New platform... which chipset,MB or even socket ?

[sbdragon]

Well, dont know whats the reason of this, but the AGP on my old board (MSI KT3V) recently refused to work... whatever I plug in, the board just screams(or beeps, if you want) that there's no video card present. Now I'm running "hi-end" PCI card (diamond firegl 1000 pro) ) lent from my neighbour. However that's not a point of this post, indeed. I decided to buy a new motherboard and CPU although I'd surely get a new board for my athlon XP for few bucks. I just want some more power. So I personally dislike Intel, thus I chose an Anthlon 64 cpu, but... there are many of them. At first I was not sure even about the chipset, but then I decided for 754 instead of 939, cause 939 supports dual channel DDR, and I dont want to spend money for a new pair of modules (I'm gonna put my old ones to the new board = 266/284MHz CL2/CL2.5 256MB single-sided and 512MB 333MHz CL2 double sided modules, they are capable of running at high speed with timings like 2-2-2-6). And, of course 754 CPUs and mobos are cheaper then 939 ones. But now I am not able to choose the right MB, got two candidates - MSI K8T NEO FSR and MSI K8N NEO, maybe K8T NEO FIS2R for the another harddrive controller, but that is not essential... the Via board has these pros: corecenter with dynamic overclocking, lower price and nVidia board these: HW firewall, frequency locks for manual overclocking. Which one would you recommend? or would you recommend something else? or even socket 939 ? do you thing its worth the extra price? (note: I dont care about soundcards and SATA controllers on either board, and I dont plan to use RAID function)

Thanks a lot for your help

 

[Flinx]

I'm not sure your memomory would overclock to 200Mhz, i.e. PC3200 speeds. How have you verified that they will?

Usually these things are a matter of pocket book ($).
Since your pocket books seems very limited, your choices seem limited as well.

Perhaps if you narrowed it down to one board or another someone more knowledgeable than I would be willing to supply an opinion.

The loving are the daring!

 

[sbdragon]

Well they won't overclock to 200MHz and I do not expect them to do so ! I just said that I'm confident with the speed of those two modules and thus I dont find it necessary to spend money on new ones... The point of my question was however the choice between those two motherboards, more exactly those two chipsets...

 

[Rugger]

First to answer you questions. The choices are either:
1. MSI K8N NEO-FSR with the Nvidia nForce 250 chipset.
OR
2. MSI K8T NEO-FSR with the VIA K8T800 chipset.
The nForce chipset is a single chip vice two and will therefore create less heat - bonus for overclocking. I think the nForce chipsets are superior to VIA chipsets at this time and would go with the K8N Neo FSR.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[Robc1880]

one thing that you have to understand is that your probably going to have to underclock your CPU to match your ram or you can run a divider to make up the difference. I would suggest getting some value ram to run the dual channel and go with s939. If you insist on getting a s754 board, have you looked at the DFI motherboard? From what I hear they are very stable boards and great overclockers.

 

[endyen]

I will agree with Rugger. Not only are the nforce chipsets cooler, and faster, but we get fewer requests for trouble solving as well.
For your considerarion. The nforce boaeds do not take much of a hit for running ram asyncronously. They do take more of a hit from pc2100 than they do from pc2700. If you were not aware, the on die memory controller does not like to run at DDR400 speeds with 3 dimms full.