I need to replace my Athlon 1.1 GHz/Asus A7V combination, which is a complete disaster. Could anyone recommend a reputedly stable mobo/CPU combination that would work with an Audigy and a GeForce 3, as well as my PC133 RAM? I'd like to keep as much of the current system as possible, meaning everything but the motherboard and processor. I understand there's a problem with the Audigy/VIA chipset combination.

Thanks in advance.

You have the Asus A7V which is the original VIA KT133 chipset, correct?

I can recommend the Asus A7V133 which is KT133A based. It's what I use, and I really haven't had any problems. Believe it or not there is a HUGE difference in stability between the original KT133 and the updated KT133A.

A friend of mine recently made this exact same "sidegrade" with the ABIT KT133 board.. he had problem after problem (lockups, crashes, data errors-- you name it), with the last straw being failure to install Windows XP due to intermittent drive data corruption. He upgraded to the Asus KT133A board on my recommendation, and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

It's almost amusing how VIA repeated this process, almost verbatim, with the KT266 and KT266A chipsets. Let history be our guide: *never* buy the first version of any VIA chipset. Sheesh!

Anyway, with this approach, the only thing you need to buy is the motherboard.

Oh. Also. I haven't had any major issues with my SB Live! on this board, though I did experience some bizarre, rather serious problems when I moved the card into a different slot. I put the card back into the slot it was originally in, and the problem went away. I am ambivalent about creative's sound cards for this and other reasons, so if you can come up with a viable alternative, go for it.

I'd have to totally agree with Jeff here. I built three almost idenitcal machine. Two with the A7V, and the third with the A7V133.

The two with the A7V seems prone to crashes. At first I thought it was a heat problem. I made sure it was running cool, and they still have problems.

The A7V133 system runs as smooth as silk. It rarely freezes, reboots, crashes, etc. I think it froze on me 4 times since I built it 3 months ago.

Thanks, that's helpful. I'd prefer to avoid the VIA chipset altogether, though, since I don't have an alternative sound card to the Audigy unless I want to get a separate computer with a professional sound card and have it as a dedicated sequencer running Cakewalk. I was considering an AMD761-based m/b like the Asus A7M266. I can get that and a 1.4 GHz Athlon for $250 or so. Since I got the A7V m/b for free and the 1.1 Athlon was dirt-cheap, I don't mind just replacing both.

If you want to go DDR, there is absolutely no question that the AMD761 is the "safest" route. I think you still get the VIA southbridge with the AMD 761 boards, though.

Go with the Athlon XP if you're getting a new one. That hardware prefetch + SSE + lower heat makes it a no-brainer over the old models.

However. I'm not sure buying a non-VIA chipset will guarantee no conflicts with the SB card. If I were you I'd just stick with my existing items and save the cash for a major upgrade down the road sometime. There are plenty of people with KT133A boards getting Audigies and Lives to work just fine.

Also I thought you were supposed to be busy doing your rotations? ;)

ECS K7S5A - SiS 735 chipset (no VIA), onboard LAN, onboard AC '97 sound, 2 DIMM / 2 SIMM

Some believe that they have problems; there are two well known - a bug which corrupts floppy data under win2k (a bios patch has been released for this, is not a problem under other os's), and the header for the hard drive light is 2 pin instead of 3 like every other case ever made.

There is some speculation at Overclocker's workbench that some of the motherboards have a technical error in their resister type used which causes some data errors writing to memory, but this seems to be only with a few mbs.

Just getting all the info out.
Cost about 65 w/ shipping $ ^^

Ive had it for a month no problems
duron 950 @100/133 (pc2100 ram)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=22&manufactory=1414

Yeah, the Elitegroup K7S5A and your choice of Athlon would be a good way to go. It'll work with PC133 RAM too, and you can migrate to DDR later if you want. The money you save on the mobo you can use to buy a faster CPU. The XPs are very nice. I've bought a couple K7S5A/CPU combos from tufshop.com recently and am happy with the service. The price was excellent.

