Athlon

[beginner]

Hey everyone,

could someone tell me what it means if it says FA-71X Slot A K7 AMD Athlon "Ultra DMA/ATA 66", its the part thats in quotes--

and also can someone recommend the 751 or the 756 chipset. Which board with which chipset?

Thanks to everyone in advance, i appreciate all the help ya'll give (as i'm sure everyone else does too)

Alpha & Dominus - if your out there thanks again,

Kim (beginner)

[Dominus]

That means it has an ATA/66 controller built into the motherboard. All Athlon motherboards do.

ATA/66 is a faster harddrive interface, as opposed to ATA/33, which is probably what you have on your motherboard now.

It's still compatable with older IDE drives; it just has the ability to go even faster with drives that support ATA/66, like the IBM GXP series, as well as others.

[beginner]

Thank everyone, I really appreciate your help

[Michael Adcock]

Hi, beginner!

To my knowledge, there are less than a dozen Athlon motherboards out there, and as of right now all but one of them have the AMD-751 controller for the "north bridge" (for CPU, system memory, and AGP control) and the AMD-756 controller as the "south bridge" (for the PCI/ISA and, I believe IDE, control).

The exception to this is the SD-11 by FIC (which is also marketed under another name by another company--can't remember which). The SD-11 board uses a VIA686 controller chip for the south bridge. The tests I have read seem to indicate that this is a better arrangement, in the benchmark ratings, but I have also read of some people having problems because of the VIA. It might be safer, as you say you are a "beginner", to go with the two AMD chips for your chipset, since AMD is, of course, the same company that makes the CPU.

I hope this helps you.