I would agree with you on the assessment of the motherboard situation being
in flux.  There doesn't seem to be a board that stands out as a best choice
at the moment, if you are looking for features such as support for 133mhz
bus or ATA-66.  This is in contrast to how BX based motherboards appear to
be the clear choice for a 100mhz bus (pentium) system.  I have been
contemplating an upgrade, but it doesn't seem to be the time to do this, if
you can sit tight and wait a bit longer.  In particular, I think that we
should be seeing some motheboards designed to work with DDR SDRAM to fill
the gap left by the unsuccessful RAMBUS toting motherboards, but these are
not in production yet.

You mentioned the i840 chipset.  This is already available.  It is
essentially an i820 with some added features (wider memory bus I believe)
that intel had targeted for the server market.  I think there is something
like an i815 in the works that is suppose to provide a better SDRAM based
solution than the i820 does with the SDRAM memory translator.

If I needed to build a system today, I would look at the VIA 133 Apollo
based motherboards.  I don't think that it matters much whether you get the
133A, which allows use of the 4X AGP, or the plain 133 VIA chipset, since
the faster AGP just doesn't seem to be make any real world difference at
this point.  For what it is worth, Micron has been using the Tyan VIA based
board in their 133mhz systems.

I would try not to spend too much money on a motherboard at this point,
since it does look like we will have something more attractive sometime in
the next few months.  This cost factor would steer me away from an Athlon
based system, as these motherboards tend to be more exspensive.  The flux
you mentioned is evident with the motherboards for the Athlon at the moment,
too, since the new VIA KX133 chipset for the Athlon is just being
introduced.

The same "not quite ready for prime time" arguments could be applied to the
current crop of processors.  The Athlon needs faster memory cache, which I
assume will be taken care of before too much longer.  The pentium III is
slated for a new stepping that is to be released this Spring, hopefully
correcting a rather long list of bugs.  (Perhaps you've noticed the scarcity
of PIII coppermines, especially in the popular 500e and 550e flavors, which
makes me think that intel is having trouble getting good yields in their
production of these chips.)  But this is another thread.

John Sproule
----- Original Message -----
From: Conor McNessa <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2000 3:59 AM
Subject: Motherboards of different styles


> I'm still looking for a motherboard, and the industry seems to be in flux.
>

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