There are a lot of options, most of which depend on how much you want
built into the board, like sound and LAN, how many PCI and DIMM slots
you want, etc. It also comes down to chips. Pentium processors have
better integer units, so they score higher on game benchmarks. For real
world work, the Athlon processors have a better floating point unit, and
usually score higher in office benchmarks. Which pieces are you planning
to migrate to the new board, or are you building another system? Do
you overclock, or do you prefer stability?
I suggest you make a list of the options you want, and read the review on
the hardware sites, and see what fits your needs and budget. It took me a
few weeks pouring over reviews and the like before I settled on the ABIT
KT7A-RAID (two years ago), but I'm glad I spent the time. It's got a lot of
features including OC so tweaking was easy. It's been really solid. Back
in '97 I bought an ASUS board for the K6, and while it's not the fastest
horse in the stable, it is still chugging along for the kids.
What I would look for today are options that are the "new standards" like
serial ATA, AGP 8x, USB 2.0, Firewire, and gigabit LAN. Built-in sound
and LAN would save slots. I don't know that there is much to differentiate
sound cards anymore, now that Creative is more or less the only game in
town. LAN cards are a commodity, since there is really only a few chipsets
anyway. A really nice feature would be a BIOS that supports a serial console,
so three or four years down the road you can make a headless server out of it.
Personally, I'm holding out for a Hammer. By then my current box will
be between two and three years old.
My $0.02 worth.
Andy Johnson
On Wednesday 01 January 2003 09:26 am, pltaylor wrote:
> I currently have a BIOSTAR M7SXH motherboard w/sis645 chipset. Processor
> is a 1.6 P4 and 512 of PC2100 ddr.
> I do not like the sis chipsets and am looking for suggestions for a new
> motherboard.
> Your opinions and experiences are appreciated.
>
> HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
>
> PAUL
>
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> Nolug mailing list
> nolug@nolug.org
>
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Received on 01/01/03
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