A7V8X-X - Is it any good?

[Paul]

Hi,

I'm planning to use the A7V8X-X board as the basis of new machine to
be used as a xmas present. As the subject title says though - is this
board regarded as good, bad or ugly?

I'm planning to use it with...

AMD Athlon XP2200 (retail) Processor
Crucial 512Mb DDR333 PC2700 Memory
Microsoft XP Home with service pack 1A (oem)
LG 52x32x52x CDRW
Panasonic floppy
Seagate Barracuda 80Gb 7200rpm HD
New case with 350watt PSU

And with either a...

Sapphire Radeon 9200 128Mb DDR TV-Out GFX (retail)

or...

Gainward Fx 5200 Powerpack Pro 660 8x AGP 128Mb DDR Video-out DVI
(retail)

I've also considered opting for the on-board GFX version of the same
motherboard again anyone know if it's any good?

The machine is not intended for games so the overall performance in
this respect is not really an issue. Some light gaming at most I would
have thought.

Any advice or opinions much appreciated.

 

[RonK]

I have recently built 2 systems using the A7V8X-X and it is a great board
especially for the price.
I used the Athlon XP 2500, Gigacube Radeon 9000 Pro 128 meg , Maxtor 40 gig
ATA/133 hard drive and PC-2700 Ram.
The machine run excellent and the video graphics are excellent and smooth.
I would recommend this motherboard.

 

[Paul]

Great to hear. I ordered all the bits earlier. I ended up opting for
the Nvidia GFX card - I hope it dos not cause me any grief!

The board does seem to be regarded quite well from what I've read - so
here's hoping to a smooth build.

Cheers.

 

[Mike Gorman]

I think you have a nice setup planned. Consider the Athlon 2500 Barton
instead of the 2200 (unless its' already ordered of course). I initially
went with the 2200 and the Geforce 5200 and found that I wanted a bit more
performance.

One other thing to consider is that the PC2700 memory is overkill for the
2200. You could get 768m-1gig of PC2100 memory for the $s, unless you are
keeping an eye toward upgrading at some point. Either way it's not like you
can go wrong with the faster memory.

Best of luck.

 

[RonK]

I agree with Mike - Go with the 2500 - Much faster !! and it only costs a
little bit more than the 2200.

 

[Ed T]

I picked up one of these boards to replace a dead SOYO Dragon MB.
It was completely painless. Everything has been running without problem
since the first bootup. The cost from zipzoomfly was $75 delivered to my
front door.
A great board for the price.

 

[BG250]

I bought 3 of them last Aug for new machines for our CAD dept. Only problem
I have had is that with Windows 2000, they will sometimes freeze at the
password screen when logging on to Windows. I updated the BIOS, have good
300watt PSUs, installed patches...
The mouse freezes too, but when I hit the power button, Windows displays a
shutting down dialog, so it is not really locked.
bg

 

[Paul]

I think you have a nice setup planned. Consider the Athlon 2500 Barton
instead of the 2200 (unless its' already ordered of course).

It is already ordered and like a number of other components the extra
cost of the 2500 Barton pushed it out the budget. Shame because I do
have a 2500 Barton in my A7N8X Deluxe based machine and it's very
nice.

I initially
went with the 2200 and the Geforce 5200 and found that I wanted a bit more
performance.

Thing is this machine I'm putting together is a xmas present for my
brother and he does not really use it for games, mainly just burning
CD's.

One other thing to consider is that the PC2700 memory is overkill for the
2200. You could get 768m-1gig of PC2100 memory for the $s, unless you are
keeping an eye toward upgrading at some point. Either way it's not like you
can go wrong with the faster memory.

I never really thought or realised the memory was faster than I
possibly needed to buy - doh. Still as you say no harm done and it may
be worthwhile should a future upgrade be in order. ;-)