Which Mobo? Abit or Asus?

[apu95]

hi. i wanna buy a new mobo and ive rounded it down to 2:

- the Abit KR7A-133RAID

- the Asus A7N266-E

ive been told that the best one for an athlon xp (1800+ by the way) is the Abit, but on one hand, the asus has integrated ethernet, 5.1 audio and nvidia video. and, on the other hand, the abit has raid support (which im not sure i need) and 6 pci slots (instead of 5).

any ideas?
Apu

 

[pc_tek]

I am a HUGE ASUS fan.. but..

integrated lan is not too bad...

integrated sound...eh eh eh eh...could possbly live with it or without it..ac97 sound..can live without

integrated video...NO WAY!


I have the asus a7v. Great board. But i am not to familiar with the N model you stated, but from the sounds of all the integrations you mentioned, it sounds like a lower end board.

Me personally, I would stay away from anything integrated. Especially video. Integrated video typically shares system memory. Yuck!

 

[xsivforce]

I have theAsus A7A266. I love it! But, Abit is just as good a bet. Either way, you won't be dissapointed.

 

[Taurus]

the asus A7N266-E is an nForce board with integrated everything. but the built-in geforce2 uses shared memory and is maybe as fast as an mx400 so you'll probably end up buying a video card for it anyway if you'll be doing a good amount of gaming.

also, kr7a is $20-$30 cheaper and would be better for overclocking. and who uses 4 or more pci slots? 5 or 6 probably doesn't matter.

the nForce is supposed to have some kind of superior memory architecture (TwinBank) but i think that's only if you have 2 or more DIMM's installed. haven't seen evidence of increased performance anywhere, though.

lemme know what you pick. 🙂

 

[albybum]

I have the abit KG7-Raid with the Athlon XP 1900+ and I absolutely love it. I have never used an Asus board, but the Abit's softbios is extremely easy to overclock and abit boards are cheaper than the asus in many places. Integrated features are nice if you are on a strict budget, but you can get an ethernet card and a soundcard cheap online. You can buy an Nvidia geforce 2mx for dirt cheap online to go with an Abit mobo, if you wanted the Nvidia chipset. I would say Abit.

Either way, you will be getting a good board.

 

[apu95]

well, ive made a choice and i thank all the people who replied

im going with the abit for the following reasons:
- ive read nothing but good stuff about abit, while with asus, ive read good and bad stuff
- the abit, while having nothing integrated, gives me a hell of a possibility to o/c
- since i already have a video card (radeon) and a NIC, why not put it to good use instead of replacing them with the onboard stuff?
- the abit is cheaper than the asus, and since im running on a budget, i want to save as much as i can while getting the best possible
- i havent bought the cpu, so i need the extra money (even though we can always ask old daddy to dish some dough...heh heh 😉 )

thanks, apu

 

[XPNuT66]

I am hearin awesome things about my Soltek SL-75DRV4
and my friend has a Soyo Dragon Plus and it sweet too.

XPNuT

My Motherboard total with shipping was 90$ at newegg.com

 

[xsivforce]

The Soyo Dragon will be my next board. Anyone want to trade for my A7A266? 😉

 

[Taurus]

ah, delightful choice, apu. hope i didn't come off as biased. 😉 as you can see, i'm an abit guy, myself.

somewhat off topic and directed to others; has soyo cleaned up their act in the past couple years? i just know they made less-than-stellar stuff in the past.