PC133 is making a comeback!

[erwin1978]

So I lied.

It wasn't that long ago when PC133 was the talk of the town. I remember my grandma talking about it with her bingo friends at the YMCA like it was yesterday.

Now, it seems 99% of all motherboards I find only support DDR ram. So I need some help since I'm looking for a good mobo that supports PC133. You might scratch your head and wonder why I don't get a DDR mobo when they can be had for the same price. Well, here lies my dillema: I recently purchased 640 MB of PC133 ram; the good stuff. So I want to put this to good use for a little while.

I've found Shuttle AK32L, but I'm looking for others. I'll be using an XP or Duron(1.3 GHz) cpu with it.

 

[stars]

I've read alot about people liking the MSI K7T Turbo2. They have them at newegg for $76 shipped.

 

[Praxis]

Consider the Biostar M7VIG. It only has 2 SDRAM slots for PC133, but also has a couple of DDR slots if you find another home for your SDRAM. It only has 3 PCI slots, but onboard video, audio, and LAN, as well as an AGP slot and CNR slot. They run about $59 delivered.

 

[Peter]

Get a DDR mobo that still has SDR slots too ... there are quite a few, from the hugely popular ECS K7S5A that happens to be the cheapest anyway, over K7VTA2 and plenty of others, even with integrated video, down to ASRock K7VT2 (ASUS's low cost spinoff brand).

 

[cp668]

NewEgg has ECS K7S5A for $54 and free shippig. There is also some BIOS hack to allow overclocking. Forewarning, it seems very picky on your power supply's amperage.

 

[CanisEstInVia]

Originally posted by: Praxis
Consider the Biostar M7VIG. It only has 2 SDRAM slots for PC133, but also has a couple of DDR slots if you find another home for your SDRAM. It only has 3 PCI slots, but onboard video, audio, and LAN, as well as an AGP slot and CNR slot. They run about $59 delivered.

Nice looking board. Gives you some nice options... pc133/ddr, agp/onboard-vid

 

[erwin1978]

Rules: PC133 support, Athlon XP support, up-to-date bios

The competition was fierce, and judges(me) were unforgiving. But six finalists arise to the top to compete for the prestigious title of, "erwin1978 worthy." These contestants should all be proud to make the list. Only one round left in the competition before the elite of the elites goes to my final shopping list.

Here they are:

Epox 8KTA3+
Iwill KK266Plus
MSI K7T Turbo2
ECS K7S5A
Shuttle AK32L
Soyo K7VTA Pro

You are now to judge which of these mobos deserve the coveted title of, "erwin1978 worthy."

 

[GR8Madmax]

Bump. I'm interested in opinions about those boards also..

 

[FelixDeCat]

Originally posted by: erwin1978
So I lied.

It wasn't that long ago when PC133 was the talk of the town. I remember my grandma talking about it with her bingo friends at the YMCA like it was yesterday.

You hung around with your grandma playing bingo?

 

[First]

ECS K7S5A.

 

[JHeiderman]

A vote for the MSI board. I've got the older MSI K7T Limted Edition board. I'm running PC150 at a 148mhz bus speed with a Athlon XP 1600+ at 1585 mhz (or something in that range). It seems to hold it's own in games with the DDR bases systems with the same CPU and video card (ATI Radeon 8500LE @ 300/300). I haven't been been able to justify the switch to DDR yet since everything runs so well on this system still.

I also have some experience with the Epox boards and they seem to be very good overclockers. A buddy of mine just put together a ECS K7S5A with 512megs of PC133 and it seems to be doing pretty well. The onboard sound sucks though and the microphone input is bad on the board. I would probably avoid it personaly but lots of other people have had great luck with it.

- J

 

[Goi]

ECS K7S5A.

 

[eGAK]

Spacewalker

 

[Shack70]

ECS K7S5A gets my vote! I got this MB for the same reason. I had good PC133 and wanted a MB i could migrate to ddr later. If you to OCworkshop, they have OC bios for the MB too! It's cheap, fast and OCs!!! What more could anyone ask.

The only prob i ever had with the board is the built in lan wont work in linux. It may work in newer versions on linux, but not redhat 7.1 or older

 

[joe4324]

K7S5A, I think the SIS735 chipset will give the best performance out of PC133 memory then any other Chipset out there. Especially if you flash the OC bios. You dont even have to OC at all. the OC bio's change the FSB a TINY bit (like instead of being 132.1FSB it will be 133.9FSB). Its only 54 bucks. Supports ALL AMD chips inclouding ones that arent even out yet. I think we will be saying K7S5A's around for the next 3-4 YEARS maybe longer. ECS literally struck gold. they have sold MILLIONS.

