motherboard opinions

[CraigRT]

.. After reading reviews, and using MSI in the past, I'd whole-heartedly recommend the MSI K7T266Pro2 board. I am going to probably get one of these as well, I am hoping it will kick ass as much as my K7T Turbo LE.

It's looking very much like the case, so far.

 

[RossGr]

This thread is pretty typical of what happens when someone asks "What should I buy?"

Everyone has an opinion, and for there own situation they are completly correct, but everyones situation is different and there is no single solution which fits all. The only way to get the best solution for you, is do the research. On the other hand every board mentioned in this and a multitude of other threads works for somebody, for somebody else it is a complete turkey. You will find this with every chipset and brand of mobo. If you have no clue, then simply get what your pocket book can afford. With the knowledge that there is no such thing as a sure bet.

 

[tslaughrey]

I just found this thread, so I apologize for being late to the party. But I do have a question regarding Enermax PSU's.

I bought an Enermax Whisper 431W to replace my generic 300W. However, when I installed it my computer wouldn't boot. The fans spun, the drive lights blinked, but it wouldn't even POST. I took it out and put my generic 300W back in and it booted up fine. Then I put the Enermax in my second system and it worked fine. Here are my system specs:

Athlon XP 1900+
Shuttle AK-31 rev 3.1 (KT266A)
GeForce 3 Ti 500
512MB Corsair CAS2 PC2400 RAM

my second system ...
Pentium 733
Intel 815 motherboard
Hercules GeForce 2 GTS Pro
256MB PC133 SDRAM

Does anyone have any ideas on why the Enermax wouldn't work in my "good" system? I sent the Enermax I ordered back and now I don't know whether to try another Enermax or just go with Antec. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Insidious]

<< do any of you well informed folks have an opinion of the Abit KG-7R? i'm going to use a 1700xp and winxp and set it up for raid. thx >>



Ok, at the risk of getting seriously flamed, here goes.....

I chose the KG7-Raid board because at the time the KT266 (no A) was flopping and I wanted DDR. I game alot and have been very happy

with these MoBos. I love the SoftMenuIII (only moderately overclocked here-air cooled) for tweaking stufforz.

I think now I would probably get the KR7-Raid because I have become a believer in the KT266A from what I read (no personal experience with it)

a good note for the KG7-Raid is that it's price really came down when KT266A got in the mix. Also, with the WindowsXP I just installed, the native

drivers are fine for the 761 and 686B which lets you avoid downloads and confusion when setting it up.

IMHO, this ABit MoBo is one of the most underrated boards in the Anandtech forums........ (not the best one of em all, but a nice MoBo none the less!)

 

[emjem]

<< I base my advice on a) first-hand experience, b) commonly accepted results from reliable sources (like reading something in the NYTimes), and c) technical, empirical evidence. >>



Heh, heh, you had me going there Chiz until you came up with the NYTimes being a reliable source, lol. Your being facetious, right?

 

[zigzag03]

my thanks to Insidious for his input. i chose the board based on wat i had read on anandtech and also the fact that i only had ata100 drives. i typically build my main machine to be about 6 mo behind the tech curve and keep it for 18-24 months before upgrading and this will hopefully be a solid choice. also my first amd experience, learning every day. Insidious tell me briefly wat it takes to set up the raid, is it done in the bios? if i understand it corectly, raid 0 for speed, raid 1 for redundancy, raid 0+1 a compromise of each? thanks

 

[Insidious]

Zig Zag, that's the one question I'm particularly uncomfortable answering. I had just started to mess with it a little bit (for my first time) when I had

an opportunity to try the windows XP. So my second HD became a ghost of my former system (and is on the shelf) pending a definite decision to keep the XP. But here is what I understand so far.

Striping (mode 0) is to increase speed. To set it up, you put your two HD's on the IDE3 (master) and IDE4 (master). you don't HAVE to do it this way, but

what I understand is the Raid works more reliably if you only have one drive on each connector (when possible/practical)

then, on your boot, you hit Cntrl-H when prompted to set up your array.... BIOS will guide you through it... pretty straight-forward.

(I understand that [*edit* 32] MB is a good block size to set)

Well, that's all I know.... the rest seemed to take care of itself... (I only had it installed for 2 days)

Windows reported my C: drive as 60GB (I used a 30G and 40G) drive and all seemed normal....

There are TONS of people in here with better experience who love to share it, so I know they will give more input to this! *hint, hint*

 

[Fury190]

Pezuzu,

I wouldn't put much weight to chizow's opinions. It is well known he is paid off by the companies he so fondly worships, and so harhly shoots down anyone who says anything bad about said company.

 

[Fury190]

Also, its a fact that 1/2 the people who agree with him in a post, are in fact, his duplicate accounts.

Your not fooling anyone chizow.

 

[zigzag03]

Insidious, thanks again, i'm going to get this discussion out of this thread. clearly there is a good deal more to it than i initially thought. do i understand you correctly that raid won't happen under 98se? i have the upgrade to xp but will have to set up under 98. i'll start another thread for your answer and anyone else's input.

 

[Insidious]

ZigZag,

I didn't mean to make it sound hard. It wasn't for me at all.

Windows 98 (SE) is the OS I was using at the time, so that will work fine for ya.

I just used the Manual like a cookbook and it went fine.

[The only difference for WindowsXP is that you don't have to install the Via 4-in1 drivers,

the HPT370 drivers, or the AMD miniport driver (as described in the MoBo manual apendicies)

because Windows XP has the drivers included with it.

MOST IMPORTANT:

When you are installing your KG7-Raid, start with only your CDROM and Video card.
use the manual like a cookbook to get your BIOS settings where you want them.

The apendicies walk you right through the raid array setup (that is on first boot before
windows installation) and the MoBo driver software installations (that is after windows installation)

Also, on the ABit website, there is a great step-by-step setup section under the KG7 FAQs

(I noticed I made a mistake in my earlier post, it was 32K I used as a block size)

 

[zigzag03]

Insidious, i am in your debt, off to do some reading and thanks