
  
  To date, privious VIA 4-in-1 driver patches have been unable to resolve these problems.
  

 

[JellyBaby]

<< Any modern mass storage systems are thus overwhelmed by VIA Chipsets. >>

All your mass storage are belong to us!

Seriously, I hope their native tongue is better than the English translation. That except was not impressive at all. :Q:Q

 

[Rhodent]

Umm..No offence intended but what does this mean to me?

 

[Rhodent]

I was just looking on Axion site and found this board "GIGABYTE:GA-7VMM,KLE133,SOCKET A,3PCI,2 DIMM,UMDA100,AUDIO,VIDEO,UDMA 100,ATX,OEM" Anyone familar with it? It is about 20 dollars cheaper than the other one and seems to have the same basic features.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

I am personally wary of anything but what I know, and almost all of the systems I build are etiher Abit or Asus. However, I recently built an ECS (KT133A chipset) based system for a friend, and it worked without any problems. In fact, it worked "better" than most Abits ive made, requiring less BIOS tweaks and so forth.

The ECS K7AMA is a pretty decent board.

 

[ToBeMe]

<<

<< Any modern mass storage systems are thus overwhelmed by VIA Chipsets. >>

All your mass storage are belong to us!

Seriously, I hope their native tongue is better than the English translation. That except was not impressive at all. :Q:Q >>


LOL! Probably made a LOT more sense in the language it was in originally..........translaters leave much to be desired..........

 

[ToBeMe]

<<

<< It acknowledged thereby about what several knew for approximately two weeks: VIA's chip-corrodes from the KT133&Aacute; to the current P4X266 and KT266&Atilde; and has difficulties with high load on the PCI bus.

Even the old MVP3-Chipsatz for the Socket 7 fights with the problem.

The major occurs when (among other things) a fast fixed disk floods the system bus with data.

It does not matter whether ATA/133-Adapter or SCSI RAIDs are used by PCI card.

Chip performance from SiS or Intel are faster with the same tests by up to 42 per cent over their VIA counterparts. >>



That's funny how some people hate VIA chipsets . LOL When they don't use them much , if at all. VIAphobia is a decease, and it can and must be cured with correct reviews. MVP3's PCI problems..... ROFLMAO....... MVP3 has been the fastest K6-2/K6/Pentium MMX chipset for years on end, this product's lifecycle has already ended, and until now, after years this chip has become obsolete and being used less and less some survey writer has discovered 'a major flaw' in it..... People have been using MVP3 for years, and never complained about it. It was fast, had no known bugs and people never complained about it. I don't believe the author of that article and his test results, I think they're hardly credible. >>


Well, then wait for the same story to be in the news here in the US tomorrow...........the site is German and the release was made by Via......it'll be on sites like The Inquirer and The Register early and the rest will pick it up too......... BTW......I currently have a KG7-RAID and a KR7-RAID running in this room with me..............

 

[Rhodent]

Right now I'm leaning toward the Giga 7ZMMH from Newegg and the 950 duron retail from there as well. Looks like 155 shipped. I was looking for a tad cheaper but a few dollars is worth less hassle. Thanks and I'll check again tomorrow if anyone else has input. I appreciate all the info.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

the ecs sis735 mb + radeon ddr oem or gts-v is under $120.

 

[Gstanfor]

LordSegan:


<< I am personally wary of anything but what I know, and almost all of the systems I build are etiher Abit or Asus... ...I recently built an ECS (KT133A chipset) based system for a friend... ...In fact, it worked "better" than most Abits ive made... >>



ROFLMAO! Quite a few of us have known for a long time the sort of company ABIT shares in the motherboard world when it comes to reliability. I really don't know why AMD bothered allowing ABIT to build Socket/Slot A motherboards - they refused to support Super-7 and were no great loss in that market.

Greg

 

[Brian48]

I just built a new backup based on the ECS K7S5A. Works great.



<< Box #2:
WinXP Professional
Powerman FSP300-60BT
850mhz Duron/ECS K7S5A
Taisol CGK742002 (w/Evercool 6500rpm)
384mb PC133 Crucial CL2
Visiontek XTasy 5632 GTS-V
ATI TV Wonder VE
SB Audigy X-Gamer/Altec Lansing ACS56
Actiontec 56k PCI
Maxtor 7200 ATA66 40g
Acer 52x CDROM
Sony CDRW Spressa 8x4x32x
USB devices:
MS Sidewinder game pad
MSIntellimouse Optical
Epson 480SXU printer
NEC 15" E500 >>

 

[CraigRT]

<< ECS K7S5A Without A Doubt! >>



Have doubts.. It is worth what you pay.. painful setup, very hard to get working the way you want it to, low quality at best, very finnicky.. I'd never recommend building on one of these things after my experience with one.. while it IS cheap.. it certainly seems so as it's being setup... I don't see it as the kick ass bargain board that everyone else does.. it's an attractive low priced nightmare! Maybe the one I had the misfortune to setup was just defunct, (surprise) I don't know.. but I was not impressed.. For the price though, I can't recommend anything better. It's very cheap!

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< a real one (ASUS A7A266). >>



LAUGH

and...this guy does NOT want problems, why in the hell are you recommending the K7S5A?

 

[CTho9305]

all 3 k7s5a systems I set up (tbird 1.4, xp 1600+, duron 750, none mine though - the tbird is roommates) are 100% stable. (when running REAL OS'es). no crashes under XP and linux. winME, well, winME just sucks

 

[theshrubb]

Well, I read through half the posts and then gave up, but I'll just post this anyway. I'm using a Shuttle AK31 v2.1. It's stable, fast, and cheap. I payed $119US for it awhile back. I don't know what price you consider to be "budget," but I'm really happy with my board, and $119US isn't very expensive. Hope I helped a bit...

EDIT: I see you want to use SDRAM tho, while this board is DDR only. If you can afford it, the DDR is worth the few extra bucks.