top socket A board Advice.

[nadine]

Hi:a friend of mine He is looking to buy a new socket A for Duron/Tbird and He need advice to which He must choose from the following http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gifNOt for overclocking purpose board)
1) Epox EP-8KTA 3 KT133A /133MHZ.
2)MSI K7T pro 2A KT/133/100MHZ.
3)abit KT7A Raid KT133A /133MHZ.
4)MSI K7T turbo KT 133 A ,266MHZ FSB Retail
5) MSI K7T turbo Raid 1.5Gig Duron/Tbird 266MHZ.
thanks in advance.

[wildbuffalo]

I personaly have preference towards EPOX boards. If your friend does not want to overclock, then any of the EPOX boards with KT133A chipset would work great. Their costs are reaonable, and performance is good and stable. One can set up using 133/266 fsb (for better memory performance) and still keep the multiplier appropriate so as not to overclock. However, this would require mod of CPU's L6 and possibly L7 bridges.

But then as I said I have personal preference for EPOX!

Wild

[elroy]

I bought the Epox 8KTA3 and am very happy with it. Installed easily, everything worked the first time, VERY STABLE [Duron 800@980, has all the options you could possibly want. FYI, newegg.com has been selling these for $117 with free shipping.

[Bovon]

I am (or waz) looking at the Iwill KK266 or the KK266-R version with Raid.

After searching the forums now for many weeks, I am finding many horror stories about the new KT133a chipset, and from what I am reading, it may be the newer 686B southbridge...which is found on all of the KT133a boards. Methinks this technology needs to grow up a little before we jump on the bandwagon for a good stable machine.

I personally want the raid feature because there seems to be a way to use that as an extra IDE board instead of the main purpose of raid. So far, the guys that are trying it haven't discovered the secret...or sweet spot of setup just yet. I think I will start a thread here concerning this, and see what the ppl here think.

So far tho, the Iwill has had the best stability and the best reviews...then, they came out with a 1.2 bios revision to help the overclockers, but unfortunately...there was another chip problem that screwed that up. I read at the [H]ard forum just a little while ago. that Iwill has corrected this with a new chip, and the new boards should work just fine...we'll see.