Announcement

**Topha** · 3 May 2001, 07:52

from what i heard the msi is best at the moment, but im not quite sure

**Dr Mordrid** · 3 May 2001, 08:06

Onboard RAID (or anythings else) isn't always a good idea.

First of all if it whacks out it can mess up the rest of the mainboard in the process.

Second, this usually means a Highpoint chipset. This is nowhere near as good as Promises with very inconsistant throughput.

Dr. Mordrid

**Nuno** · 3 May 2001, 08:37

AFAIK, only ABIT uses the Highpoint controler. The rest (Asus, MSI) use Promise.

But if you want my opinion, I´ve used both and I´ve had more troubles with promise than Highpoint. So as always, you milleage may vary.

**Jammrock** · 3 May 2001, 11:06

I exclusively deal with Asus and Abit (mainly because they are good and I get them cheap). I have used both Promise and Highpoint onboard IDE and both work fine. I haven't had troubles with either (except finding the right drivers for Win2k installs).

I prefer Asus, since they have excellent boards and good releations with all chipset makers. Asus very, very rarely makes a bad board. Abit's are also very nice, and I currently have one in my computer. They are more of an overclockers board than anything.

Jammrock

**SCompRacer** · 3 May 2001, 18:21

Everyone has some good points here.

I have always liked ASUS, but depending on which forum you go to, there is alot of ASUS bashing going on, more than with the Abit. Of course ASUS puts alot more boards into peoples hands than Abit.

Many claim MSI or Iwill are the way to go for stability. But you see the occasional "I can't get this board to work..." rants for them too.

I had an Abit KT7A RAID board for near four months. Had 4 PCI cards and two RAID 0's when many couldn't get more than 3 PCI in it with one RAID 0. Had a SB Live, Hollywood +, both serial ports and USB enabled too. IRQ sharing going on, and ACPI enabled in both Win98SE and Win2000. Only guy that beat my Win2000 ATTO RAID 0 bench at Icrontic had a 4 drive RAID 0.

Worked great, even overclocked. Only thing I couldn't crank up in the BIOS if it was O/C was the "K7 CLK_CTL Select" setting. This decides internal parameters of the CPU, and if on Optimal I would get freeze ups in Windows.

The onboard Highpoint RAID controller worked great for me. Put a Promise in just to see if there was a difference, and they were so close in benches as to not make a difference. Just a slight edge went to the Highpoint in benches, but the use of the Promise cleared up some hardware compatibility issues for some.

Now I have an ASUS A7M266 DDR board with a 1.33 T'bird. All PCI slots are full, both serial and USB are enabled. I put the Promise FastTrak RAID controller in along with my two RAID 0's. A recent scanner upgrade will allow me to leave Win98SE, so as soon as I can devote some time to loading all my software, I'll only need Win2000.

So the ASUS board works good too, and I get performance for alot less effort. Since I am really not much of an O/C, it was a good move for me.

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ASUS A7M266, 1333MHz/266FSB, 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR, Two RAID 0's, Win2000/Win98SE

**cbman** · 3 May 2001, 19:34

LOL

I have an ASUS board... and it works.. so it must be the best... everything else is crap even though I haven't ever tried it.

Oh and don't get QDI because I had one and when the store screwed up a ram slot, the ram slot in question never worked again.. so it sucks... even though it still works like a champ (minus a ram slot)the ASUS didn't have anyone screw up a ram slot.. so it must be way better... oh and don't forget that I get better marks in sisoft with my ASUS than I did with the QDI... plus the ASUS has a way faster processor in it... I will never buy anything other than ASUS again...

LOL

I hate lamer's like that... keep an open mind.. and I have heard good things about ASUS and MSI... Depends on who you talk to.

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Canadian... Hell Ya!!!

[This message has been edited by cbman (edited 04 May 2001).]

**isochar** · 3 May 2001, 22:27

If you're going with a DDR mobo for the Athlon, get a AMD 760 based one. (Asus or MSI are tops in stability)

Stay away from the Taiwanese chipsets

**Marshmallowman** · 4 May 2001, 22:07

wait for a couple of board and or chipset revisions, I think it going to be a while before the DDR boards get sorted.
AMD 760MP sound's very tempting, will be a while commming tho.

