Poll: Need help Deciding

[terrancelam]

Now just hypothically speaking if I were to upgrade my mobo in alittle bit, if i had the cash, what should I get? Should I try for a Abit KR7 w/raid (Or without, please specify a reason for not getting it, I want it for the ata 133 and the two extra IDE channels.) Or going with the Iwill DDR333 board, which uses the ALi Magik chipset. Or With the Asus A7N266 Nforce board (One reason not to get this is concern for the compatibility of my Radeon with it. Or make a recommendation for a board

Or

Finally, stick with what I have now. It's not that my board isn't already great, the bandwidth is pushed pretty high up and I can get near KT266 chipset speeds, but I was wondering if the DDR upgrade would be worth it for capping and the extra performance that it would give me now. Just need a few opinions. Thanks in advance

[MAmuT]

iwill ddr333 get it!
the Asus A7N266! is good but you can get almost the same soun quality with audigy ( you wont notice it ) and a great video quality with a radeon 8500 or Gf3 ti 500

and about the compatibility with Asus A7N266! and radeon dont know anything about it

[terrancelam]

Will those other people who votes give alittle insight as to why I should choose the other boards?

[Gaming-Module]

Looks like a conspiracy to obfuscate the truth.

[YeOldeStonecat]

I had a good experience with my nForce board...would have gotten the Asus one, but who knows when it will come out, and I wanted to build one about a month ago....so after hearing how MSI has gotten to be a good brand...gave their k7n420 Pro a shot.

Glad I did, love it. Reason I went nForce? I just cannot stand any other AMD chipsets due to reliability, flakiness, crashing systems, compatibility with mainstream hardware.....they're what has kept be away from building an AMD system up til this past month with the nForce.

Onboard video, well, most of us disable that is there's one and put on our own high performance cards anyways, so that's not a show stopper.

I use my own PCI RAID card, already had one.

Overclocking so far has been reported as modest on these boards, but yesterday, MSI released new BIOS which allow multiplier adjustments also! So overclockability should go up.

[terrancelam]

The A7N266 looks like it's in favour for me at the moment, the Iwill DDR333 doesn't have much in gaining favour, cept for the fact that it's made by Iwill (The ALi Chipset just doesn't sit well with me.). AS for the Abit KR7, I saw some of the memory scores and they are WAY too low to consider, it's almsot digusting to think that if that is the real time performance and the memory bandwidth increase from the KT7A (A SDram based chipset) to a DDR (KT266A) Is only 150-200megs, that is just wrong..I was expecting about a 500meg increase in the bandwidth, so one reason not to go there.

Ken keep your eyes glued, YeOldStoneCat, could you please do a SiSandra memory benchmark to show how the A7N266 peforms? Thanks in advance!

[YARDofSTUF]

Epox 8KHA+ onboard ide and floppy is about all its got built in, it do look sweet tho!

EDIT, eh it does have onboard sound

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by terrancelam
The A7N266 looks like it's in favour for me at the moment, the Iwill DDR333 doesn't have much in gaining favour, cept for the fact that it's made by Iwill (The ALi Chipset just doesn't sit well with me.). AS for the Abit KR7, I saw some of the memory scores and they are WAY too low to consider, it's almsot digusting to think that if that is the real time performance and the memory bandwidth increase from the KT7A (A SDram based chipset) to a DDR (KT266A) Is only 150-200megs, that is just wrong..I was expecting about a 500meg increase in the bandwidth, so one reason not to go there.

Ken keep your eyes glued, YeOldStoneCat, could you please do a SiSandra memory benchmark to show how the A7N266 peforms? Thanks in advance!

I have the MSI nForce board...I guess I can D/L and install SiSandra, I just hate it, and usually keep installed programs to a minimum so I don't accumulate extra garbage files.

gamepc.com finally got the Asus a7n in stock, I may try to sell my MSI board and pickup the Asus.

Will be away all this weekend, but next week will probably download the new MSI BIOS which allow more overclocking features.

Only complaints I have on this new system....which I hope to find an answer for, are:
1)I have the Creative FPS2000 digital Cambridge set, which had the digital feed custom for their SB Live cards. The built in nForce audio has SPDIF connector on the MSI....which I cannot use until I find some adapter.
2)I chose the Dragon Orb 3....which is great for keeping the temps down, but oh so loud. I read it was loud....but didn't think it was ///THIS/// loud. A penetrating whine you can hear throughout the house, even across to the TV room when one is watching TV!

