Hi Pete,
I'm considering building a Duron system within the next month. I really
like ASUS boards, but they don't make dual CPU boards. (At least I don't
think so.) I've built 2 Athlon systems already, both using ASUS boards
and they rock. One board, the K7V uses the KX-133 chipset & has a K7
Athlon in it. The other board, the A7V, uses the KT-133 chipset & has a
Thunderbird in it.
PC-133 memory is a nice addition but not needed. In order to experience
significant performance gain in these chipsets, PC-133 capable of CAS2
latency is needed. You can find this only in high-quality memory, but you
can still find this at less than 50 cents a MB. I am about to order 256MB
sticks from from a Florida website. Wanna split the s&h charges?
There are newer mobos coming out for the Athlon with ATA-100 built-in.
The A7V mentioned above has a Promise ATA-100 controller on-board in
addition to the regular ATA-33/66 main IDE bus, so I think it can support
8 drives altogether (altho I haven't tried it nor does the docs say
anything about that).
A couple notes I fuzzily remember is:
1. I don't think any boards beside some OEM boards support the newer
266MHz K7 front-side bus.
2. ASUS boards are one of the best manufacturers to overclock on, but it
depends on the particular board you get (whether you get some extra
jumpers). However, since I don't have money to burn, I haven't OC'd any
of mine.
This is my 2 cents with Athlon systems. Anyone else?
FL
On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> i'm considering building an athlon system. i've fallen completely behind on
> modern x86 technology.
>
> what manufacturers should i be looking at for high quality athlon motherboards?
> are there dual athlon mboards yet?
>
> i assume ECC133 ram is needed for an athlon?
>
> anything else i should consider?
>
> pete
