Reasonably priced mobo

[Jerethi]

I'm thinking of upgrading my system, and have spent the last 3-4 days constantly reading up on all the new mobo's on the market... chipsets... RAM, all that good stuff.

The A7V266 is a bit pricey for me, and available no where. So I'm out of luck there.
Ever heard of Slotek? I can't seem to find their boards ANYWHERE...
The MSI K7T266 looks quite good...
I've also heard some good things from SOYO and Giga (sp?)

In any event... I understand now the market is tending towards mobo's that support DDR RAM.. but I just read an article on this very site loaded with benchmarks, and apparently the VIA133A chipset with PC133 RAM outperforms the newer 266chipset with PC1600 Ram in a number of tests.

So basically what I'm asking is, at this point in the game, which is the better investment, the MSI K7T266, or the asus a7v133?

 

[Jennifer66]

MSI the a7v133 is a lousy board.

 

[o1die]

I recommend the ECS K7S5A with a 1.4 athlon. For less than $200, you won't need to overclock, and have money left over for other upgrades.

 

[Dundain]

Well of course PC133 is going to beat out PC1600. Their basicly running at the same speed, and the PC133 has a much lower latency. Now if you were to see hte benchmark with PC2100 the PC133 would put up a good fight but would get beaten. Especially in things where that memory bandwidth comes into use (and even more so with the Athlon 4, Palimano, whatever its freakin called).

As to a good DDR board the ECS Ive heard good things about, and the Soyo Dragon and Abit KG7 Ive also heard alot of good things about.