A little advice plz

[Dustmonkey]

Hi.........I'm after a little advice & I was wondering if anyone could help me plz?
I've currently got a PIII 700 on a Gigabyte board,I've bought an Athlon 1.4 but have no idea what motherboard to get. I'm not very 'clued-up' when it comes to this sort of thing :confused: . I've read dozens of various reviews on different motherboards, but still dont feel confident enought to part with my hard earned cash.

I would like a board that's DDR compatible and supports AGP X4, but I'm not really sure what other features I should be looking out for (e.g which chipset, etc.)

Any help with this would be much appreciated,
Cheers,
Dusty.

[hirschY]

Go here to look into the VIA KT266 (http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010808/index.html) comparison.

Also, here is the AMD 760 Chipset (http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010806/index.html)

I really cant give a recomendation myself. but I'm sure others will:eek:

[surrealchereal]

Kind of depends on how much you want to spend too... 70 to 150. is about the range, I would never presume that 75 bucks wouldnt make a difference in your budget..

[LostBok]

Dustmonkey, welcome to SysOpt!

VIA KT266 and AMD 760 are both very good.... take a serious look at some of the newer one though: nVidia's nForce looks to be a serious competitor.... and has decent 6 channel sound, 100Mbps LAN, etc etc all onboard.... the one that I'm waiting for is the KT266A which appears to be the real beast out there at the moment...

Keep an ear to the ground here and at www.tomshardware.com and www.anandtech.com.

Good manufacturers, although most people have their personal favourites, are: Epox, iwill, ABIT, Giga-byte, ASUS, Supermicro... I've also had some very decent boards from PC Chips and TekRam.

Basically the bigger the manufacturer, the better the support will be for getting BIOS updates, etc for any bugs... I think I'd seriously consider getting a KT266A from any of those manufacturers... I have had fantastic boards from ABIT, Supermicro, Giga-byte and TekRam.... it just depends what each is offering/charging on the day!

Think about if you want any extras like onboard sound (newer ones can be V good), onboard LAN (useful for saving a PCI slot), onboard graphics (ok for servers, waste of space for gamers), onboard RAID (like the HPT370 - very nice for 4 extra IDE slots)... I'd highly recommend the RAID, think abou the others...

[Dustmonkey]

Hi guys :)
thx for the help...........should of gave ya's a bit more info.

a) Dont want any onboard sound,graphics,etc
b) I got about £150 to spare
c) Definately interested in RAID capabilities
d) Want something thats ATA100 compatable (would that come as standard with RAID setup?)

The system is used mainly for high end audio & graphics apps. like Cubase VST,Rebirth,3D Studio Max,UnrealEd,etc. I also take part in at lot of online gaming. Does this type of info come into the equasion when choosing hardware such as M/B's ?

Thx again,

Dusty.