AMD Barton MB

[pgx]

Looking for a fairly modern - USB 2, FireWire, SATA - mb. Price IS an
object, as is stability.

Planning on XP-2500+

What do you suggest?

Phil

 

[HM]

I have recently built a PC using the Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 motherboard with
an Athlon XP2800+ overclocked to 3200+ with DDR 400 memory in Dual Channell
mode, and over the
3 or 4 weeks I've had it running it's been completely stable.

My HDD is a Maxtor 80 Gb SATA drive and I am about to order a second 160 Gb
Maxtor SATA drive
for film editing.

PS. If you go for SATA remember XP won't recognise it during the
installation process. The trick is to
format it in advance (e.g. with Maxblast2 if it's a Maxtor downloadable from
the Maxtor Web Site) and
intercept the XP installation (F6 during initial part of install) in order
to force XP to make use of the drivers.
In the case of the Gigabyte, the drivers from Silicon Image are on it's
installation disk. Some other boards
use 'Promise' SATA drivers.

Not the cheapest of boards, but reasonably priced, excellent documentation
and accessories and very stable.
Note though that some people don't lik eit because it's not the most
versatile or convenient board for
overclocking. Multiplier and FSB speed are set by jumpers, not in the
BIOS.I've had no problem reducing
the multiplier to 11* and increasing the FSB speed to 400 MHz (i.e. 200 * 2)
though.

Good luck.

Harry

 

[ray hartman]

Looking for a fairly modern - USB 2, FireWire, SATA - mb. Price IS an
object, as is stability.

Planning on XP-2500+

What do you suggest?

Phil

PGX:

Are you really getting "value" for firewire & SATA ? If cost+stability
IS
an object, then a more "experienced" mobo makes sence. That board will
likely have neither of the above frills.

 

[Ric H]

Looking for a fairly modern - USB 2, FireWire, SATA - mb. Price IS an
object, as is stability.

Planning on XP-2500+

What do you suggest?

Phil

nforce 2 all the way: brand doesn/t matter too much but i';d get asus, msi
and abit in that order....

ric h

 

[Peter Harrington]

I would suggest the Epox 8RDA3+. Doesn't have a fire wire, but is a stable
board for OC Barton 2500+ and has everything else. It does have active
cooling of the North Bridge, which is helpful if you want to go faster than
2.2 GHz.

I am running mine at 2.333 GHz, cool and stable.

Epox has a nicely automated BIOS update utility and there is a freeware
program called 8RDACore, where you can adjust CMOS settings directly from
windoze. In addition, you can configure the system to vary the settings
based on the CPU load or the temperature, which I find to be pretty useful.

Pete

 

[Andy H]

I have MSI KT6 Delta-FISR with Firewire SATA, USB 2 running fine. This was
cheaper than the Asus a7b8x deluxe I was also looking at. But isn't much
cheaper now.