Pentium 4 & Abit Board Choice

[Steve]

Hi there,

I am going to build a new system using a Pentium 4 3.2GHz Prescott
Processor (Socket 478).

I am in the UK and have been looking at two "Abit" motherboard, which
I have seen in PC World.

1. AI7 - Guru at £69.71
2. AS8-V at £73.73

As you can see there is very little price difference and as far as I
can find out not much difference in spec (or is there ?).
Anyone any experience of these two motherboards and which is the best
?

They also had another Abit motherboard for around the £100 mark but I
didn't get the model number of that one but now I might just be able
to afford it if the two above aren't very good.

Any help would be appreciated.

Steve

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Steve,

This invites an essay, but it's getting late.

The AI7 board is for Socket 478:

http://www2.abit.com.tw/page/uk/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=AI7&fMTYPE=Socket 478

The AS8-V uses the same 865PE chipset, but it is for Socket T (LGA 775):

http://www2.abit.com.tw/page/uk/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=AS8-V&fMTYPE=LGA775

If LGA775 is an option for you, perhaps you should look at the newer
technology boards using the 915 or 925 chipsets, although the cost will be
higher, and you'd need a PCI-E graphics card and DDR2 memory rather than AGP
and DDR.

If you need to stick with Socket 478, the absolute best performance may be
had with boards based on the 875 chipset (IC7 family).

I have no personal experience with them (I'm an Asus loyalist), but I'd
expect that any of the boards above would be good.

Regards,

Bob Knowlden

Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.