im jsut wondernig which ones better?


Socket-A EPOX 8K7A+ AMD/VIA 686B Chipset ATA-100 RAID AC97 Sound DDR Support $285
Socket-A ASUS A7A266 ALI Magic1 Chipset ATA-100 DDR & SDR Support now with dipswitches $309

and will the epox one work with 266 MHZ fsb cpu? im pretty sure it would but just confirmiing.

and is the altexlansin 54.1 better then the creative fps 1500? or is it the other way round?

and whatts bett4er value:
$750 powercolour GF3
$890 winfast GF3
$919 ASUS GF3

and is it worth it to spend another $190 to get a $300 gametheater XP than a $90 sound blaster live or a soundblaster DE 5.1

get the ASUS A7M266 Motherboard, heaps better, or, if you dont want DDR, get the A7V133

Get the Asus G-Force 3, its better quality, and seems to have more performance in benchmarks.

Unless you are playing DVDs or somthing out of your computer, all you really need is the Sound blaster Live! Value


hope this helps

my 2c:
From what i've heard the ALI Magick1 chipset used on that ASUS board is krud(not as fast etc.). Go with the Epox board that uses the VIA chipset. (is it the KT266 chipset).
I dont know if there is much difference between the GF3 cards but I've read that the Powercolor GF2mx cards have some probs with fuzzy picture. If there are no problems then i'd say cheaper = better value. coz essentially they are all the same chips/memory just stuck 2 a board by a different company.

btw I wouldnt have a clue bout which sound card. i just use onboard sound. sounds crap, but i get by.

LoL

okay, epox boards are s***, they are unreliable and break EASY.
as for the fact that there rally is no differance between gf3's and cheaper is better, what a crock of s***!.
If you haoppened to pay attention to benchmarks etc, there is a differance to what you buy, cheaper, also means, s***ier

aight! so u basiclly get what u payed for unless your buying fmor sunlit or harvey norman(hardly normal)

Fair enough if you've got money to burn... fine get the expensive s***. But if u must get an ASUS board at least get one with either the VIA kt266 chipset or the AMD 761 chipset. From what I've read (from paying attention to benchmarks... ahem) ALIMagick1 = slow.

pretty much yeah


just get ASUS, you know it rocks

Get XP Theatre. it s***s over SBlive V

My Idea,

ASUS A7M266 MB, Stay away from Ali Chipset all together or you will run into problems with NV GPU VGA cards. A7M266 is DDR only however.

"just get ASUS, you know it rocks"
I agree compeltley.

With A7M266, if you run Tbird with 133 bus make sure your CPU fan puts enough pressure on the chip as the ASUS MBs are pressure sensitive.

I use SB Live, good sound but i am looking to upgrade to the XP for DVD and other features the XP has.

Im Kent Brokman, and thats my 2 cents worth

About the GF3, here is some benchmarking goodness comparing 7 GF3 cards from over at Tom's Hardware, which may prove to be interesting, with the Winfast card beating the Asus card on almost every test(and it's also cheaper). But they do recommend the ASUs card because it has more features. tv/out/in and some funky 3d shutter glasses (?).

plus the fact that ASUS has the best quality s***

aight! so u basiclly get what u payed for unless your buying fmor sunlit or harvey norman(hardly normal)

wat are you doing d00d?

upgrading, building a new computer , wat?

and how much do you have to spend?

Jeez, I hope youu can see this post, soz some of the ones I posted last night didn't show up.... ?¿

I'm upgrading to a Duron 850 or there abouts....I'm just hoping i can con dad to let me borrow some $$$ so i can afford the Asus A7V133. BTW, what should I get> The A7V133 or the A7V133-C?

Catchyas

A7V133-C is pretty good

thanx whomever gave that link..... v8200 is ok but leadtek is faster..... but the v8200 won overall cuz it comes with tv out and video in and comes with weir dgoggles

The XP Theatre is Hella worth the money dood. I own a SB live and have tried an XP theatre in the same system. It DOES actually improve gaming sounds etc. And yes it rawks for DVD's n movies etc. Highly Recommend it. Also

Friendly Technology
57-59 Montpelier Road Bowen Hills. Ph> 3252 2055
Have some pretty good prices.

renegade - im running an abit kt7a, its pretty sweet.

noone mentioned the speakers

get hte altec lansing ATP-3 or the ACS45.1

only 2 speakers an a sub but they s*** all over the creative cambridge stuff

the 54.1 are kinda dodgy...45.1 is the way to go

No way get the ACS54 or the newer ones, Which is 4 speakers and a mean sub. You can get the "newer ones" or the "updated" acs54. Which has a bass knob on the sub woofer itself. once again go to Friendly Technology

eds am gay

asus seems good, go for dat s***.. as for scard, get the most exp biggest hardest one you can. for speaks, spend 1000 dorrah on a stereo wit surround sound and hook that up if you want to play music/dvd's. for games, buy meanass vibrating sony headphones

im getting an i feel mouse...... becaise they virbrate and there small

Epox boards are not s***. I bought one for my first slot1 Athlon and it was every bit as good as the Abit or Asus boards at the time.

The 8K7A+ is a very well reviewed board. That said I'd probably wait a little longer before getting any DDR based boards. They all have issues from what I've read.

Oops, should have added this handy review of heapsa DDR mobos.

wtf????????????????

i have an asus A7M with a 1.33 gig athlon (10x133 multiplyer) with 256 DDR atm.

I have not had any stability problems. performance wise, well i get 3400 3d marks in 3d marks 2001 with the 1.33 gig athlon and got 2700 with my p3 750 with an asus p3v4x with 384 kingmax pc 133.

my computer uns 24/7 and has not locked up yet. i run win2k and it runs swoit.

i must say that ddr doesn't speed up your pc by much. reviews i have read say 5-10% but i am still to benchmark my video card in a 1.2 gig athlon with sd or a 1.33 with SD, i think either strex's or mirage's machien at qgl will do that :P


but that is my summary of the asus A7M it is a good board.

2 ide channels (4 devices) both are ATA100 and 2 ddr slots.

Interesting, I get 3461 out of my current setup 1.2 (slightly oc'd 1.215) and OCd vid card. You are running a GeForce2 aren't you?

Either DDR does bugger all or Win2k is a bottleneck...

isnt DDR only a 5% increase?

I have an ASUS A7A266 mobo and I am cool.

WTF? only a 5%-10% increse?
and ur bitching about that?
if quake 3 normally runs on 200 fps and u get ddr. it will increase to 210-220 FFS i would kill to have another 20 fps!

20fps wooo, not like you can tell after 125fps anyway.

And -Eds- : can you suck on Asus's cock anymore?

hrm..... now i know microsfots plan behind WINXP...

Pity you'd get nasty tearing at 200fps or you'd need to buy a $10000 monitor to display that at anything above 640x480.

He wouldn't get 200fps constant all the time.

Anyway sif you wouldnt just cap it at 120 and use 120hz refresh.

what does tearing look like?

'tis like flickery stuff in 3d graphics when often seen when turning corners in quake3 if ure refresh rate is not high enuff. The top half of the screen refreshes before the bottom half or vice versa and looks well... torn... Tho it happens quite quickly and looks flickery.

or if you wanna see if for youself, set ur refresh rate to 60hz (or lower if u can :) and then disable vertical sync in ur video properties....now play some quake or cs or wateva

creeping then stilll my computer is to dlew to get above 60 fps with out looking at a awall