KT333 or nForce2? (KT400 has too many issues)

[J3anyus]

Alright, I did more research, and have limited things down a little bit for the board I'll be buying soon. I'm probably looking at getting a KT333 board, although I'm also open to the nForce2 (no KT400, I've read about too many issues with it). Can anybody give me some opinions on what I should get? Although I'll only be running a 1700+ for now, I'd like something that can handle future upgrades for awhile. I've never used an Nvidia motherboard chipset, so I'm a little hesitant to use one, but I'd be willing to try it if I hear a bunch of good things.

Also, which board would you recommend? For a KT333 board, I'm looking at the Epox 8K5A3+. For an nForce board, I'm leaning more towards the Asus A7N8X.

Thanks so much.

Jacob


Old Post:
Well, I've finally decided to upgrade again, although I'm definitely not going all out. I plan on getting an Athlon XP 1700+ (Thoroughbred core) and a new motherboard, and then carry everything else over from my old machine. However, I'm not really sure what board to get. I was originally looking at the Asus A7V333, but have read a few reviews and they all talk about quite a few different problems with the layout of the board. I like to stick with Asus and EPoX because those are the two brands that I've found to be the best, although I'm willing to look at other manufacturers. I was thinking of getting a machine with a KT333 chipset, mainly because it's been around for awhile, so most of the bugs have been worked out. I'm not sure if that's necessarily the way to go though...anyone have any opinions on the KT400 chipset? It seems like KT400 boards aren't much more expensive than KT333 boards, and some of them even seem to be cheaper.

The next board I was looking at is the 8K3A+, but it just seems like that's getting to be such an old board that I should get something more recent. Really, I'm just confused as hell on what I should get

So yeah, I'm looking for something that's not TOO expensive, and is going to last me through a couple of upgrades...I'd like to stick with a VIA chipset, although I'm not sure which one would be the best. I've looked at the SiS 745 chipset and it seems to be pretty good, but I'd still just like to stick with VIA. I've never worked with NVidia's motherboard chipsets, so I don't know much about those. Shoot me some recommendations on some boards, if you don't mind

By the way, how's the EPoX 8K5A3+?

Thanks a bunch.

Jacob

 

[J3anyus]

ttt for a completely revised post.

 

[Vette73]

what issues does the KT400 have??

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
what issues does the KT400 have??

most people i know are having a bad-load of problems with KT400 boards.
not to mention the fact that when they are up and running fine, they are not as fast, if not, SLOWER than KT333 boards.

EDIT:
your 2 choices are both boards I would consider buying if looking for an NForce2 or a KT333 board.

 

[mechBgon]

Looking at your system rigs that you have now, I see you have an IDE RAID0. So far, one of the biggest gripes about the crop of nForce2 boards is the lack of parallel-ATA RAID controllers (as opposed to Serial ATA). That could factor in, I suppose.

I look at the results in Evan's 6-way shootout and it looks to me like the nForce2 gets more performance per MHz in just about everything, it can run the RAM at very tight timings even with all the banks filled, and it has native USB 2.0 and FireWire in the southbridge, along with high-quality sound on the MCP-T models such as the A7N8X-Deluxe.

One of my major problems with my own KT333 board (an A7V333-RAID) is that when the USB 2.0 controller is enabled, it drags down the PCI bus and my SCSI card is seriously hobbled as a result. I now use an nForce1 board for that system (A7N266-VM), and it is far better than the KT333 board even with the USB 2.0 controller fully disabled. The KT400 boards use the southbridge which has native USB 2.0 support IIRC, getting that controller off the PCI bus, so they might be better in that aspect, but judging by the lowly nForce1 board I have, nForce2 is probably going to be the one to beat.

 

[J3anyus]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Looking at your system rigs that you have now, I see you have an IDE RAID0. So far, one of the biggest gripes about the crop of nForce2 boards is the lack of parallel-ATA RAID controllers (as opposed to Serial ATA). That could factor in, I suppose.

I actually don't plan on running RAID 0 ever again

I'm just realizing that there are too many problems with it, mainly that if you want to pull data off of a dead machine running RAID 0, you're more or less SOL.

I keep reading good things about nForce2...the main reason I'm hesitant to buy a board on that chipset is because it just seems so weird to me thinking that Nvidia is producing motherboard chipsets...their GPUs are fine, and it seems like nForce is doing great, but it's just weird to throw another chipset manufacturer into the ring.

 

[kyoshozx]

I still own a KT400 board, and nforce2 board. Had a kt333 before it broke down.

Personally I would definately go for the Nforce2 board, I currently have the asus a7n8x and it runs perfectly stable in my machine. No problems. Performance wise it's definately faster than the via chipsets(kt333, kt400) even though i'm only running it with one dimm. So it's not running in Dual DDR mode. If you really want to stick with VIA chipset maybe you can hold out until via releases there new kt400a.


Also via released new 4 in 1 drivers and www.amdmb.com tested it seems like the new agp driver does improve performance slightly for the kt400 chipset.

 

[randomlinh]

i would go w/ nforce2 (maybe i'm biased.. but i like my asus a7n8x deluxe ). Tho, there are issues w/ it and win2k and HD's only running in PIO mode. And sandra benched my HD to be significantly less than it should be... but i haven't tried any other benchmarking programs, and my hd is quite fragmented so that could be an issue there.

The only other problem i'm having is static popping occationally. I haven't pinned it down to what causes it though, i think it has something to do w/ the cpu load, or someone suggested the analog interface is just bleh. but my roommates comp is perfectly fine, so i dunno.

But, if you can wait it out, and see if nfroce2 will announce barton support, might be a better bet. see if any new boards come out that will have it (i dunno if a bios update will work for these first generation boards, not all of them can really do 200mhz fsb stable.. assuming barton does come out at that speed).

And go w/ the deluxe asus... if you don't need all the features, I think the epox would be a better buy.

 

[J3anyus]

Anyone else with any comments?

 

[Athlon4all]

nForce2 over both KT333 and KT400. It is the platform for the Athlon XP, and I predict that it will remain thye platform for Socket A for the rest of its life.