For the record: Sapphire ATI A3 Mobos...

[Motoman]

...suck. I just went through 4 of them...couldn't get any of them to stabilize. Thought I'd be building some decent general-use PCs, but it turns out that they are total crap.

Decided to use KM266 mobos. Built 1 so far - so good.

That is all. Carry on.

[LordOPain]

Originally posted by Motoman
...suck. I just went through 4 of them...couldn't get any of them to stabilize. Thought I'd be building some decent general-use PCs, but it turns out that they are total crap.

Decided to use KM266 mobos. Built 1 so far - so good.

That is all. Carry on.

were you trying to O.C.?

what model of mobo? and why the KM266 when theres many more upgradeable mobo's..(btw, the savage8 was supposed to be one of , if not the, best budget video at this time..(but there doesnt seem to be any stand-alone savage 8 cards..)

perhaps one of the N-force's with all of the onboard goodies?(not trying to be a fanboy, just curious)

i do feel that the nvidia onboard would be more compatible(avoiding end user difficulties) and you would have better forum input & driver support..

[Motoman]

I think the model is M275 - they only make one. And there aren't any OC options AFAIK. 3 of them were completely dead - no POST code beeps or video. Only 1 even POSTed, but no OS would install on it.

I went with the KM266 boards because they are cheap - under $50 a pop, from ASRock, and they come with on-board LAN and an ACR modem - you don't need anything else.

Granted, an Nforce board would be a lot better from a gamer's point of view, but these were meant to be just basic office-use machines, not gamers. That, and Nforce boards cost a lot more...and don't come with free modems.

[LordOPain]

Originally posted by Motoman
I think the model is M275 - they only make one. And there aren't any OC options AFAIK. 3 of them were completely dead - no POST code beeps or video. Only 1 even POSTed, but no OS would install on it.

I went with the KM266 boards because they are cheap - under $50 a pop, from ASRock, and they come with on-board LAN and an ACR modem - you don't need anything else.

Granted, an Nforce board would be a lot better from a gamer's point of view, but these were meant to be just basic office-use machines, not gamers. That, and Nforce boards cost a lot more...and don't come with free modems.

ahhh... understood..

[drs1771]

Originally posted by Motoman
...suck. I just went through 4 of them...couldn't get any of them to stabilize. Thought I'd be building some decent general-use PCs, but it turns out that they are total crap.

Decided to use KM266 mobos. Built 1 so far - so good.

That is all. Carry on.

Hmmm,

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I've stocked this board for a little over a year now, built many low end gaming systems with it, and tons of workstations with it. In fact, I have four in stock right now. I've had a reasonably good experience with this board. I'm not a huge fan of Acer's ALi chipset, but an onboard Radeon 7000 with up to 256megs of dedicated video rocks for a sub $50 board. Throw a gig of pc2100 in it, crank up your vid memory and I've been fairly impressed with it. However, given the choice, I would take a kt266a board any day over this board.