In <[log in to unmask]>, on 07/16/99
at 09:41 PM, Uzi Paz <[log in to unmask]> said:
>But ok, than perhaps I shall go with a Celeron, any
>recommendations for a cheap motherboard which is still
>reasonable. Most of the stores here sell something by PC-Partners
>which is less than half price of the ASUS P2B (which I know that
>it is excellent), another seller told me about something called
>BX-Free-Teac-PII. In most of the reviews, I can see reviews of
>only the more expensive motherboards, while all those that I
>mentioned are much cheaper and still use the 440BX chipset.
>Anyone cqan recommend anything?
In this area (Silicon Valley), most of the popular boards go for
around $100 for a name brand (ASUS, ABIT, GIGABYTE, TYAN, FIC)
basic ATX. Generic boards from Mystry Motherboards are around $65.
They are contract manufactured for little(mostly) outfits that can
disappear overnight. I have one. No documentation, no support, no
bios upgrades, ... Not worth it! The key things to consider are
the number of PCI & ISA slots. If you are recycling old ISA cards,
then you might want a board with a 4 PCI/ 3 ISA mix. If you are
building a new system, go for a 5/2 or 5/1 (6/1 ?). ISA boards are
always going to be a hassle, so it's better to get rid of them.
Remember that the MB will have all the basic I/O and storage
control built in, maybe even audio. I don't like onboard video
myself, but that just eats the AGP slot.
Memory slots are another issue. You can get 128 MB on one DIMM.
I'm not quite sure how it works out, but you apparently need 512
KB of level 2 cache for each 128 MB. Common boards come with
either 512 KB or 1MB, so at most you need two DIMM slots.
Performance will suffer (sometimes severly) if you put in too much
memory.
jan lambert
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