Stable Motherboard...Help me pick one!!!!

B

Boseafus

New member
I have an AMD 1700 XP that I would like to build a DAW around. I have an ECS K7S5A Mobo but I need something more stable (I.E. the K7s5a has been a bit difficult to get up an running with my WD80 gig HD). I just would like to know from you all what is a good standard board out there that will be easy to install and get up an running. I am a novice at building but would like to save on costs by building my own.

Also...do I need to run a graphics card if I'm Only using this as daw?
BTW...I am running a Delta 66 soundcard

Thanks

Nate
 
I aways recommend the Gigabyte ga-dx7 motherboard...

for video, if this is a DAW, I say go simple with an agp card and you should be golden...

when dealing with PC's...drivers means stability.
 
I always recommend the asus a7n266-c mobo (nforce chipset).

I run it with a Delta 66 under win2k with an XP1700+ and an Ati Radeon 7500 video card (which supports dual monitors). Very stable, doesn't need any 4-in-1 updates every week :)
 
Thanks so much. Any others?

I will probably stop by tomorrow and pick one of em up and build it this weekend. Hope I don't screw it up! Got to find a good site on how to build a PC.

Nate
 
Either ASUS or A-Bit without RAID. Avoid the VIA chipsets. The less extra crap on the MB the better. No o/b LAN (get a seperate card that you can move around if IRQ's are a problem), no o/b sound (since you won't need it anyway), ATA-100/133 (a must),
and most of all, read the reviews.

http://motherboards.org/

http://www.hardocp.com/

http://www.viahardware.com/

These should get you started. After my AMD/VIA fiasco I moved onto P4's but that's a whole different topic. Hope this helps.
 
To clear up some bad advice here... do NOT avoid the Via kt266a chipset, as it pretty much smokes everything else right now. Do pass on the AMD chipset though, since it is now old news. The Nvidia chipset doesny quite stand up to the VIA, either, in most cases and is more expensive. Check into the motherboard roundup at anandtech.com for some comparisons.
I just finished building one with one of the highest recommended boards at almost every site I've been to, which is the Epox 8kha+, and it seems absolutely wonderful so far. It uses the Via kt266a and has very nice overclocking features too.
 
Thanks a ton for all your replies. I have done a ton of research over the past couple weeks and ended up building a P4 1.8 512Cache on a MSI 845G Max board (533 FSB). Works great. Recorded 12 tracks last night...loaded them with plugins and it worked fine.

BTW...I understand that a lot of people are having success with VIA chipsets but I know a number of folks who are not...including myself (hence why I was looking for a new board; I have a kt266a). My MIS VIA board is working great with the 4 in 1 drivers but only for gaming...not recording. I really needed to know of a surefire MOBO (or close to it) and I think I found one.

Found this VIA link interesting

http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/3683
 
533 fsb

I was just curious, i have been investigating upgrading
my system , and one of the things that i came across
was that to effectively utilize the 533 fsb you needed to
also upgrade to the rdram 1066 mem. ???

Thanks in advance
Makkon
 
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