Alright, I’m looking to upgrade. I need a new athlon motherboard (kt333 or kt400).
I need it to have an ATA100+ RAID setup, with 4 total controllers (either 4 RAID controllers or 2 RAID and 2 non-RAID).
I need ps2 and serial support (Abit MAX is out). USB2 is a plus but not necesary. Firewire is irrelevant.
Onboard LAN is preferable but not required.
I’m geared towards performance and tweakability (lots of overclocking options, etc.) as well as stability. Not costing an arm and a leg is a plus, but the motherboard is one area I’m willing to pay a premium for if it’s worth it.
Also, support for upcoming (barton) athlon cores is a definite plus. I assume that means an ability to support a 166 mhz FSB, but I’m not sure - can anyone clarify that for me? I’m gonna grab a 2100+ now and wait till the price comes down in a while on 3 ghz + chips, then upgrade to that, so I want support for future cores without upgrading MBs.
I’m probably gonna get pc2700 RAM anyway, so I don’t really care between the kt333 and kt400 chipsets.
Right now the gigabyte ga-7vaxp looks appealing to me - good features, fairly cheap, and has good performance benchmarks. Although I’ve yet to research to many boards (asus looks like another top of the line brand I need to look into).
I was thinking about the kd7-raid because I was partial to abit, but they don’t seem to be the performance king like they used to.
Anyway, any advice on any of this would be appreciated.
Oh, also… it appears that the only real difference between kt333 and kt400 chipsets is the memory supported. Is there something else I’m not seeing? If so, is the kt400 clearly superior to the kt333?
I think the KT400 has 8X AGP and the kt333 (what I have) doesn’t. The nForce2 chipset is better than either of the VIA chipsets though (according to reviews I’ve read). Some sites for your viewing pleassure.
SocketA
Anandtech
Tom’s Hardware
The only contribution I can make to this is, don’t buy the absolute fastest chip out there. You always pay a hefty premium for that last fractional gig of clock speed, and two months later there’ll be a faster one on the market. Get something just a but slower than the fastest possible and save some bucks.
Oh, I know… I’m getting an athlon 2100+ now, which is only $100. That’s why I’m looking into being able to support future cores - way down the road when 3 ghz athlons are out there, I can upgrade to a 2800+ or something for cheap.
I like the ASUS A7V Raid variant. It’s Thoroughbred Ready.
check out www.tigerdirect.com , they have some nice Asus mobos.
dead0man is right about the Nforce2 boards, of course. But just in case you don’t go that way. . .
I have the Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Ultra motherboard in my home computer. I’ve been using it for about 3 months or so at this point and so far, I’ve been very pleased with it. I’ve had excellent stability and performance, and it also has a few nice extras. The monitoring software that comes with it integrates right into the Windows Administrative tools (at least in 2000 or XP) and lets you monitor fan speeds and temperatures. It also comes with ahandy sticker showing the board layout that you can put right on the inside of the side of your case. It’s the little things. . . 
Overall, the KT400 boards are faster than the KT333 boards were. However, there’s no point in using DDR400 RAM in them. The performance increase is miniscule (sometimes it actually causes a decrease in performance), because the RAM isn’t running synchronously with the FSB. If I were buying a new set up right now, I think I’d go with an NForce2 board, good quality DDR 333 RAM, and a midlevel Athlon XP processor (in the 1800 to 2100 range somewhere). Then upgrade the CPU later, just as you’ve already planned.