What is the best value Socket A m/b out there?

[Wilan Wong]

Basically I wanted to know the best Socket A motherboard out there, at a GOOD price. I have seen several fully featured ones, but they contain a hefty price tag. I need one that is a budget Socket A m/b but I also want reliablity and stablity. I'm not looking forward to clockin' my Duron just yet...

[marcusbateman]

To be honest I would ignore the budget options and go wild and get the Abit KT7 RAID.

I have one and it's fantastic. You tend to get what you pay for a far as motherboards go.

I think Gigabyte do a cheap Socket A mobo....the GA71XE4. Don't know how good it is though.

[bdunn]

Shuttle AK10 is the only socket A board I've used so far. I recommend it.

[smapdi]

The MSI K7T Pro and Pro2 are good boards for a T-bird or Duron. I have been using the Pro with a duron 600 for a while now with no stability problems. Just my 2 cent's worth.

[Peter M]

DFI's offerings are considerably cheaper than most of the better known brands. They also have revised their AK74SC to become the EC (using the ATA100 IDE enabled VIA 686B south bridge chip), and the AK74AC (using the 686B _and_ the new KT133A 133 x2 MHz CPU FSB capable north bridge).

Also very decent, and at a similar price, is the ECS K7VZA.

An interesting piece for building fast LAN clients is the ECS K7VZM - it's microATX and has only two PCI slots, yet has 10/100 LAN right on the board ... and it has a real PCI 4.1-channel sound chip, not the chipset integrated AC97 two-channel stuff most of the other lower cost offerings use.

All of the above are on AMD's Recommended Mainboards list.

For even lower cost (but this will sacrifice performance then), boards using the SiS 730S all-in-one chipset are just around the corner.

Regards, Peter

[This message has been edited by Peter Missel (edited 11-06-2000).]