which asus mobo??

[hatayama]

I'm trying to pick out an asus mobo, and i just can't decide...what's the best price/feature/performance ratio for these mobos?

a7v266,a7v266-E, a7n266, a7n266-E.

also, i was wondering about quality of the onboard c-media audio; is it comparable to sblive or phil acoustic edge cards? or should i get a separate card?

oh yeah, this is the setup i'm tentatively going to put with this mobo:
amd 1600xp
maxtor 40gig OR 2x maxtor 20gig raid
256 pc2100 ram
visiontek gforce2 gts

if i'm missing anything send a note and i'll try to respond as accurately as possible; none of these are commited to paper yet (or credit card), so any advice would be great.

thanks

 

[Thresher]

A7V-266E.

The Nvidia chipset is not performing as expected yet. I'm not sure if it is a driver issue or what, but it is a bit of a disappointment.

The A7V-266E has much better memory bandwidth than the A7V-266.

 

[Swashbukler]

If you go for the A7N266-E, it already includes sound and video. But the nForce chipset included does not perform as well as a motherboard with the KT266A (the case of A7V266-E) according to Tom's Hardware review (http://www4.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/011126/index.html).

I haven't heard from anyone in this forum that tried the AMD XP + Asus A7N266-E mobo, but heard from a guy at BZBOYZ.COm that this combination has some problems, but I'm not sure of what kind. Also, if you prefer to get a mobo that is recommended by AMD (http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_1039^2338,00.html), you should go for the A7V266-E.

Finally, since you already have a video card, why pay more for the A7N266-E that includes onboard video and go through the trouble of disabling it?

Notwithstanding, I would like to hear from anybody who has the A7N266-E with an AMD XP CPU. The included features seems nice (video+sound+lan), but I have the restrictions mentioned above.

 

[LOWDRAG]

A7V-266E............

I like this board, and what i read about it.
But i dont need the onbaord sound and video ect....

what board or version of this asus board should i go with ?

 

[Gandalf90125]

The A7V266-E does not have onboard video.

As far as the onboard CMEDIA chip vs. SBLive goes, I played around with the CMEDIA on an Iwill KK266 for a little bit, and I thought that the sound wasn't as good as the SBLive. However, there could have been driver issues which prevented me from experiencing this chip in all its glory on my 2-speaker setup. ;-) All in all, my conclusion is that the CMEDIA chip isn't bad at all; it's certainly good enough for playing music, viewing videos, and game playing as it supports EAX. You could certainly give it a try and always get a sound card later if you aren't satisfied with it or if you need 5.1 sound.

I'm currently using the A7V266-E with an Athlon XP and an Audigy sound card under Win98SE. No problems at all.

 

[Wind]

Asus A7V266-E. No sound...but u can always chip in a cheapo sound card. The KT266A chipset so far perform better than the Nforce.

 

[Swashbukler]

Gandalf,

I heard from more than one person that the SB actually "steals" a lot of the CPU capacity, which does not happen when you have an onboard sound.

Do you know more about this? Is it worth it to disable the onboard sound? or, if the onboard sound is that bad, shouldn't hatayama go for a Dragon+ that has the 5.1 Surround Sound onboard ?

 

[Gandalf90125]

I skimmed through an article online during this past week (sorry, I don't remember where...) that examined different sound solutions, and the article had a section on CPU utilization. I think the boards that used the AC'97 codec had the lowest utilization, and the other solutions (both expansion card and onboard such as CMEDIA) had a higher utilization.

I do not know much about this issue, but given the improvements in memory bandwidth and processing power over the last two years, a higher level of CPU utilization may not matter: if you want or need 3D sound, for example, you'll gladly pay the "price" in CPU power. Similarly, if you want better graphics, you'll pay the price in a slower framerate by going with a greater color depth (32-bit vs. 16-bit) and/or a higher resolution or by turning on FSAA.

My thinking re. onboard sound is this: If you want a feature such as 3D sound, EAX, 5.1, etc. and your motherboard of choice doesn't support this via onboard sound, get what you need via an expansion card. You may end up paying for onboard sound capability that you will never utilize, but on the other hand, you will probably end up paying for other features that you may never use anyway: infrared, extra USB headers, WOL, ACR/CNR, unused PCI slot, etc.

Otherwise, it comes down to the "quality" of the sound, e.g. how "good" an explosion sounds, for example. I don't know of a way to objectively measure this, so my suggestion would be to just try out the onboard sound for whatever it is that you do. If it satisfies, then you're set; otherwise, if a driver upgrade won't help, just disable the onboard sound and go get an expansion card.