G400, Athlon 700 - which chipset?

[dave m]

Hi people,
We're happily running two Marvel G200s(an AGP and a PCI) and an older Mystique with various AMD chips up to AMD K6-2 350s. Our only non Matrox machine has on board graphics and was a big mistake. We now want to upgrade this one and have decided to go for a 700 athlon, a G400 Millenium 16Mb but don't know which motherboard to go for.

Having searched KX133 and G400 on the site
Is VIA still a no-go?, the Tyan Trinity K7 looks good but has the VIA KX133 chipset, and certain members of the forum don't seem to like VIA very much :-)
I can go for a Microstar or Gigabyte using the older AMD Irongate chipset if it works better with a G400 if that's what you'd all recommend, any comments would be very helpful.

Dave and Jackie

[Alfie]

If you get the Slot A Athlon,MSI has pleased everyone.
If you get a Thunderbird Socket A the new Asus(A7v)is getting great press (it uses the Via kt133 chipset.)
Those familiar with Via seem to have less problems than those that don't.
The kt133 chipset seems to be pretty decent!

[Zwisch]

Personnaly I have tested several Athlon motherboard (K7M, K7M, MSI K7Pro, FIC SD-11, dealt with the Abit and Tyan) and so far, I found the Soyo K7VIA to be the best of them all with it's KX133 chipset. A very cool and well made mobo that deserves attention.

Z

[anid]

I set up a system for my folks a few monthes back using an Abit KA7 (KX133 chip) and G400 32MB, had no problems at all that were mobo / chipset related. Well, it wouldn't boot in AGP 4X mode, but that is not any kind of real loss and I don't think it is a common problem. The 2 work great together with the Via AGP 4.0 GART (now 4.03) and the PD 5.52 drivers.
It is worth considering getting a Thunderbird instead of a "classic" Athlon for future upgradeability (and a small performance advantage) - the 2 run about the same price for the same speed grade (about a $15 premium for the Tbird). The main thing would be finding a mobo (the Asus A7V does seem to be top pick right now) and there is a larger price premium on the mobo end (maybe about $30). Another alternative is to get a Duron, which is _very_ close in performance to the Athlon "classic", but much cheaper. The KT133 chip does seem to have more of the bugs worked out than the KX133, but the mobos using it are still early production, so you'd have to upgrade the BIOS fairly frequently for a while if you go that route.

------------------
"I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

[dave m]

Thanks for the help people, I'd previously passed over the socket A route as T'birds aren't readily available in the UK.

But an Asus, Duron combination as Anid suggested is definitely the way we'd have gone. I was on the verge of ordering...

Unfortunately Jackie just found out the lockups on her SiS on board graphics was due to bad polling from her UPS.

Oh, we were so close to building a new Matrox kickass machine.

But now I know what we want next...

Thanks again,

Dave