Upgrading my Mobo

[Wee Davie]

Hey all,

It's been a long time since I used these forums, so I don't know if anyone can help me with this or not.

I'm looking to upgrade my mobo as it has reached its max CPU capacity. I was wondering if you guys can take a look at a couple of boards for me and tell me if you heard any good/bad/indifferent reports about them.

I'm only looking to upgrade the mainboard just now so I need it to work with the current parts of my system. My current system is:

Athlon K7-1400 MHz
Jetway 866AS-R
1280MB PC2100 DDR
Chaintech GeForce 3 Ti200 128MB DDR
Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM

The boards that I've been recommended are a Jetway Polaris KT400, Abit NF7-S and Abit KD7-Raid. Clicking the names of the boards will take you to the manufacturers pages for each of the boards. From there you will find spec pages.

Any comments and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

David

[Brett_Henderson]

One of those boards (KT7A) may not support DDR RAM at all, and none of them are 500mhz FSB...

Unless I had to replace a broken board RIGHT now, I'd wait till I could do it all (or at least board and CPU) with a 500mhz FSB and at least a 2.6gig CPU....

It's tough enough to stay current with technology, no sense in starting 2 steps back...

Just my opinion...

[Wee Davie]

Hey Brett,

One of the links I entered is wrong, its fixed now though. It should have been the Abit KD7 as opposed to KT7

They all support DDR, it was the first thing I checked. As for the FSB being at 500MHz, I haven't seen any AMD processors that need that level.

The reason that I want to just upgrade the mobo is that I only built the comp 6-8 months ago.

Also, contry to popular belief, being unemployed has its draw-backs, a major one being lack of income, thus I'm upgrading bit by bit.

As for taking two steps back, I'm not trying to build a Cray

[Brett_Henderson]

Oh my,,,

[Wee Davie]

Hey,

See,,  it only took 6 months and you've outgrown the hardware...

Not strictly my fault, the supplier didn't have the newest make of the board so I lost out big time when it came to upgrade aand I found that I would only take a 1.4.

I don't think any board (FSB speed aside) that will support your K7

I didn't know the K7 part of the name affected the type of board it can be put in. On the list I've got here there is a quite new chip you might recognise with K7 in its name, this is straight off the sheet, as is:

AMD K7 3000 MHz*333* XP BARTON

surely you don't want to buy a board every 6 months...

Your damn right mate

Cheers

David

P.S.

Oh my,,,  ;D

Sorry if I was a bit snappy,I'm not trying to start a riot, this time, it was about 1:30am where I am when I wrote it.  ;)

[Brett_Henderson]

Ok,,,  all   K's    XP's   P's  and all the other CPU  ABC's aside:

Let's (safely) assume that all boards have a range of CPU support. Wouldn't you want the bottom of the range on your new board to be the next CPU you buy ? Rather than your current 1400 K-7 ?

It's always been my experience that a board is good for at least 1 (sometimes 2) CPU upgrades...not vice-versa..  oh never mind,, I'll really be quite now  ;)

[Wee Davie]

Hey Brett,

Let's (safely) assume that all boards have a range of CPU support. Wouldn't you want the bottom of the range on your new board to be the next CPU you buy ? Rather than your current 1400 K-7 ?

Simple answer, of course I would, but I'm skint and cannot afford both cpu and mobo to be upgraded just now.

[quote]It's always been my experience that a board is good for at least 1 (sometimes 2) CPU upgrades...not vice-versa..