What motherboard to get?

[Altrez]

I'm looking to buy a new motherboard. I need one that will support an Athlon XP processor for future use and that only supports DDR RAM. This motherboard I need will be used for gaming so a suggestion for a very stable motherboard will be apprietiated. Thanks!

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Welcome to Anandtech Altrez. What price range are you looking for? What features on the board? Looking to overclock? What other components do you have or plan on getting?

 

[Altrez]

I ain't looking for any special features and price doesn't really matter. With extra features come with extra money so avoiding that much. I'm not planning to overclock. I was checking out a review on the ECS K7VTA v2.0 KT266A.
BTW thanks 4 welcoming me!

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Ehhh...I've got nothing agains ECS (I own a K7S5A), but if given a choice I would opt for a board made by someone else. Since price isn't your primary concern, I'd go for the EPOX 8KHA+. It's a solid board with overclocking features if you change your mind about overclocking and is very fast. If you need quality onboard sound I'd go for a board with the Nvidia Crush chipset but you're gonna have to pony up more moolah for it. The SOYO Dragon is chuck full of features like quality sound, NIC, RAID etc. It all depends on if you want to have the individual cards of have it integrated on the board.

 

[hollowman]

if you want all the features go with Soyo Dragon
if you want overclocking go with Epox or soltek
if you want the stability and no overclocking go with Asus

and obcourse.. i was all talking about KT266a chipset board.

 

[KouklatheCat]

When I first bought my Epox 8KHA+ I thought "How good can this board be, its less then a hundred bucks?" "Ill bet I will be yanking this sucker out and doing a fresh install about an hour after I get it installed." "Ill bet I will be taking this sucker to the shooting range." Lets just say I was wrong and I love my 8KHA+.

Typically when I do a MOBO change I F-Disk and do a fresh install. I did not do it when I first put in my 8KHA+ and everything went flawlessly and ran great for about a month when I screwed with Windows and had to reinstall. After I f-disked and reinstalled (due to my screw up not the boards) my computer runs great.

 

[WhiteWizard]

If you are not worried with the price, go to ASUS, it will eat all your money. I got an A7V266-E, and I running my t -bird 1.2Gz "B" at 1266 with 133Mhz bus, just set everything from the BIOS, and if the overclocking don't work, just turn off and on the machinne and would boot in default settings. It can go further if you unlock the processor, but I don't wanna mess with that. You also got RAID for the future and decent sound (I never actually heard it, just plug my Live! Platinium). You can go also to Iwill 333-R, its a ALI chipset but has good reputation, also the SOYO Dragon Plus works fine with a little tweaking.

 

[kylef]

Hey WhiteWizard: I read that the Asus runs the Athlons at a slightly higher voltage than the motherboard reports, resulting in higher temps. And these are temps as reported by heat-sensing thermometers, not built-in thermistors.

I wonder if that is why Asus is able to achieve better normal stability, but doesn't have as good a record at overclocking?

 

[Boonesmi]

my vote goes for the soyo dragon +

its a little more expensive then the other (with the exception of the asus)
but it kicks hinny its got all the features and increadibly stable

i also have a pc running an epox 8kha+ and its a good board to

 

[oldfoof]

Got my Epox About 2 weeks ago! LOVE it thats all I can say!!

Stable And fast!

 

[flier]

The Soltek SL-75DRV2 or the SL-75DRV4 would be your best bets. Fastest 266A chipset board and very stable. Best price to preformance ratio. Read the review at Tom's Hardware Guide. Best place to get it is NewEgg.com

Faster than the Soyo Dragon+ , Epox, and Asus.
More stable than all the above also.

Read the reviews the Soltek is faster and more stable than the 13 boards tested.

If you don't need on board RAID, NIC, Ect. why pay for it?

THE BEST WITH THE BEST PRICE FROM THE BEST ONLINE RESALER.

 

[DoubleL]

Well I have built a lot of the new computers and the first one I built was a 8KHA+, I was going to use it till the better boards came out, Well to make it short their is no better board than the Epox 8KHA+ so far, So save some money and still run the best

 

[onegauss]

My vote goes for the Soyo Dragon Plus. I did not have to use even _one_ PCI slot. Onboard LAN, Audio saved two cards.

The onboard audio is decent. But, I went and bought an Audigy Gamer anyway.

Extremely stable, no problems. The installation was easy as heck.

This is the most popular mobo according to pricegrabber.