[aclug-L] Re: Choosing a new motherboard

[Carl D Cravens <raven@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Nate Bargmann wrote:

> I'd like to know what you decide to get and from where as I'd like
> to put together a workstation early next year.

I got a EPoX EP-MVP3C2 Super 7 AT board and AMD K6-2 400 from CyberTron
here in town.  Has the VIA MVP3 chipset (though I couldn't care less about
the AGP support, since it runs in text mode all the time).  Supports UDMA 
33/66 IDE.  Only has two ISA slots, four PCI slots, one AGP slot, and 3
168-pin DIMM slots.  $89. 

Overall price was comparable to the mail order I looked at... maybe a
little higher, but I always prefer to support the local guy.  Especially
if the local guy clearly wants my business... I felt very welcome at
CyberTron and was told that they would stock Linux-compatible equipment as
much as possible if folks would tell him what to stock.  Very friendly and
helpful.

The board isn't quite top-performance... it's replacing a 486/133 and is
pretty much already overkill for the job its doing.  If I wanted top
performance, I'd have gotten the EPoX ATX board that has 2M of CPU cache
instead of the 512K I got... but that was an extra thirty-three bucks I
didn't think I needed to spend.  (Plus buying an ATX case.)

CyberTron cut $22 off the price of 64M SDRAM stick I bought since I bought
a CPU, board and memory.  Price might have been a little high compared to
generic memory, but it was PC100 and a name-brand memory stick.  They were
out of stock on the 64M sticks... he gave me two 32M and told me to come
back Friday and exchange them for a 64M.  That way I could get up and
running right away but not take up an extra DIMM slot for future
expansion.  (That and two 32M sticks cost more than one 64M stick which
he'd already offered me a discount on.  But he didn't have to do that.)

I was happy with my experience at CyberTron and will shop there
again.  They carry primarily EPoX boards, though they also carry a few
ABIT, ASUS, etc... the EPoX seem lower-priced for comparable boards in
other brands.  He said they sell a lot of EPoX boards.  I've got a current
price list if anybody would like a quote. 

--
Carl D Cravens (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
I came. I saw. I stole your tagline.