Top performance at a great price
Written: Feb 26 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Low price, great performance
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: The only thing cheap about this board is the price.
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| artrag's Full Review: ASUS NVIDIA nForce Chipset A7N266-VM (A7N266-VM W/... |
My son recently became a videographer, but the demands of video editing proved too much for his old computer. I had the choice of listening to him endlessly complain about how inadequate his system was, let him use mine, or get him something new. Since I had just upgraded my system to the latest and it was running perfectly, I decided to see what was available for not much money.
I have always used Intel processors for myself, but decided that I was willing to experiment with someone else's computer(I was paying for it, after all). I ended up choosing the Asus board, a retail version Athon XP 1700 processor with fan, and 512 Mb of DDR memory. With a new case, the total charge was $332. I reused the hard drive, cd rom, and floppy disk from the old computer, and used the old operating system, windows 2000.
The Asus board includes an integrated video adapter, network adaptor, and sound card, so there was no cost for these items. I was not sure well the built in video card would work since it does not have any memory of its own, so I decided to get the extra motherboard RAM. I used an ATX case with 300 w power supply, but the Asus is a micro atx size so it could be installed in a smaller case.
I put the parts together and held my breath. To my amazement, the new system booted up flawlessly the first time and has been running fine ever since. I installed some software and tested it out and could see little difference between it and my high end system. I had to get a firewire card in order to load the video data, but my son couldn't be happier with the system. The video, sound, and networking seem to work great.
I would recommend this board to anyone who wants to upgrade to a modern system at a reasonable cost.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 73
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Epinions.com ID: artrag
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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