TR Forums

Hey all addicts

I've got ahold of a pair of Athlon XP's and as far as i can tell after searching on google, it is indeed possible to make a dual-setup with those XP mofo's. I saw several pages that showed setup's with Tyan's S2460 (Tiger MP) mobo, but since this board only has support for registered PC2100 ram (expensive) i want to hear you guys if there's any alternatives ?

I've thought about ASUS A7M266-D AMD762 but as with the Tyan board there's no info on the possibility of dual XP's on Asus homepage (besides single XP setup)..

Please help me out deciding which motherboard to buy

Thanks in advance

Brgds

[bmc]

registered ram is NOT much more expensive unless you're living somewhere slightly more remote than Afganistan. You're buying a premium piece of hardware and you can't slap in any DIMM you've scored off the streets of Taiwan and expect it to work right.

The S2460 is a good board, not great. I would not hestitate to recommend it based on my experiences. You will have to use registered DDR.

The Asus board seems okay, but has very limited expansion possibilities unless you have a lot of 64 bit 66 MHz PCI cards you can use (I'm betting you don't!). It will work with XP CPUs despite early reports. It will take unregistered ram, but then you're limited to the first 2 slots.

uhm .. heh .. well i might go for Asus though, seems those 64bit PCI slots are backwards compatible ..

Small snip from their webpage: "Two PCI 66-MHz 64-bit slots deliver up to four times more bandwidth than conventional 32-bit PCI slots, and are optimized for server or workstation functions. 64-bit PCI slots are backwards compatible and also support 32-bit PCI cards or peripherals. ".

512mb Registered PC2100 DDR RAM costs around 250usd here in DK compared to 150usd for non-registered, and sad4y i gotta try stay below 400-450usd for RAM & mobo if i want something desent for dinner during february Dunno if RAM is more expensive here in DK compared to other countries though ..

I need a raise

Comments/suggestions still very welcome

TIA

bmc

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12845

The backwards compatability of the 64 bit slots on the a7m266-d is not as good as you would want it to be. It is only physically backwards with 3.3v cards, and people have had problems even getting those to work. Also, there are a lot of 5v only cards that are keyed for 3.3v too by their manufacturers for some unknown reason. If you plan on using the 64/66 slots on the a7m266d for 32-bit pci cards, be aware of these issues and do a lot of research. Also, if you put in a 33mhz card and get it to work, you will cut the bandwidth between the north and south bridges in half, to what it is on the tiger MP.

Given that the S2460 is the cheapest of the bunch ($190 online), and is no slouch (unless you're craving 66 MHz PCI with 5+ drive RAID arrays hanging off it), I'd say that's the best choice.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Prototyped on 2002-01-14 20:33 ]</font>