[terrancelam]

the loud 7K fans I personally have a Black label Delta 7k 38 CFM fan and it' sstill quiet loud, I can hear it from my room, which is about 10 feet away and in another room! But it's fairly silent, I modified it a bit, I reversed the airflow, which quieted it down a lot! Then I added a lining aroung the gap between the fan and the hs and that did a bit to help with the noise. I'd have to say still, my old alpha with the 5K fan was much more silent

[YARDofSTUF]

Originally posted by terrancelam
the loud 7K fans I personally have a Black label Delta 7k 38 CFM fan and it' sstill quiet loud, I can hear it from my room, which is about 10 feet away and in another room! But it's fairly silent, I modified it a bit, I reversed the airflow, which quieted it down a lot! Then I added a lining aroung the gap between the fan and the hs and that did a bit to help with the noise. I'd have to say still, my old alpha with the 5K fan was much more silent

get a 60 to 80 mm fan adapter from cooler guys and a lower rpm 80mm fan or the 80mm delta that does 64cfm, it runs at 5200 rpms only, its still loud but not high pitched.

[terrancelam]

I'm holding back on that option is that my hs/f currently is right below the PSU (one it's dual intake fans) and it would be more then the space I have right now, have to get a better Midtower ATX.

Hmm interesting some people thing I should keep the KT7A.. BTW Ken if you are reading, I think you should very well consider the KR7A for the moment, along side with the A7N266, but I'm leaning on the KR7A for you, more of a base support and if it works well, then you have a board that can have about a 900/900 meg bandwidth board!

[intense]

Originally posted by YeOldeStonecat


I have the MSI nForce board...I guess I can D/L and install SiSandra, I just hate it, and usually keep installed programs to a minimum so I don't accumulate extra garbage files.

gamepc.com finally got the Asus a7n in stock, I may try to sell my MSI board and pickup the Asus.

Will be away all this weekend, but next week will probably download the new MSI BIOS which allow more overclocking features.

Only complaints I have on this new system....which I hope to find an answer for, are:
1)I have the Creative FPS2000 digital Cambridge set, which had the digital feed custom for their SB Live cards. The built in nForce audio has SPDIF connector on the MSI....which I cannot use until I find some adapter.
2)I chose the Dragon Orb 3....which is great for keeping the temps down, but oh so loud. I read it was loud....but didn't think it was ///THIS/// loud. A penetrating whine you can hear throughout the house, even across to the TV room when one is watching TV!

Why would you want the asus over the msi? The msi uses a different audio than the asus and that is the only differece that I could see.

intense

[RoundEye]

I can't tell you what board to get, but I wouldn't get the KR7 for it's raid performancehere's a thread that is about 23 pages now. (that I've posted before). These guys have tried everything, and still are getting poor raid performance, only about 10-15% over a single drive.

I have the KG7 raid, and it's performing ok, better then the KR7 even though I'm useing ata-100 drives.

Seems like the VIA chipsets and have a high latency on the PCI bus, so any drive over ata-100 won't see much improvement anyway.

If you can wait about two weeks, I'm about to buy two of the special edition Western Digital drives with the 8 meg cache. In the hopes that the extra cache will help with the latency of the PCI bus. I'll post benchmarks when I get my computer back together.

:2cool:

[RoundEye]

More info on the VIA chipsets and Raid.

[terrancelam]

the peformance issue is only an issue if the raid controller is used for right, correct? It doesn't effect the regular IDE functionality?

BTW folks, right now, I am very much considering sticking with what I have, just because of the stuff I'm seeing now isn't the biggest improvement over from what I currently have.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by intense


Why would you want the asus over the msi? The msi uses a different audio than the asus and that is the only differece that I could see.

intense

I'm a long time Asus fan....have never been let down by them, every board I've had has been rock solid. Nothing wrong with the MSI so far, I was wary getting it at first, but according to many articles I've read, MSI recently has really driven themselves hard to improve their quality, and so far I'm happy with it. I just go through hardware like people go through the daily newspaper sometimes.