Thinking about a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP. Need help!

I currently own an Athlon-based Soyo board I'm happy with and in the past I've
been an A-bit fan (not in a while though) and have never owned an MSI board.

Based on the recent Tom's Hardware round-up I was thinking of getting and MSI
865PE. However, I've gotten concerned because of many posts in the MSI group
about instability issues. That led me to the Gigabyte GA-8KNXP. I'm looking for
rock solid stability and as far as features, as long as the board has plenty of
USB ports and a LAN input I'm pretty fine. Firewire, card readers, RAID arrays,
etc., are all pretty useless to me.

Am I likely to find this move to be very stable? I don't really care too much
about overclocking. I might push the system a tiny bit but not much. Mainly want
it to improve my performance in Flight Sim 2004 from my Athlon XP 1800+ system.

What RAM (manufacturer and speed) should I be looking to? In the past I've had
great luck with Crucial ram. I would have just gotten 512mb. Should I look to at
least 1GB now?

Figured I might be able to get in and out around $500-$600 for the motherboard,
RAM and processor (say a 2.8GHz).

Lastly, I used to FAT32 and in the past I just hooked up my new components to my
old hard drive, booted to a command prompt, renamed the Windows directory to
say, winold and then installed the OS again from a directory that had the CD's
copied to it. Fast and efficient. I recently converted the main partition to
NTFS at the heavy recommendation of nearly everyone I know. I'm uncomfortable
with this as I now have NO clue how to go about re-installing the OS (XP Pro
which I own).

Do I just boot the CD and install over the same directory after replacing the
motherboard/processor/ram?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

*** RTH ***

Rich Heimlich wrote:
| I currently own an Athlon-based Soyo board I'm happy with and in the
| past I've been an A-bit fan (not in a while though) and have never
| owned an MSI board.
|
| Based on the recent Tom's Hardware round-up I was thinking of getting
| and MSI 865PE. However, I've gotten concerned because of many posts
| in the MSI group about instability issues. That led me to the
| Gigabyte GA-8KNXP. I'm looking for rock solid stability and as far as
| features, as long as the board has plenty of USB ports and a LAN
| input I'm pretty fine. Firewire, card readers, RAID arrays, etc., are
| all pretty useless to me.
|
| Am I likely to find this move to be very stable? I don't really care
| too much about overclocking. I might push the system a tiny bit but
| not much. Mainly want it to improve my performance in Flight Sim 2004
| from my Athlon XP 1800+ system.
|
| What RAM (manufacturer and speed) should I be looking to? In the past
| I've had great luck with Crucial ram. I would have just gotten 512mb.
| Should I look to at least 1GB now?
|
| Figured I might be able to get in and out around $500-$600 for the
| motherboard, RAM and processor (say a 2.8GHz).
|
| Lastly, I used to FAT32 and in the past I just hooked up my new
| components to my old hard drive, booted to a command prompt, renamed
| the Windows directory to say, winold and then installed the OS again
| from a directory that had the CD's copied to it. Fast and efficient.
| I recently converted the main partition to NTFS at the heavy
| recommendation of nearly everyone I know. I'm uncomfortable with this
| as I now have NO clue how to go about re-installing the OS (XP Pro
| which I own).
|
| Do I just boot the CD and install over the same directory after
| replacing the motherboard/processor/ram?
|
| Any input would be greatly appreciated.
|
| *** RTH ***

Converting from FAT32 to NTFS can affect your performanc,
because it makes the cluster size too small.
Do one thing at a time.
1) Use sfc /purge cache then sfc /scannow. Test the results.
If this don't help go to 2.
2) Insert your XP CD and boot from it. Choose to install then
a message will come up sayng that XP found a copy and will
ask if you want to repair, choose yes. Test the results for a while.
if this don't help go to 3.
3) Boot from the XP CD and choose to delete the partition and
start from scratch.
Good Luck




--
Tampa Bay