October Motherboard Recommendations

[Jeff Mings]

Thanks Warren!  The nvidia chipset sounds excellent!  I'll be checking 
amdmb.com.  The article is at 
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=119 for those interested.

-Jeff


Warren Togami wrote:

>Recommendations from Ryan and Lars, the two main reviewers of AMDMB.com.
>You will want any motherboard with the VIA KT266A Chipset.  It has amazing
>performance benefits over all other DDR SDRAM Athlon motherboards.
>
>Budget : Shuttle AK31 Rev3.1
>$95+ but a very excellent motherboard.
>
>Mid-range: EPoX 8KHA+
>$120+
>
>High-End : MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU http://www.blargoc.co.uk/reviews/k7t266pro2/
>$180+
>This motherboard has onboard Promise RAID.  Read my last post about Promise
>and HPT RAID Linux compatibility.  With some kernel patching your system
>will run fine with RAID 0 with the ATA RAID driver.
>
>If you can wait about two months, new motherboards using the nForce chipset
>will be available.  This is a chipset made entirely by nVidia that has
>performance well beyond even KT266A.  It doubles the bandwidth of the DDR
>SDRAM by using two parallel channels.  It has a built-in Geforce2 MX
>graphics controller at AGP 6x, integrated 4-speaker high quality sound
>controller, 10/100 ethernet, 56k modem, and additional AGP 4x slot if you
>want to use your own AGP video card.  This will be a totally AMAZING
>motherboard chipset, making a low cost integrated motherboard that also
>outperforms anything else on the market.  Buy one of these motherboards,
>case, CPU, hard drive and RAM, and you got yourself a complete system for
>about $400.
>
>Cheapest CPU
>Athlon-C Thunderbird 1.4GHz
>$105
>
>Better CPU
>Athlon XP 1500
>$125
>
>Best CPU
>Athlon XP 1800
>$225
>
>I recommend buying the cheapest "Palomino" Athlon that is really 1.33GHz.
>The Athlon XP model numbers reflect the equivalent performance when compared
>to older Thunderbird CPU's.  Yeah, the CPU rating thing is entirely
>marketing, but the numbers really show the true power.  This cheapest Athlon
>XP doesn't cost much more than the Athlon-C  Thunderbird, but it has SSE and
>many other design improvements.  It should also overclock to anywhere
>between 1.5-1.8GHz.   (That would be over 2100 and up in XP rating.
>Yeowch.)
>
>
>Dual Processor Motherboards
>------------------------------
>If you want insane performance, here's the pricing on Dual Athlon
>motherboards currently available from only Tyan.
>
>Tyan Thunder K7 with 64-bit SCSI
>$450
>Tyan Thunder K7 without SCSI
>$380
>Tyan Tiger K7
>$240
>
>All three motherboards have 64-bit PCI slots (fallback to 32-bit just fine).
>Thunder K7 has two built in Intel 10/100 ethernet.  Be warned that Thunder
>K7 requires a special 460W power supply, but Tiger K7 should work fine with
>standard ATX 300W.  I recommend using ATX 350W with the Tyan Tiger K7.  All
>three motherboards require "Palomino" processors, these are Athlon XP and
>MP.  Don't buy the MP.  XP works fine, and considerably faster.  Within a
>month or two more dual Athlon motherboards from other vendors like Gigabyte
>are coming to market.
>
>All three motherboards have been shown to outperform Intel's fastest dual
>Intel Xeon systems in most benchmarks, despite the massive cache of the Xeon
>machines.  Xeon machines are considerably faster for only a few things:
>Quake 3 Arena, and MP3, MPEG and DIVX ;) encoding.  Dual Athlon won in all
>other benchmarks, sometimes with even a SINGLE Athlon beating the dual Xeon.
>
>
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