On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:21:08 -0700, Martin Rosenfeld wrote:

>I need a new MB. I have a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Ultra with an AMD Athlon XP 
>2200+ and 2 GB of RAM. I like this setup. It is fast enough for me. I 
>run eCS and rarely Win2K. I like the IDE, RAID and SATA controllers and 
>real Serial and Parallel ports with lots of USB too. But it won't boot 
>until it has warmed up for about 5 minutes because one or more drives 
>fail to get recognized, and occasionally it hangs until I jiggle the 
>drive cables. I need a new MB.
>
>Please, someone, express an opinion or give some advice. I could buy a 
>replacement MB that would support my CPU and memory, or I could buy 
>something more modern with a new CPU and memory. Would it be foolish not 
>to do the full upgrade? Can anyone suggest MBs or Chip Sets to avoid for 
>eCS?

What speed of RAM is your 2GB, and how is it configured... 4x512, or
2x1024?  You'll need to get a board with enough DIMM slots for it, if
it's usable.  That Gigabyte board supports DDR400 in only two slots, so
I'll assume you have 2x1024.

Socket A is dead, and even the newer Socket754 is dead-end... all
current and future development on AMD is in Socket939...  which will
allow you to upgrade to the new dual-core Athlon64's in the future.

The Tyan S2865 series features Broadcom LAN support that works with
eCS, and ATI RAGE XL video support you can upgrade later - but for most
people, it's more than enough, especially with eCS.  You won't be able
to use your existing AGP card in this motherboard, but for 2D work, the
RAGE XL should suffice.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8e.html

It's available with or without audio and firewire and has 4 PCI slots
for plugging in all your older cards, as required.

It's "latest and greatest", but if you buy into AGP or Socket A or
Socket 754, you're cutting off your upgrade options in the future.

Of course, that means you'll also be buying a new CPU - if you're happy
with your old one, there's a number of Socket A motherboards still
available... you might be best off seeing if you can find an identical
board, for greatest ease-of-implementation, since you're already set up
on one.  Tried eBay if you can't find it locally?

Whatever you do - I'd recommend avoiding Intel architecture... it's a
non-starter these days.  It's "already obsolete", and the
price/performance ratio is poor... but I don't need to tell you this,
really - you're already an AMD owner. :-D

Toughest part with new architecture motherboards is making sure the
on-board stuff is supported - LAN, audio, SATA... and the video
chipsets are coming out faster than SciTech can keep up with them, so
you have to shop carefully.  You're already doing the right thing by
asking first - all depends on how much you want to upgrade, if any.


Hope this helps!

-Derek



Derek W. Keoughan,
Finnegan Software, Inc.,  Brampton, Ontario, Canada  http://www.finnsoft.com
416-410-4774 phone - 800-258-0033 toll free - 905-846-5516 fax

Consulting, Networking, Cabling, Internet, Hardware, Software, Tech Support
eComStation, OS/2 Warp/Server, WinXP/2000/NT/Me/9x, Linux
Customized PURRformance PC's & Servers, OnSite Services, Installations
and Upgrades

= Celebrating 10 years of "happily purring" computing - Founded
1995-02-02 =

FinnSoft "CyberCat" logo clothing and more -
http://www.cafepress.com/finnsoft





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