Which Socket A mobo?

[nubbin]

OK, computer whizz kids, I want to (slightly) upgrade my motherboard and CPU - I intend to wait a year or so for PCI Express to take over, as I want the prices of complete PC's and components to come down, but meanwhile my current 1.7GHz Athlon and 133MHz FSb board won't handle my gaming needs. (I admit I probably need to upgrade the graphics card as well...).

So, I want to buy a Socket A board to couple with an Athlon XP 2600/2800 CPU, and I'd like SATA plugs for my Serial ATA HDD, but there are so many boards out there, that I don't have the background knowledge to be able to make a good choice. I want to spend about £60-70 on the board, and similar for the chip. So, over to you for ideas on which board to go for!

[gopher]

if you just looking for an interim mb that will take a 2600 then take a look at the asus a7v600, nice board, had done me fine for the last 6 months and has quite a few features and at nothing like the £60-70 you were thinking.

www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=3207617836&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=58200

Cheers

Paul

[adam1330]

I've been running an Asus A7N8X for a while now, and can't fault it:10th one down

[HarryW]

adam1330 said:

I've been running an Asus A7N8X for a while now, and can't fault it:10th one down

Ditto except the deluxe version, which might be one and the same .

Harry

Edited to add a link to 'novatech' who are local to me so I use them all the time, but still very competetive see here www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a557x1y0z1p0s0n0m0

>> Edited by HarryW on Monday 22 November 23:43

[arcturus]

I'll second the A7V600

[nubbin]

Thanks everyone - remarkably, my stumbling blindly around various websites has thrown up the Asus A7N8X as the board of choice - what a clever lot you are!

[chris watton]

The best (I have put it in 4 PCs I have built) is the Asus A7N8X Delux mobo, it has everything you could want, and overclocking an Athlon XP 2800+ to 3200+ speeds is a doddle!
(not sure of the availability now though)

Chris

[dern]

I bought a (deep breath) "Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2 nForce 2 8xAGP Ultra400 400 FSB DDR400 IEEE 1394 Retail Box" 3 months ago from ebuyer for 65 quid because it has 4 IDE sockets as well as 2 SATA sockets so I could continue to use my IDE disks and I could upgrade over time. The rest of the specs are pretty good too incl on board sound/LAN/firewire and nforce 2 chipset. The packaging is superb too.

Mark

[pdV6]

dern said:

The packaging is superb too.

[Airplane style]
Nice box!
[/Airplane]

[MickC]

Another vote for the A7N8X Deluxe - have been running it with a variety of processors, memory, disks etc for more than a year with no probs.

[nubbin]

The deed is done - I've gone for the ASUS board, and picked up an Athlon XP 2600 cpu. Next on the agenda is trying to overclock my graphics card - the ATi radeon 9600XT has a driver that allows automatic overclocking by the software - apparently not as good as manual overclocking, but I'm definitely not going there!

Chris, how easy is it to overclock the Athlon?

[icamm]

Be aware that the A7N8X, in all forms, can be fussy about memory. I have had no problems with cheap stuff in mine but I have read about plenty of people who have.

[rsvmilly]

nubbin said:

The deed is done - I've gone for the ASUS board, and picked up an Athlon XP 2600 cpu. Next on the agenda is trying to overclock my graphics card - the ATi radeon 9600XT has a driver that allows automatic overclocking by the software - apparently not as good as manual overclocking, but I'm definitely not going there! Chris, how easy is it to overclock the Athlon?

You'll easy get 10-20% extra speed out of your 2600. Mine runs at 3200 speeds with 100% reliability.

[chris watton]

If you have a Barton cored Athlon (512kb of level 2 cache), it's very easy, crank up the multiplier by, say, 11-11.5x and the CPU frequency to 200MHz and your CPU should be flying!
The PC I made myself at work is a XP 2800+ Barton with 2x 512 MB of PC 3200 DDR RAM (Crucial, slow CAS, but very stable and solid)The CPU is cranked up to XP 3200+ speed, and so it has been for a year and a half now without problem.
My home one is even better, with an Intel CPU running at 4 GHz, a GB of CAS 2 Corsair RAM and a 9800 Pro 256 MB graphics card. This PC is a year old now, and never once had a problem, it does pay to build your own and cherry pick the best componants, the PC lasts longer (where work and especially games) are concerned

[nubbin]

Chaps, I'm having a bit of a problem. I have put the mobo and CPU together, and it powers up fine. However it will not boot into Windows - the first windows splash screen appears very briefly, then it goes into Asus bios screen - but when I downloaded the latest driver for the bios, it ran the upgrade, but still won't start Windows, the Windows failure screen comes on, asking if I want to boot normally/safe mode, but no matter which option choose it will not start Windows - it simply reboots over and over again. Any ideas?

I've checked all the cables etc. and they all seem to be connected correctly, and swapping my old HDD etc back to my old computer results in a normally working system again, so the HDD with Windows on is working. I expect it's a BIOS problem, but I have no idea how to solve it.

[HarryW]

Do you know what HDD number windoz is on (0 if you only have one) . If so, go to BIOS when you boot up, F8 or del during the intial boot will enable it. Then select the 1st boot device as the CD (need that for emergencies with back up CD ), then set the 2nd boot device as the HDD that contains windoz.
I'm sure someone with a little more technical and descriptive powers will put what I've just tried to say in a clearer way a bit later if it doesn't make sense .

Harry

[squirrelz]

This is a hard drive with Windows already on it from previous hardware?

The only way I reckon you'll get that working is to do a system recovery using the install CD. However, the best thing is to do a fresh install.

[chris watton]

It is VERY important to re format and re install Windows when you change something very major like a motherboard, otherwise, you'll be very lucky if you don't encounter problems.

[nubbin]

Thanks guys - I realised that it was Windows that was the problem - so i happily re-installed it last night - all went well until I heard a little "tick" noise, and the new computer died! The display went ff, the hard discs stopped, and all I was left with was the case lights and the fans going!

i spent all last night frantically trying to resurrect the thing - but I gave up, assuming the mobo has been fried by a short out somewhere. I put my HDDs back into my old computer only to find they too were seriously unwell - the boot drive will just about respond, but the computer flatly refuses to entertain my SATA drive - which of course is where i stored all my important stuff!!

To top it all, I did manage to get XP to reinstall but there 's boot remnants of XP Pro still on the disc, despite a full NTFS format of the C drive. So it asks me "XP Pro or home to boot from?" every time I start up.

AND... Now XP is up, I tried reinstalling Norton AV, and I've got a virus all over the place! Great - but is that the cause of the major damage?

NAV has detected the virus, but I had to come to work and leave it running until lunchtime when hopefully I can erase the virus and see how it performs then.

What a bloody nightmare, and when I had almost sorted it all out!

[HarryW]

Intersting about the remnants of XP being on a drive even after formatting. I hit similar problem with one of my drives and can't use it as every time it is in the system it try's to use it and says to reinstall XP .
How did you overcome it, if you did, as I could do with reconnecting that drive for data storage.
Re the problems with virus, I think there is a fair chance they are the culprits for your problems IMHO .

Harry