best motherboard for athlon t-bird??

[cluelessnewbie]

I heard that ASUS A7A266 is a good motherboard for amd ... anyone have any suggestions?

[cluelessnewbie]

Also, i had another question. Is it good to buy the motherboard/cpu combo or buy separately?

[Goldwingnut]

First: I hope you are aware of http://www.anandtech.com/articlelist.html Anandtech. This guy and his staff do a lot of motherboard reviews. It's good to have a variety of MBs reviewed by the same crew, using the same procedures and benchmarking software. That way the comparisons are valid and useful. They haven't reviewed the one you mentioned yet.

May I suggest another approach to your decision making process? Instead of asking others which is the best product, define your needs and seek a product that meets your needs.

Example: I want to build a box that does cross-media transfers. Put in a Zip, send the contents to CD. Put in a DVD and copy a portion of it to Jaz.

So I need lots of drives, but I can't afford SCSI drives. I need a lot of IDE drives.

I found two MBs that meet that need: Soyo ( something or other ) Mark 4, and the Abit BP6. Both have 2 IDE controllers on the board, but the Abit also has dual processor capability. So I can say I built a dual proc computer in a future job interview. Added bonus.

Identify your needs. Rank them by priority. Then find an MB which mets your needs, or meets all of your high-priority needs and most of your low-priority needs.

[Roy]

Goldwingnut ~ Good Answer!

Comparative reviews are the ticket. Some motherboard manufacturers' sites provide links to favorable reviews. These help too.

Buying a combo, or two items from the same source, might save on shipping, but I usually find better overall deals separately.

[This message has been edited by Roy (edited 06-11-2001).]

[vtruty]

I own a A7A266 with a 1.2GHz Athlon (which just got fried this afternoon #$#%^$#). It is a great board, 2GB of DDR and 3 SDRAM slots. 2IDE drives and (optional, but I have it) a 3D 4-Speaker on-board sound (which I really like). Good for O/C ing and has 1 4X/AGP Pro, 5PCI, 1AMR(Shared w/ PCI#1).

If my CPU has not have been dead today, I'd be using it....COL(Crying Out Loud)

VJT

[eagle1]

GREAT Answer Gold!! I really complement you.!! Well clueless, as you already heard, it depends on what you want. Types of hard drives, overclockability, etc.!