Mobo Reccommendations

[neit]

Hi all, this is my first post, so i'll try to make it count,

I'm looking for a new mother board with a price in the 100 dollar range. My problem is I don't have too much experience with companies, and don't know the best overall board to get.

Here are the things i want:

ATX (no micros please)
uses the Athlon xp
DDR support
ATA 100
Integrated sound (i'm not big on audio, so i'm content with decent onboard sound)
NO integrated video, as i hope this will reduce the cost of the board, or increase the quality of the other parts
integrated lan is a big plus

My thoughts are to wait for a cheaper nForce board to come out, but i kinda want it soon. I've looked around newegg and seen some good ones, but i don't have experience with any of the new chipsets and the quaility of the various onboard sounds. and i don't want video because i couldn't resist that visiontek at bestbuy over thanksgiving, so now i need a new system to put it in

I'm not into overclocking anymore, as i realized i won't see too much result w/o more $ investment for cooling and other stuff.

 

[jcmkk]

About any boards based on the KT266A chipset are good. There are many many people in this forum that worship the Epox KT266A board. If I were you, I would go to newegg and look at the page with the KT266A chipset motherboards. Research each one a little to check out the highs and lows, then make my decision. By the way, all of the new boards come with integrated sound. The better ones come with the C-media sound chip, not AC97.

 

[cnwk64]

If you are on cheap side, go for ecs k7s5a it offer good perforamce but none of overclocked stuff.
If you have cash to spend, Abit's KR7A looks good.

If you are not in hurry, nForce will get better and cheaper later on.

 

[rondeemc]

So far the nforce boards aren't looking that great and definitely not better then the kt266a units out now even before you consider the higher cost of the nforce. I like the MSI k7t266 board for $104 at newegg. It meets your specs/price, very stable, comes with utilities that you can really use like live bios, live driver that make updating a no brainer. The trouble shooting led's can be helpful for some. I run mine with the optimum settings with no problems. Only negative is the bios does not see fans below a certain rpm. Several other good choices to in this category. Heard some good things about gigibyte but only have experience with one at work which never gave a problem but it was an older model. They carry a Gigabyte GA-7VTX-H with onboard ethernet and sound for only $110. If you are looking for a video matchup take a look at the Visiontek GEFORCE2 GTS-V for $65 at newegg.

 

[Eforster]

you want a good cheap board
get the shuttle ak31a rev3.1
it uses the kt266a chipset and is only 80 bucks at newegg

 

[neit]

hey, thanks all for the replys,

i'm looking at that MSI K7T266 PRO2 that rundeemc suggested. Just to make sure, it has the lan and sound right? also, if/when i get it, does it allow for any multiplier adjustment if i put in another chip, like the duron/tbird? thanks

 

[rondeemc]

Sorry no lan on the MSI, that was the Gigabyte.

tom's hardware review of several boards

 

[Ionizer86]

Since you don't want video, definitely stay away from nForce, since these boards cost way too much: ~$180.

My suggestion is the EPoX 8KHA+. It meets all your criteria. It's ATX, has 6 PCI, 3 DDR dimms, KT266A chipset, ATA100, Athlon XP support, and cheap, integrated sound. Overall, a very fine board. It has no LAN, but you can get a $15 PCI LAN card, and that won't hurt at all bc there are 6 PCI slots on the EPoX. If you wish to save some $, the 8KHAL is like the 8KHA+ but is cheaper and has 5 PCI instead of 6.

With the sound, you may have to use the program that comes with the board to play music, since the prog offers a filter to remove some of the noise that comes with software sound.

BTW, did you get one of the $99 Ti200 cards from Best Buy? There were so many ppl waiting for them that it was harder to get one of those than an AMD XPP package.

 

[Commando223]

You should get that ECS K7S6A motherboard it's DDR333 I don't know how much they are but it sounds really good

 

[neit]

yah, it was madness out there at 6 AM, at least a hundred people out there before me, and even more came after. good news it they opened the doors half an hour before stated.

I'm now considering the epox one too, choices choices!
My biggest factors for the decision is integrated lan/sound and the stability of it. I haven't seen too many w/ integrated lan, so i'm kinda giving up on that, but if someone knows of a good one, i'd like to hear.

 

[Eforster]

if you are looking for sound and lan
get the dragon+
it has 6 channel cmi sound and has a 10/100 lan controllor
i haven't had any lock ups with mine!!!
and it is actually is a nice looking board will worth the 30 extra bucks i spend on it!!!!
and it came with a smartcard reader which has 2 usb for mounting in a 5.25 or 3.5 drive bay...

 

[DARTHSINDER]

Check out the Soyo Dragon + , built in Audio, LAN and very fast!

 

[anime]

Stay away from MSI--i have one and dont like it for one bit.
prolly should've buy another shuttle or other boards from epox/abit or soyo.

 

[neit]

shoot, a little too late, i already ordered it =(

What sorts of problems are you having that i should look out/prepare for? i wouldn't say i'm a power user, so i don't need the highest performance out of it.

if anyone knows, is the $104 msi board at newegg the red one? the pic looks like it, but at the msi site it seemed regular green?

 

[silky]

Try a Gigabyte GA-7VTXH you will like it.

 

[rondeemc]

shahbazq
I have the MSI from newegg and its red. BTW I have tried around 10 MSI boards including the kt133a turbo and microatx and they have given me no problems with either w2k, or 98se.

 

[microAmp]

I'm going to stay away from nForce chipsets for a while due to the memory problem it is having right now when all banks are populated.

 

[themadmonk]

Hey rondeemc, I too have never had any problems with MSI boards. Well, the only one appeared late
and that was with the K7 Master, and I think it was something I installed but was too lazy to troubleshoot,
plus it was discontinued so I kinda got weary on future support. Apart from that, I think MSI makes one
of the most rock solid motherboards in their K7T266 Pro 2.