In the next couple weeks I plan on upgrading my Asus A7V (PC 133 Sdram) and 1300 Mhz Thunderbird, and Asus V7700 Deluxe to something newer. I've budgeted myself to under $700, so money is a concern here.
I've already bought an MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64 MB with TV out, this was $180.
The choice of motherboards is tough. My criteria were:
Throughbred (and potentially beyond to Barton if possible) support for future processors.
No reported issues with the VERY HIGH power requirements of the GF 4 Ti cards.
Decent performance, but stability is always of highest priority for me.
USB 2.0, Firewire (IEEE 1394), and ATA 133 support are a bonus.
Thermal protection (overtemp auto shutdown) feature
The following were not that important to me:
Integrated Video
Integrated Ethernet
Overclocking ability is not important for me. (I plan on potentially using this board as the base for systems I build for others.)
Raid
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I've extensively looked into the following boards: Asus A7V333, Abit KR7A-133, Abit N7V-133R, Gigabyte GA7-RXP (that might be a typo but it's close), Asus A7N266, MSI K7N420 Pro, and the Asus A7V266-E.
On the two KT333 boards I've looked at, I've decided the following:
The Gigabyte board got great reviews on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech, but my research showed there may be voltage regulator issues with Rev 1.0 and 1.1 boards that make GF 4 Ti cards likely to be unstable. It has all the features except integrated video and overclocking ability. Gigabyte boards also have two bios chips, meaning you can't kill your board with a bad flash. I've eliminated it from consideration at the moment, it's just too early to tell on the GF 4 issue. It MAY be a great board, but I'm not ready to take the leap on this one yet.
The Asus A7V333 is tempting, it is the only board which has thermal protection. It also has all but integrated video and tweaking options galore. Asus typically has excellent support and the highest build quality, with top notch performance. Negatives on this board are complicated setup (over 30 jumpers) and high cost. There didn't seem to have nearly as many GF 4 conflicts with this board as with the Gigabyte board, but this board currently has a VERY high RMA rate. Asus even has a special RMA procedure for this board. The problem seems to be a bad batch of bios chips with a corrupted bios. The high chances of getting a bad board and the very high cost and excessive number of jumpers have made me decide to pass on this board as well.
The A7V266-E board is a great and proven board, but lacks USB 2.0 and ATA 133 support.
The Abit KR7A-133 has ATA 133 support, but lacks USB 2.0 support. It's well priced and has a great reputation.
The MSI K7N420 Pro is an excellent board, I've used it before in the past, however I've decided not to use it because I do not want to pay $40 extra for the onboard GF 2 MX video in the nForce 420 chipset that I will not be using.
The Asus A7N266 and Abit N7V-133R are next on my list. The Abit board supports both USB 2.0 and ATA 133 thorough an onboard Raid controller. Both use the nForce 415 chipset with all the features of the 420, but without the onboard video. The nForce boards (along with the KT333 boards) both support the Throughbred Athlons officially. Both nForce boards have nearly perfect stablity records, but do lack overclocking options. There are no problems with GF 4 compatiblity reported with either board. (They use a nVidia chipset, imagine that.) There are also no issues with Creative soundcards, unlike the VIA boards. (Though the problem is actually Creative's fault, it is still nice to see this.) It is worth mentioning that the nForce boards can only use AGP 4x ( 1.5V signaling ) video cards, but unless you are using something older than a GF 1 or Radeon, that won't be a problem.
It's tough choosing between these two boards, BUT the Abit is slightly cheaper, has USB 2.0, raid, and ATA 133 support. One last thing is the addition of the new 12V ATX power connector, which allow the motherboard to pull power from the 12V + supply for the CPU and video card, which may result in better stability with the GF 4 card and fast AMD processor. I think I'm going to try the Abit board, mainly for the extra features. I'm hoping that the sound issue reported by funked with this board will not show up, but if it does I plan on using a Soundblaster Audigy card, which includes a Firewire port.
In the end, it came down to a choice between the Asus A7V333 and Abit NV7-133R. For now, I'm leaning toward the Abit board.
The Asus A7V333 board just seems too new and has more reported issues than I like to see. It's priced well, is easy to setup, and has many of the features I wanted. It doesn't have thermal protection like the Asus board, but it is cheaper. I can get this board for under $100.
Performance-wise the nForce boards are much better now than they were initially. Newer drivers and bios releases have gotten them at least equal with KT266A boards, and in some cases better than the new KT333 boards. IDE drive performance on nForce is almost never benchmarked, but it is better than the VIA, or for that matter Intel chipsets. There is a potental issue with add-on IDE controllers and raid controllers with low write benchmark numbers. I will not be using the onboard Raid, so this doesn't concern me.
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The rest of the system will consist of:
2x 256 MB sticks of Corsair PC 2100 DDR Ram ( approx $90 ).
MSI GF 4 Ti 4200 video card ($180 )
Athlon XP 1800+ - 2100+ (I haven't decided which yet, but between $80 and $180.)
I'll be switching out my old case with a new Enlight case and 340W powersupply. ($60)
The Abit MB mentioned above is approx $100.
If I need the Audigy, that will add $65.
I'll be reusing my 45 GB IBM 75GXP harddrive, along with the floppy, DVD drive, and CD RW drive. I have a copy of Win2k as well.
Without the Audigy and going with the 1800+ I should total out at around $550. With the Audigy and a 2100+ it would be around $675.
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To be honest, I did consider going with a P4 system this time around, but decided against it for the following reasons:
My prefered motherboard, the Asus P4B533 (which supports the 533 FSB P4s, which can finally outperform the AMD 2100+ overall), was literally twice as expensive as the Abit nForce board. I would have used a 2.26 GHz 533 Mhz P4 had I gone that route, which again was just too expensive for my budget for this upgrade.
The P4S533 board, based on a SiS chipset, was also under consideration, but again it was more expensive than the nForce board and lacks some features. I also don't know how upgradable this board will be with regards to future P4 chips. There could be potental GeForce 4 issues here as well.
I also have the need to run some engineering (x87 FPU intensive) applications, which still run faster on the Athlon. This is one area where the P4 is not a good choice. Only the 2.533 and 2.4 Ghz P4s with the 533 FSB significantly exceed the performance of the XP 2100+ overall, but at best will tie when it comes to raw x87 FPU performance. The 2.533 GHz processor is over $600 alone, and the 2.4B is over $300. The 2.26 Ghz can be had for around $250, which is more reasonable, but the Asus MB I would want costs $100 more.
Intel also does not have a good record when it comes to future upgradability. They've already gone through 3 incompatible sockets or FSB formats for the P4. It's hard to say how long the 845E chipset will support future P4 processors, but it's likely Intel will actually stick with the 533 MHz FSB for the rest of the year, but they are supposed to switch to dual channel DDR PC 2700 in the future, which may mean the 845E chipsets won't support P4s beyond that point.
I do have to say the P4s are much more attractive now than they have been in the past.
It was a more difficult decision than normal, but in the end it came down to bang for the buck, so I'm going to go with AMD once again. Future Athlon XPs based on the new Throughbred core are supported by both nForce and KT333 until at least December, and even then the Barton core Athlon XPs to follow may also be compatible. AMD's Hammer processors will certainly be expensive for both boards and CPUs when launched late this year, so I don't really want to wait for their release. AMD's roadmap indicates the Barton core Athlon XPs will stick around until at least the second half of 2003.
I'm going on vacation for a week this Monday, but I plan to do this right after I get back.
