DDR Motherboards?

[broadwayblue]

Does anyone know if Abit, or MSI will be releasing ddr motherboards soon? With the drastic price reduction on DDR ram (and the lengthy delay of the msi turbo) I am thinking about skipping the 133a mb altogether and going with a ddr mb. I know that a few are already out (Asus, Gigabyte, and Iwill) but is it too soon to jump on board yet? Are these new mb's as reliable as current models? If they are going to become the standard then I'm not sure I should go with a mb chipset that's on it's way out. What do you think?

 

[senior guy]

broadwayblue~ Yeah, although a little expensive right now, I do think DDR is the way to go. I haven't seen the Abit or MSI boards yet. From what I've read so far, Gigabyte's GA-7DX is the most stable (if not the most feature-rich) DDR board out there.

 

[senior guy]

But then again, IF you believe jonny GURU's review/test of a Biostar M7MIA DDR board (see: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=341013), that's defintely the one to get!!!

 

[broadwayblue]

anyone else know of any soon to be released ddr boards?

 

[CandyKid]

How long (in your opinions) do you think we'll have to wait to see a ddr motherboard on the via chipset with raid from the big manufactuers like Abit, MSI, and Asus.

3 or 4 months? If it's gonna be that long i dont' see why people think we should skip kt133a... Heh i wish i could upgrade every 2 months.

I've been waiting on the turbo for 2 months and i wouldn't be suprised if it's another month till i can get one. so i would think more then that but everyone keeps saying to skip the kt133a...

Shrug

 

[Sledge]

I wish there was a DDR CUSL2. That's what I'd want

 

[IntelConvert]

Here's what I know about availability of DDR boards. All are for Socket A and use the AMD 760 chipset (except as noted):

Asus A7M266 - Available Now
AOpen MK7A - ETA:3/01
Biostar M7MIA - ETA: 2/01
DFI AK76 - Available Now
DFI CD70 - ETA:3/01 (Intel Socket 370)
EPoX EP-8k7A - ETA:3/01
FIC AD-11 - ETA:3/01
Gigabyte GA-7DX - Available Now
Gigabyte GA-6RX - ETA:3/01 (Intel Socket 370)
Iwill KA266-R Available Now (ALiMagik 1 chipset)
MSI MS-6341 - ETA:3/01 - SCSI optional
Soyo SY-K7ALA-R - ETA:? (ALiMagik 1 chipset)
Soyo SY-7ALA-R - ETA:? (Intel Socket 370)
Tyan S2398 - ETA:?

There's no rush to market by the board mfrs because the 266MHz FSB T-bird is still not generally available. Also, PC2100 is still very high priced, especially in 256MB sticks (a wiser purchase than 128MB considering the AMD 760's 2-DIMM limit)!

 

[broadwayblue]

IntelConvert, thanks for the info. i'm heading out of town for a couple of weeks but when i get back i will be putting my new system together. hopefully by then a few more boards will be out and the ram will cost a few bucks less.

 

[Dogmeat]

Has anuyone seen a review or has anyone tried the IWILL KA266-R with the ALI chipset?? I'm interested and am waiting to see what the problems / performance issues are.

 

[IntelConvert]

I've seen one Iwill 266-R user-report (I think at TomsHardware). No problems were reported and the user was very satisfied.

Although the ALiMagik 1 chipset has gotten less than an ovation in reviews, it does have at least one advantage over the AMD 760 chipset in that you can populate an ALiMagic 1 motherboard with more than 2 unbuffered DIMMs (whereas the AMD chipset does not accept more than 2 unbuffered DIMMs)!

 

[IntelConvert]

Here ya go dogmeat~ just came across an Iwill KA-266-R review at:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/mainboards/iwill-ka266-r.html

(I would have linked it for ya - if I knew how)