looking for a good athlon xp mb

[ardenk]

Hi everyone,
I've been looking for a new mb and processor and i'm not having much luch finding one that has good linux driver support. Can anyone suggest a good mb that has linux drivers?

Thanks,
AK

[Timothy L. Miller]

Most everything on a motherboard really doesn't NEED drivers. Unless you have onboard sound, video, networking, etc, of course.
If you want a great motherboard with everything, The MSI KT4 Ultra FISA (??). It has onboard 5.1 sound, networking, RAID, everything. If you want a cheap board that still rocks pretty good, I like my MSI 745 Ultra. It doesn't support the newer 333 FSB athlons, but it does support PC2700 DDR so you can run your memory asynchronous to get a little extra performance. I've also got an MSI KT3 Ultra2. Although I'm really kinda dissappointed with that one as far as the performance for the price (the 745 was $65, the KT3 was $85), according to MSI, it will support the Athlon XP 2700+ (333 FSB) with a BIOS flash. I also have a SOYO KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum. If you have a case window and want to show off your board, that's the board to get. Otherwise, save your money, the MSI KT4 Ultra FISA is a better overall board.

[m3rlin]

I have a AsusA7v266-E with out the RAID, and its the best board that asus ever made,have got good reviews,good performence,and stability!
And have a AMD Athlon XP 1800+, and everthing is working fine,great for overclocking,when combined with good DDR its even faster!It have a sound card but i don't recomend it,if you want good sound by a pci sound card,like Sb live 5.1(its cheep). Check for the reviews of tomshardware!

[sarah31]

i use a soyo dragon lite and msi kt3 ultra 2. both work great. no problems at all.

[Timothy L. Miller]

Sarah, never checked out the dragon lites. What exactly makes them lite?

[LrngTheHardWay]

I'll kick in on this:

MSI makes excellent Athlon M/Bs.

[lsm]

ABit and ASUS do very good boards,

[bosox79]

I like my Mobo, check sy sig

it works great, I got it last year with my box. You should be able to find it for cheap now :)

[liquidfx13]

the Asus AV78X from everything i have seen out there lately is IMHO the best board on the market at the moment for AMD cpu's.

[ShieldWolf]

I personally like Abit, Asus and Tyan products. I suggest that you check out http://www.tomshardware.com/ and http://www.motherboards.org/

Decide on which features you must have, which ones would be nice to have, and which ones you don't want. Then find a good reliable board with those features.

Compare the motherboard to the foundation of a house. You might build a nice home on a shaky foundation, but sooner or later, the whole thing's coming down. Pick stability over features, and you'll have a better system with fewer problems.

Pick an all-in-one type board if you want to build the equivallent of a trailer house; cheap to buy, has a lot of nice features, not as stable, hard to make improvements, and has poor resale value.

[psyte]

Originally posted by liquidfx13
the Asus AV78X from everything i have seen out there lately is IMHO the best board on the market at the moment for AMD cpu's.

The A7N8X just came out and is quite a bit better (it uses the nvidia chipset, which, from the reviews I've read, works much better than the KT400 on the A7V8X). But then again were talking about a $155 board here, so it better be good :D

[Grognard]

I have had very good luck with ASUS and GIGABYTE motherboards. My current board is a Gigabyte VRXP series and with my Athlon 2000+ I am really happy. Just a suggestion, do not skimp on the motherboard, get the most advanced, best one you can buy, that allows a great deal of upgradeablity for your system.

[ardenk]

thanks for all the replys :)
I was reading another thread and it seems like it matters what video card you match with the mb. i would like the 3d stuff but it isn't really necessary. a 333 fsb isn't necessary too, i'll wait for prices to come down a bit but i will spend the $$ to have a stable system and avoid a horror story.

TLM
thanks i'll check it out, i could leave the case cover off too :D
KT4 looks really nice

m3rlin
what video card do you have ?


thanks again !

[ardenk]

i checked out the VAXP it looks nice too though a little higher in price, 25. is your usb 2.0 supported ?

thanks again
:D

[m3rlin]

I have a Prophet GeForce 2mx 200! Its not a GREAT video card, but it works fine!I have no graphics problems with it!
A word of advise, if your going to buy a Mb that uses DDR, then i must warning you that it is better to buy good DDR, like Muskin or Kingstone! don't buy cheep DDR it only gets you troubles!

[ardenk]

I've been through all that before buy it is VERY good advice that needs to be reiterated.

my boss wouldn't spend the extra 30 or so for better quality ram, the damn box didn't work right until the cheep ram was replaced.

I usually use micron but if peace of mind is an extra us$2 it's money well spent.

thanks for all the help!
:D

[bskahan]

I've been happy with a soyo dragon plus (266) and an athlon 2k. The downside to the dragon is the integrated sound is not as nice as some of the soundblaster offerings, but its suficient for my purposes. I haven't tried the onboard RAID setup.

[deimos]

My favor has recently gone from Abit to Epox. The Epox 8K9A is the best board I've worked with for Athlon systems. I've built 3 machines in the last few months that all use the 8K9A. Each had a different cpu, case, and powersupply. No problems installing the board, and it overclocks nicely. Even has an AGP voltage setting for those of us with GF4 cooling kits :)

Excellent overclocker.
Stable.
ATA 133.
333 fsb (able to reach 370 easily).
Onboard audio is easy to setup in Linux.
Nice easy layout (except for the additional usb headers).
Plenty of room around the ziff for my Swiftech 462 heatsink.
The raid board uses the Highpoint, not that junky Promise.
Retail box can be had for $90 US.

[Timothy L. Miller]

Originally posted by deimos
My favor has recently gone from Abit to Epox. The Epox 8K9A is the best board I've worked with for Athlon systems. I've built 3 machines in the last few months that all use the 8K9A. Each had a different cpu, case, and powersupply. No problems installing the board, and it overclocks nicely. Even has an AGP voltage setting for those of us with GF4 cooling kits :)

Excellent overclocker.
Stable.
ATA 133.
333 fsb (able to reach 370 easily).
Onboard audio is easy to setup in Linux.
Nice easy layout (except for the additional usb headers).
Plenty of room around the ziff for my Swiftech 462 heatsink.
The raid board uses the Highpoint, not that junky Promise.
Retail box can be had for $90 US.

Lucky. The last 6 boards I've gotten from Epox have all been DOA. THey used to be my favorite company, but anymore, I won't touch their products with a 500 mile pole, it's just begging to waste money. I've switched over to MSI , SOYO, and Gigabyte. Been having very good success with their boards.

[deimos]

Ewww, Soyo. Too bad about the bad Epox's. DOA mobo's are a b*stard :(