Best Motherboard For Athlon Xp 2700+

I want to build a PC with an ATHLON XP 2700+,
What mb would you suggest?

 

first, do you already have the 2700+? if possible, get a 2800+, as it has a Barton core which performs better than the thouroughbred core of the 2700+.

2 motherboards come to mind when thinking of the 'best' for Athlon XP's:

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
and
Abit NF7-S2

those are at the top, and their stripped down counterparts (the A7N8X-X and the NF7) are also solid boards, just with less features.

 

Both are excellent boards and like Years To Come said the barton runs better and has a bigger L2 cache. The bartons have been known to run a little hotter so get a good heatsink fan combo or if you have the stock heatsink just get an 60mm to 80mm fan converter and get a good ball bearing fan like a thermaltake some have fan controller so if it is to loud you can turn it down.

 

Before you waste your money on an aftermarket heatsink/fan, see if the stock one will suit your needs. I have seen XP 2500 Bartons running at XP 3000 speeds with stock cooling and no problems. Not noisy either.

 

I plan to go with a stable system that could last 5 years and more.I do not want
to overclock and I am afraid of hot amds.Thats why the 2700.I do not have it yet.
We plan to use it for video capture and fast network transfers,and a some apps that use quite high resources.MP3 playback is also looked for.
Dont you think the asus is better,my AMD 2400+ is running good on ASUS A7V266-MX.

 

They are both solid boards if you have used asus before and are comfortable with them than that is what you should go with

 

noticed te 2 boards have nforce2 chipsets.Everybody agrees it is better than VIA etc

 

yes nforce2 would be the way to go

 

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe:What Graphics Card do I get with it.
What do I not get with the striped down version.
Will this mb support Athlon 2800+ barton core if necessary.
How much does it cost?

 

the temp isnt much different from Thouroughbred to Barton--thought it might be noticeable when overclocking. Running stock, you're better off with a barton.

follow the link for the cost... more or less $100.

it will support both Thouroughbred and Barton cores (2700+ and 2800+) without a problem.

the stripped down version (A7N8X-X) has no SATA controller, no RAID controller, less USB headers, less firewire headers (maybe even none) and i think it only has 1 ethernet adapter--the Deluxe has 2.

as far as graphics card, that depends on your price range. it is an AGP8x board. the best price/performance card available right now is a GeForce 6600GT, costing ~$170

 

InYearsToComeo you think i would get better performence with the RAID,SATA controllers.What are their functions anyway?

 

SATA lets you use Serial ATA hard drives, as opposed to standard Parallel ATA (PATA).

instead of using ribbon cables, it connects using a much thinner SATA cable. the ATA bus is ATA150 compared to standard PATA's ATA100 or ATA133, meaning faster transfer rates. nice to have, not terribly necessary--and you need new hard drives in order to use it. (it still suports PATA though)

RAID is combining 2 or more hard drives in either a Striped or Mirrored Array (raid 0 and raid 1). Striping (0) makes an array across 2 or more hard drives and reads/writes to them both at once, thoretically doubling read/write speed.--however it puts great stress on the hard drives and they are more prone to failure, and if one drive dies, all data is lost.

Raid 1 (mirroring) maintains a mirror image of a hard drive on a 2nd hard drive, and it used for data security.

 

InYearsToCome:Thanx for that.

What about this?

MSI K7N2GM2-LSR
Socket A Micro ATX Motherboard / Audio / AGP 8X / 10/100Mbps Ethernet LAN / USB 2.0 / Serial ATA / CNR

$64.99

Does this look better than the ASUS and ABIT?

 

MSI makes good motherboards as well--some people place them up with Asus and Abit and the other quality name brands.

I currently have an MSI (for my Athlon64) and while I like it, I still prefer Asus... but thats just a personal opinion.

the MSI you mentioned is good, but it has the chipset thats a little lower (Nforce2 IGP) than the Asus and Abit i showed above (Nforce2 Ultra 400).

performance shouldnt be incredibly different, but for a more equal comparison, try the MSI K7N2-Delta2 series

the -LSR has 10/100 LAN and no firewire

and the platinum has slighlty better on baord audio, gigabit ethernet (10/100/1000) and Firewire headers.

the LSR has a good price for its features in my opinion.

 

Does the nforce2 mobs have integrated graphics?Is it not good?

 

certian versions of the nforce2 boards will have onboard graphics. when they do, its the equivalent of a Geforce 4 MX 400-- a card that was $50 when it was brand new 4 years ago. not something you want to use if you like to play nice games.

 

I agree with most of what InYearsToCome has said. However, it seems you aren't looking for a gaming computer, so the onboard video for any of the nForce2 motherboards will be identical, and it should be enough to suit your needs. (As long as you don't plan on doing any gaming)

I have the MSI K7N2 Delta-L Motherboard and I like it a lot. It's a year old and I've not had any problems with it. It still runs great. Asus and Abit are also great choices.

Here are a few brands to stay away from. (FAR AWAY):
PCChips
ECS
Biostar (not terribly bad, but you can get an Asus, Abit, MSI, or Gigabyte board for the same price)

 

PCChips bad, very very bad...


Once upon a time I built three computers for a client using PCChips boards (those who are shaking their heads in dissapproval cuz they knew better please forgive me). After many, many nightmarish attempts to figure out why the drives would dissappear at random , why after two weeks they all decided to shut down at random , why sometimes they wouldn't shut off at all without flipping the switch on the power supply , or just freeze up , I replaced them with MSI boards and haven't had a problem one with them since..

 

I need Graphics for PRO-E(CAD) and some average 3D GAMES like SPIDERMAN,Unreal Tournament.

I can do all that with my Asus A7V266-MX with integrated VIA Unichrome.It works fine..Halo fails.Contract Jack fails.Hit man 2 Fails.Hobbit Fails.No 64 mb games.But thats Ok.

The Geforce 4 MX 400,will it be able to give similiar performence.
Or should I go for the Abit VA-20 with VIA KM400A,integrated Unichrome graphics?

 

the nvidia nforce2 IGP (integrated graphics) should be better than the VIA graphics-- we dont see VIA with video cards out there all the time now do we?

here are some options if you've actually decided on this:

Asus A7N8X-VM/400

Abit NF7-M <thats kind of expensive, you can get it here also--but i'm not sure about this seller's reputation http://www.dumpinggoods.com/dumpinggoods/itemdesc.asp?CartId=9075490NXYEI37-ACCWARE-9&ic=MB-ABT-0062