On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Paul Rodríguez wrote:
> If it's not too much trouble, could you take a look at this motherboard and
> tell me what you think?
>
> http://store.yahoo.com/thechipmerchant/3485-1.html
OK, but I would suggest the A7V133 for a couple of reasons
1) ALiMAGiK chipset has not garnered a lot of praise (though neither has
VIA, but it has at least been around long enough to start maturing, better
BIOS, etc)
2) The A7V133 has a RAID0/ATA100 controller so you can hook up to 8 IDE
devices to the motherboard. By default the Promise controller on the A7V
is set to ATA100 support and this most likely what you want under Linux.
3) Cheaper
Compare back to back
http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/socketa/a7a266/spec.html
http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/socketa/a7v133/spec.html
People might argue that the A7A266 has slots for DDR RAM, but the
benchmarks so far do not indicate that having DDR RAM gives a significant
improvement in speed (yet). You can't use both DDR (PC2100) and PC133
simultaneously with the A7A266.
> The following is a similar one I found on www.linhardware.com , it's the A7M
> not the A7A above (not sure of the difference).
> http://lhd.zdnet.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?2676 I provide the link
> because it has some more spec info that might be useful.
http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/socketa/a7m266/spec.html
The A7M266 uses DDR RAM and has the VIA chipset. It supports up to 2GB of
RAM (the A7V supports 1.5GB, and the A7A 3GB, though I have never
personally heard of a 1GB stick of RAM, but maybe they exist).
All of these boards support 266/200Mhz FSB.
I have a 1.2GHz AMD running on the A7V133 and am very pleased with it, in
particularly the feature/price ratio. The extra ATA100 controller is
welcome when you have 2 CD-ROMS, a ZIP, and 3 IDE drives.
But, people may have good arguments why you should pay $15-$25 more for
the A7A266 (DDR RAM support maybe ...)
Albion
Albion E. Baucom
http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~baucom
