It's alive!

[Kurt]

I'm sure enough hehe...OTOH I haven't seen any hard proof of your *bold* claims, but I don't mind. *I* don't pretend to be right all the time... ... hence this little test.

[Kruzin]

well, after a couple days with it, I decided to try a little mild overclocking.
Won't do squat.
When I set the FSB to 140, it takes windows 5 min to load, and 3dmark was a slide show.

So there's my first complaint

[Nuno]

dunno who said the nForce2 were cheaper -I'd like to see!...

I did. Well sort of. I said "equally or less" what holds true for same brand. Asus A7N8X cost about the same as the A7V8X, at least around here. Novdid also said it.

I buy boards that are 1/2-1/3 the price of the 8RDA/+ based on SIS or VIA P4Xxxx chipsets. The KT400 are about 20-40% cheaper. Asus is priced a bit higher, but then even their SIS boards can reach the price of a regular KT400 board.

I don´t doubt it. I guess you can get a way cheaper KT400 if you go for PCChips, Matsonic, ECS, Zida Tomato. Problem is that I still only have seen nForce2 boards from premium brands, so it´s like comparing apples to oranges.

[Kurt]

No. An average price (for me ) is about 80-85 EUR for a Gigabyte KT400 board (not a cheap brand). nForce2 are more expensive, at about 100-120 EUR. (prices without VAT and other taxes).

I take your example:

Asus A7V8X ~100 EUR
Asus A7N8X ~120 EUR

or

MSI K7N2-L ~100EUR
MSI KT4V-L ~ 90EUR

for retail prices you should add about 30% (in Europe)

Prices for KT400 can go slightly below 70 EUR for a smaller brand (boards with 5 or 6 PCI slots, not µATX ones).

Prices are likely to be different where you are, but if the VIA chipset is more expensive it's likely because the shops you go to don't buy where they should...

[Nuno]

I don´t doubt you know your business. I´m not in the PC area, so I´m not familiar with reseler prices, but what I notice around here is that prices are very close. Both Asus boards I mentioned retail for around 120-130€ + VAT.

Anyway, even for a $20 diference I would go nForce2

Maybe I´m unlucky, but I´ve got problems with *every* VIA system I had and none with every other chipset.

Oh and my ECS K7S5A is still going strong at 147 fsb

[Indiana]

Lots of the VIA problems come from bad BIOS programming. EPoX VIA boards didn't create any problems here.
While there are problems with KT400 boards, the KT333 runs quite good. The KT333 essentially is a KT266B with most of the KT266 quirks ironed out.
The EPoX 8K3A with the KT333 especially is a VERY nice board that stays rock stable even when fully equipped (I have a R9700Pro, a UW SCSI, a RAID, aDMX 6Fire24/96, a Firewire card and a Hauppauge WinTV in my rig).
And still it does run a FSB of 190MHz

(unfortunately I had to lower the timings a bit since my RAM couldn't keep up otherwise to CAS2-3-6-3-1TCommand, but this still is faster than 175MHz with the fastest settings)


If I had to buy an AMD board now, however I would clearly choose a NForce2 one, they're even faster and seem very trouble-free, plus having most stuff needed onboard.

[Evildead666]

Here we have the A7V8X at 126euros, and the A7N8X at 136euros.
the deluxe version, is however 170euros. it does have virtually everything onboard tho, and works very well!

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Nuno
I don´t doubt you know your business. I´m not in the PC area, so I´m not familiar with reseler prices, but what I notice around here is that prices are very close. Both Asus boards I mentioned retail for around 120-130€ + VAT.

Anyway, even for a $20 diference I would go nForce2

Maybe I´m unlucky, but I´ve got problems with *every* VIA system I had and none with every other chipset.

Oh and my ECS K7S5A is still going strong at 147 fsb

as with most cheap boards you need to be careful what settings you use in your BIOS as well as what 4in1 drivers...and yes everybody's had more problems with VIA chipsets than with others
but then...for AMD VIA was the name of the game, until NVIDIA released the nForce2 chipset. *Greebe Happy Mode ON* Even if the SIS chipset runs more stably and they have a very good PCI implementation *Greebe Happy Mode OFF*

[ayoub_ibrahim]

hehe, I'll be keeping my bx till springdale.
I'll be using a 1.4GHz celeron tulatin on the SLOT-T adapter which costs £22 over here.
much cheaper than a powerleap adapter!

[Nuno]

as with most cheap boards you need to be careful what settings you use in your BIOS as well as what 4in1 drivers...

What bugs me is that I was talking about 2 Asus (A7V and A7V133) and 1 Abit (KT133) as well as the KM133 on my Compaq laptop... not exactly generic stuff.

As for my ECS, it was the cheapest and most stable and compatible board I ever bought... go wonder

Anyway I guess my next upgrade will be an Athlon 64 anywhere on mid/late 2003, I think my K7S5A/XP1600+@1550Mhz/GF4 Ti4400 will do the job until then.

[Pace]

Originally posted by Kurt
but then...for AMD VIA was the name of the game, until NVIDIA released the nForce2 chipset

AMD chipsets were all I considered for Athlons, until the reports from here about the 745 came around. I've never considered a VIA chipset (well, not too seriously anyway, and not whilst sane).

P.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Nuno
What bugs me is that I was talking about 2 Asus (A7V and A7V133) and 1 Abit (KT133) as well as the KM133 on my Compaq laptop... not exactly generic stuff.

As for my ECS, it was the cheapest and most stable and compatible board I ever bought... go wonder

Anyway I guess my next upgrade will be an Athlon 64 anywhere on mid/late 2003, I think my K7S5A/XP1600+@1550Mhz/GF4 Ti4400 will do the job until then.

Asusu usually get the BIOS, eventually, but VIA is still trying with their drivers. Abit has good and bad...we stopped using them because of the memory problems as well as other incompatibilities...

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Pace
AMD chipsets were all I considered for Athlons, until the reports from here about the 745 came around. I've never considered a VIA chipset (well, not too seriously anyway, and not whilst sane).

P.

The SIS is not a bad chipset per se...but all the feature rich boards have a VIA chipset on it...

[Admiral]

You can't say that the MSI 745 Ultra isn't feature rich, also the AOpen AK75 PRO.
The ECS K7S5A/K7S6A and Leadtek 7350KDA are also decent boards, though lack the 1Mhz steps for overclocking.
And all will get better with the 746 boards.

[Kurt]

Let's just say there are very boards with the SIS745 that are feature rich as opposed to a boatload of VIA ones.

The ECS K7S5A has an SIS735 chipset.

You can always wait for the SIS746, but I wouldn't put my money on it. The 735 was very promising, the 745 was a refreshed version with slightly slower DDR333 memory bandwith than in DDR266 mode. It took them a while to get to or better performance than the AMD 760 chipset. They failed to deliver on the follow ups.

Maybe all the money they're making with the P4 chipsets will help their AMD business, but VIA isn't likely to let go of its cash cow -given SIS is stealing all its P4 chipsets sales

Then there's always NVIDIA, but given the time it took them to release a new chipset after the nForce1, I wouldn't hope for a new chipset when Barton arrives (they say they have chipsets for the Hammer...).