Brad Grenz

I'll have an EPoX 8KHA+ by Friday. It's their VIA KT266A based board that's gotten the thumbs up at Anand. If you're going for a complete board/chip replacement, I really think some sort of KT266A with an Athlon XP of some kind is a better choice, Bruce. I haven't seen the problems with the Creative cards and these boards like the ones you're having.

I got an AthlonXP 1700+ for $179, boxed (includes fan and heatsink). Multiwave The motherboard cost me $108. I threw in WinXP Home and a case and floppy drive, then hit Crucial for 512MB of RAM. Total bill was $572. I've already got the RAM, the rest arrives by Friday.

--Dave

wumpus: i've heard conflicting reports on whether or not the hardware pre-fetch does jack shit for ya on an older chipset (ie, AMD 760/761, VIA KT133/133A).. maybe you/your TechReport buds can do some digging on this one?

bruce: i recently (last week) replaced an 'aging' Athlon Thunderbird 950 (Slot-A, no less), cruddy Gigabyte motherboard (AMD 750 chipset), and 256M of PC133 SDRAM with the following:

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ Retail Box...$197 (from newegg, price is cheaper now)
Shuttle AK31A Motherboard...$85 (also from newegg)
2x 256M Micron PC2100/CL2.5 DDR memory sticks...$30/ea (from crucial)

...so, everything for $342 total (free shipping, no taxes). not too damn bad!

i'm using an Asus V7700 (GeForce2/32M), Creative SBLive! (CT4620), Netgear 10/100 NIC (FA-311), and WinXP...and haven't had a single problem with any of it whatsoever. the only downtime has been, of course, during the (re)install of XP, the windows update stuff, some apps, and the nVidia 21.83 reference drivers.

- mike - a little bit of money that is going a long way -

oh, one other note about the motherboard... it's using the VIA KT266A chipset- that's one thing to watch out for if getting the shuttle board- they have a similar model (AK31) with the KT266, rather than the one i've got (AK31A, KT266A), and the price difference is like nil.

- mike - faster, better, cheaper -

You know, I was all poised to upgrade this year.. but with a 1.4ghz Athlon T-bird (overclocked from 1.0ghz), and a moderately overclocked GeForce 3 on a KT133A board-- what games would I really NEED to upgrade for? What games am I having legitimate performance issues with?

I mean, damn. I'm all for hardware, but I have a hard time justifying the $500 I'd spend based on performance. I was checking through some performance graphs and it looks like I'd gain a _maximum_ of 20% in real-world games with an XP/DDR combo. And that's at low resolutions. At high resolutions the video card is almost always the bottleneck, so it's no help at all there.

I know, this is all perfectly rational. But it's scary to hear it coming from myself, the conssumate upgrader.

i know i can't see myself needing to upgrade this machine any further than it is currently.

when i had the 950, i figured i'd stay away from overclocking...for 2 reasons: 1) it was pretty much fast enough; 2) the motherboard had no facilities to really overclock at all. oh well, no loss there.

the main reasons that i DID upgrade were: 1) i sold the previous stuff (athlon 950, motherboard, 256M ram) for $250, making the money i had to invest into some new gear very limited; 2) the machine/board/something was making it so that i was unable to do a 'shutdown' or 'restart' from win2000 or winXP- the machine would do the shutdown stuff, but it would hang afterwards requiring you shut the power off. how annoying.

all-in-all, i think that i got my money's worth out of what i had originally put into the 950, sold it for more than i probably should have (:grin:, but the guy knew what he was buying, so whatever), and was able to jump into some 'current' gear for an amazingly low overall cost.

- mike - and oh yeah, games now run marginally faster, too -

I am with Wumpus, my Athlon 1.4 Ghz (not o/c at all) on a KT7A and GeForce3 (mildly o/c) can handle anything thrown at it with ease. I might upgrade to get over 2 Ghz at some point but until something seriously pushes it (DOOM 3?) I think I am good to go.