 

[ssanches]

Originally posted by: erwin1978
Rules: PC133 support, Athlon XP support, up-to-date bios

The competition was fierce, and judges(me) were unforgiving. But six finalists arise to the top to compete for the prestigious title of, "erwin1978 worthy." These contestants should all be proud to make the list. Only one round left in the competition before the elite of the elites goes to my final shopping list.

Here they are:

Epox 8KTA3+
Iwill KK266Plus
MSI K7T Turbo2
ECS K7S5A
Shuttle AK32L
Soyo K7VTA Pro

You are now to judge which of these mobos deserve the coveted title of, "erwin1978 worthy."

Add to this list the Asus A7V133, Gigabyte 7ZXR, and the 7ZMMH. All excellent and stable PC133 mobos with good performance

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: BlackFlaggThe only prob i ever had with the board is the built in lan wont work in linux. It may work in newer versions on linux, but not redhat 7.1 or older

Has been working fine since 2.4.10 kernels at least ... else I wouldn't be posting this.

 

[eGAK]

In a final effort to influence "Da Judge" a review is offered Budget Box linky

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Originally posted by: cp668
NewEgg has ECS K7S5A for $54 and free shippig. There is also some BIOS hack to allow overclocking. Forewarning, it seems very picky on your power supply's amperage.

I was going to suggest that one myself, they are very stable boards, but don't offer much for overclocking, who buys a cheap mobo to oc anyway.

 

[Thor86]

PC133 SDRAM is still great for server applications and use. I don't know what IT department would spend more for DDR-ECC on their servers.

 

[ThetaOne]

Yep, like Thor said...

It's nice to pay pennies on the dollar (compared to a few years ago) for 1GB sticks of PC133 for a server upgrade.

The costs of moving everything to DDR would be too great for most businesses, especially since there are new standards emerging.

 

[adlep]

ECS K7S5A meets all the requirements. It also supports virtually all all Athlon processors (650, up to 2000+).....

 

[Calin]

K7S5a for me too - I have one for some 8 months. It works fine (w/ Duron 600 ), and I don't need more speed than that for the moment.
By the way, I use DDRAM as I changed my SDRAM (256MB) to DDRAM (256MB) for about 5$ - long time ago.

Calin

 

[Praxis]

I've built a couple of systems with K7S5A boards in the past and have to say, I didn't have any specific problems with them except that they were extremely picky about RAM and power supplies. Moreover, though most of the folks in this thread haven't had problems with the K7S5A, rest assured, many, many people have had their fill of trouble with the mobo (particularly with the earlier marks). Remember, ECS is simply the elite division of PcChips, the motherboard maker that has the reputation (richly deserved in my experience) of making the shoddiest, most poorly supported motherboards on the market. I don't see the point of getting the board unless you can get a great deal on a Fry's combo (which was my case) or you want to use your SDRAM now and later upgrade to DDR. Frankly, I'm not going to throw away 256+ MB of high quality SDRAM (which you'd need with this board) just to get a 0-10% boost on application speed from DDR, so that's not a path I'd recommend either (though I guess you could always find a buyer for your SDRAM).

If I planned to keep my SDRAM and didn't want onboard video, I'd go with a good KT133A board from one of the better regarded manufacturers, perhaps Asus or MSI, unless someone could convince me that the SiS735 chipset is a significantly better performer with SDRAM. The KT133A boards are as cheap or cheaper than the K7S5A and have more SDRAM slots (though they don't generally have onboard LAN, but then again, you can get a NIC for $5-$10, so that isn't a big deal). Some of the KT133A boards have goodies like RAID, as well. Also, some, like the Asus A7A133 and the MSI K7T Turbo 2, can handle Athlon XPs up to the 2600+ level, particularly after a BIOS flash. And a board that is less finicky about RAM and power means you can easily shave $30 off the system price.

 

[subhuman]

ECS K7S5A (Hey even Anand's own MoBo editor suggests it!)

Works great, I was VERY VERY skeptical, but for $53.99 it was worth a shot. I too had 512 megs of the good Crucial PC133 (2x256), and an Antec TruPower 330watt power supply, and a free 800mhz Duron sitting around (will upgrade to a 1600+ or 1800+ later, along with Corsair XMS DDR).

Four notes:
1. use good quality ram (sounds like you are)
2. use a good powersupply 300watts or higher (sparkle, antec, enermax suggested).
3. check the motherboard "clear bios" jumper is set properly (some come with it set to 'reset' doh!)
4. the connectors for 'reset' and 'power' and 'hdled' etc are misprinted in the manual, a little experimentation or reading forums wil give you the right orientation.

Mine booted up first time! I did have to experiment with the HDled and reset a bit though.

I was very impressed with how much this board gives you for so little $$.