**paulcs** · 5 May 2001, 00:13

It's probably not a good idea to go out looking for an MSI DDR board with an AMD chipset. As far as I know, MSI hasn't released a DDR motherboard with an AMD Northbridge. (Most DDR motherboards have VIA Southbridges, ALi excepted, so if you take this route, your chipset will mostly likely be at least half-VIA, AMD Northbridge or not.) Their DDR boards all have VIA chipsets except for the ALi board:

http://tw.msi.com.tw/product/ddr.htm

In addition, the VIA-based K7T 266 Pro is is a very controversial product right now. Buy it, and you'll find yourself in the store, tearing the board out of its box, and hunting down R126 and R127 to see which has the resistor covered. The distinction is important, and might result in a big difference in performance. When MSI revised the board, they didn't change the revision number, so bring your glasses.

MSI has published an unprecendented tweak guide and a new BIOS that's supposed to help matters, but right now, the "bad" board has been benching slower than SDRAM based solutions.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 05 May 2001).]

**Nuno** · 5 May 2001, 03:17

No actually they just relased a AMD 760 motherboard. Here´s a quick review: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/msi_k7master/

But I personally would wait for the Asus A7V266 http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware/...6/a7v266p1.htm

It looks very promising... I wonder why Asus ever made this board, because it will eat up their own A7A...

**SCompRacer** · 5 May 2001, 05:06

**paulcs** · 5 May 2001, 10:11

Thanks, Nuno. I'd never heard of it, and they are certainly not pushing it like their other DDR solutions.

Personally, unless I was looking for trouble, I'd wait a few weeks for any particular model. Many of the DDR Athlon boards had problems right out of the gate. Boards using the ALi chipset seem to be mediocre performers. The A7M266, I hear, was a handful until revision 1.04. (You may recall that it seemed to disappear from the market for a while. I heard Asus blamed the delays on the Chinese New Year.) The MSI board has been a real handful, as I mentioned. Both performance and stability problems.

Asus seems to always release boards based on every available chipset. I'm not suprised they're releasing AMD, ALi, and VIA-based DDR solutions. I suspect the A7A266 will lose whatever luster it had quickly, and it will become primarily an OEM solution. (Although ALi really pissed off both OEM's and motherboard manufacturers in the recent past. I wonder about their future.)

SCompRacer, are those A7M266 numbers?

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

**SCompRacer** · 5 May 2001, 11:40

Yes they are. The old 1/2 AMD, 1/2 VIA board.

I don't recall where the FSB was at. Had a disaster occur with a power cable to one of the drives (loose connection in a new PS plug). Buggered up one of the drives of my RAID 0. Got a dreaded can't write to drive C warning and it crashed..hard. Upon reboot winders said "RELOAD."

I had not backed up my drive for that day so I DriveImaged what I had. Lost all info but the SiSoft image on my ISP as I put it back to stock clock.

I really like this board. May keep it awhile. Am out of friends looking to upgrade for awhile anyway. Hit 'em with the P3B-F, the KT7 and the KT7A RAID board in the last four months. Maybe need more friends????

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ASUS A7M266, 1333MHz/266FSB, 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR, Two RAID 0's, Win2000/Win98SE

**birdy** · 6 May 2001, 14:47

Over the last 3 years i have had 11 Abit boards, 3 Iwill and 2 Asus.

All the abits and Iwills have been great (apart from the highpoint 66, the 100s are better) and the Asus's had a 50/50 failure rate.

Dont touch anything made by PC CHips. I've lost count of those that had to be returned.

If i were buying a new board i would prolly go for Abit or Iwill, but thats just me. Asus do have a good rep, whatever you buy, get something from a shop you can easily return it too tho.

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1st system

Athlon 1Ghz @ 1.2Ghz, Abit KT7 RAID, 512 MB Crucial PC133 SDRAM, 2x 30GB IBM 7200RPM Hard drives raid 0, Geforce 2 GTS 32MB, SBLIVE 1024, Adaptec AHA2940 SCSI, 10/100NIC, Plextor 40x SCSI CD ROM, Yamaha 8x4x24 CDRW, Creative 32x CD ROM, 300w PSU, Full tower songcheer, USR message modem, FPS 1000 Surround, IIyama SMT900 19 monitor, Epson Stylus colour 880, Intellimouse explorer USB

System 2

Athlon 1Ghz @ 1.15Ghz, 256MB Crucial SDRAM, Mtrox G400 DH 32MB, SBLIVE, 10/100NIC, 45GB IBM 7200rpm HDD, Pioneer 16x DVD, Songcheer Superwide, USB scanner, Genius cordless keyboard n mouse, 17in Belinea Monitor

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