The problem is that the KT266A chipset-based boards are not out yet. They are slated for early November.

Looks like I'll be going with the Epox 8KHA+ KT266A. If I can get someone to ship it to my office instead of my credit card billing address, that is.

If I'm looking for the #1 performing board, I usually check out one of the tech sites. I frequent tomshardware and anandtech myself. I especially like anandtech's hot deal forum. Its the best.

Also, I will sometimes plug my chipset or board model number into google and see what kind of hits I get. If you see a lot of problems, then stay away.

Good luck with your board! I've never used an epox, but I've never heard anything bad about them.

Thanks David. That's what I did last night and today... most of the reviews I read were pretty glowing, so I think I'll like it.

Dan bought one not long ago and he says it boots into windows 2000 in 8 seconds. We'll see if I'm as lucky :)

I run an ABIT KT7-RAID, its pretty decent. I run a 1.2GHz Athlon, 768MB PC133 cas2, and I use a RAID stripe on 2 IBM 7200rpm drives.

Its pretty damned fast. I have no real reasoning yet to upgrade it. Its also using a Geforce2 GTS 32MB DDR and SB live, along with an intel nic.

I'll have to time it, after I format of course, I've been running this PC with the same OS, without problems, since January. Its a little cluttered with apps and games I don't need, but I can remedy that.

I'm sure you'll love the value of your athlon.

I agree about the value... I wound up getting the 1800+XP chip, the motherboard I mentioned earlier, and 512megs of DDR ram for $407.

Are you getting a decent video card as well? All that power is useless for gaming without a decent video card.

As for baords, I have had two chepo ECS boards now, one in my K6-2 that runs my linux server and one in my Athlon 1.2. Have not had any problems with either, except that the one in the Linux box does not support an AGP card over 16MB cuz it is older. But it was cheapo and that is what I care about.

I picked up a GeForce Ti200, which is what started this whole ordeal... it won't fit in my current case because it's a funky desktop box.

the 2 or the 3?

I ask, because I may be soon building another new machine and wanted to know how the 3 performs. Yes, I just built a new PC not 2 months ago, and I already want a faster one.

The Ti200 is a 64mb Geforce 3-based card, but it's a new value-line product that's not *quite* as fast a a regular geforce 3. It's close, though, and it's $150 less :)

On their page, they also mention a Ti200 based on the GeForce2 chip as well, that's why I was wondering. But the GeForce3 looks even better.

Aha, nevermind. i misread the captions on it. They just call it a Geforce2 Ti, not a Ti200. Roger that.