Need some mobo advice ( for both me and a friend) ASAP:)

TMOA

Ok heres the deal :
I am currently running the following:
AMD 1.8 Athlon (mild oc to 2.0 ghz)
PNY Ti 4200 (128 mb)
1 ghz DDR 2700
MSI KT4V-L mobo
WD Spec edition 80 gb HDD
40gb seagate backup/secondary drive
all this in a sonata case

Anywho heres the ?'s
Im building a new pc for my buddy, and he got the SOYO KT600 Dragon Ultra mb
now ive been having issues with my current mb and am thinking of possibly seeing if he would sell me his mb and we can get him something better (preferably with out sata since hes not really looking to use this rig for much other than gaming) while im a storage junkie and will be going sata eventually .

Now would the dragon be a wise upgrade for me considering my current gear and what would be a good replacement for his Dragon for gaming wise *he is going AMD prolly in the 2500-2700 range*

Thanks and if this made no sence please let me know and ill try to clarify

TMOA

madmat

Depends on how much he wants, my advise would be for you to buy an NF7-S and let him keep the Soyo or if you just dig the Soyo then get him to buy the NF7-S but honestly considering the lackluster performance offered by the KT-600 chipset I'd say avoid it.

TMOA

wow fast responce mat
ok well thing is he really cant return it :/ (dumb newegg policy)
Anywho so the KT600 is no better than the KT400 i have in my MSI? (also how does the rest of the board compare?

madmat

I wouldn't really know, I had a KT-400 Dragon Ultra Platinum and it had a HighPoint IDE raid coltroller that rocked, hard. I liked mine but it was still slower than an Nforce 2 based board it just had a greater RAID option, that's why I bought it. I had 4-40Gig WD's that I wanted to RAID-0 and a Promise onboard chip will only do 2 drives.

Omega65

TMOA wrote:

Anywho heres the ?'s
Im building a new pc for my buddy, and he got the SOYO KT600 Dragon Ultra mb
now ive been having issues with my current mb and am thinking of possibly seeing if he would sell me his mb and we can get him something better (preferably with out sata since hes not really looking to use this rig for much other than gaming) while im a storage junkie and will be going sata eventually .

Now would the dragon be a wise upgrade for me considering my current gear and what would be a good replacement for his Dragon for gaming wise *he is going AMD prolly in the 2500-2700 range*

Thanks and if this made no sence please let me know and ill try to clarify

TMOA

It good and easy move. Upgrading from your KT400 mobo to the KT600 will give you access to FSB400 (200mhz) and all you have to do is swap the mobos. Upgrade to the latest VIA 4-in-1 beforehand though. WinXP will just detect the new devices and prompt for any drivers it doesn't already have.

Even though the KT600 do not have a locked PCI bus you can safely OC to about 215-220mhz. And while some NF2 mobo can OC up 250mhz many NF2 mobos crap out at this level also.


If your friend is installing WINXP Clean tell him to grab a NF2 mobo from Abit NF7-S v2 , Epox 8RDA3+ or 8RDA6+ or Asus.

NF2 based mobos perform 5-10% faster than KT600 mobos in Gaming benchmarks but they're about equal in Office type benchmarks.

TMOA

Cool thanks Omega,
i installed it today and all is well (altho now i have to re overclock my system :/)
anywho it went smoothly cept i found out my ram like specific slots...lol

Thanks for advice guys!

Omega65

TMOA wrote:

Cool thanks Omega,
i installed it today and all is well (altho now i have to re overclock my system :/)
anywho it went smoothly cept i found out my ram like specific slots...lol

Thanks for advice guys!

De Nada

edcentric

Does your buddy want to stay socket "A" or go to a '939' mobo?
Either way , look at the new Epox boards. I know, they have been problematic for some people. The new 8RDA6+Pro is a socket A, NForce Ultra board with some nice features. If the new stuff doesn't do anything for him, get an NF7-S.