zennehoy

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Hi all!
My Motherboard just died, as in completely, and now I'm rather in a hurry to find a new one. While I'm at it, I want to upgrade to a new CPU as well... both for hopefully not much more than $200.
I have a stick of 512MB-DDR266, which would be nice to continue using to save on cost. I'm not sure if DDR266 is an antiquity by now though...
I have a GeForce FX5700 vid-card which has served me fine, though I would like to upgrade the vid-card (in a year or so) before I upgrade to a new mobo again.
Other than that, 2x PCI slots for sound and ethernet. I have a PS/2 keyboard which would be nice to keep, but replacing that is probably cheap compared to the rest.
Oh yeah, AMD is pretty much a given, unless someone comes up with a VERY good argument for Intel.
Some suggestions on a decent board and CPU would be great, thanks!
Zen
 

Scout

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To keep it down to $200 or so, I'd probably get an Abit NF8 Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb Motherboard with an Athlon 64 2800+. Comes to $208 at Newegg.

Reusing that memory is gonna slow things down some... but I think you can still set the memory to run at 266 on these boards.

Now if you can spring for a bit more, I'd get one of the new Venice core Athlon 64's and a socket 939 board and buy a couple of sticks of new memory. Probably talkin' closer to $300 for that...

Scout
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endyen

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Scout is a smart cookie. I agree about the mobo and chip. Going s754 for agp is a good idea. It offers better perf than s939, though it will be end of lifed soon, so will s939.
 

zennehoy

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Thanks for the replies!
Since I upgrade only rarely (usually when something breaks ;), I'm going to stick to a Socket 754 for now.

I've been looking at the ASUS K8N-E Deluxe for 92EUR, though according to newegg the Abit board is a bunch cheaper. For 63EUR I can get an Asus K8N, non-deluxe- just curious how much worse that mobo is for that much lower price. All these different endings tend to confuse me a bit...

I haven't found an Abit NF8 here yet, so I don't know an exact price. Why the difference in price anyways? Just the name or is the Asus board actually better?
In either case I'll slap on an Athlon64 3000+ for ~120EUR.

Does anyone know for sure if I can use my old DDR266 RAM on either of these boards? I realize that faster RAM means a faster system, but it'd be nice to let the wallet refill before upgrading the RAM as well.

Thanks again!
Zen
 

Scout

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Asus makes a good board, but they usually cost a bit more.

The difference in these two Asus boards is one has the nForce3 250 chipset and the Deluxe has the nforce3 250gb shipset. The "gb" chipset is the later version and supports a higher FSB speed (good for overclocking!). The other difference is the Deluxe also has more SATA ports (6 versus 2) and it has RAID, so if you need that, the Deluxe is what you want.

By the way, I did check the manual and the Asus boards will support your PC2100 memory.

Scout
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zennehoy

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Gah, I hate computer shops... they always manage to convince me that newer is better.
So I'm honestly considering getting an ASUS A8V-Deluxe with an A64 3000+ Venice, slap on a stick of 512MB Kingston value-ram, and have an s939 system for 275EUR.

I hope that's decent? Hopeing for ratification from the THG crowd :p

Endyen: What do you mean the s754 has better perf than s939? Seems strange to me that it would be reversed like that...

Thanks!
Zen
 

Scout

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That board uses the Via chipset... wouldn't be my choice. nForce3 or nForce4 are better.

The chip is fine though. It only runs stock at 1.8 GHz, so you'll probably want to overclock, and fortunately that chip is very overclockable!

Scout
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The s754 performs better than a s939 because it is clocked 200Mhz faster. s754 chips that are rated at the same PR as s939 chips are clocked 200Mhz faster than the s939 chips (i.e. a s754 3000+ is 2Ghz while the s939 is 1.8Ghz). The s939 has a better memory controller, but that doesn't make up for the 200Mhz hit on the processor.

__________________________________________________
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zennehoy

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"That board uses the Via chipset... wouldn't be my choice. nForce3 or nForce4 are better."

One reason I really like the A8V is that it doesn't have active cooling on the chipset. So far I haven't seen any nForce boards without the additional fan. Does anyone know of a board without?

For that matter, are there any nForce boards with AGP? I refuse to replace my Video card as well ;)

Thanks!
Zen
 

pat

Expert
I once had the Soltek k8an2e-gr. Socket 753, nforce3 250 gb and fanless chipset. I now use a Gigabyte k8nf-9. nforce4-4x, fanless chipset heatsink.

I like board with fanless chipset cooler too. But I'm not really happy with my Gigabyte. Not that it is not stable, it is. But, my Soltek was faster to post and the whole system seemed faster. The CPU were both 3000+, so yes, the 200 MHz advantage of socket 754 make a difference.

I'm planning to change my Gigabyte mobo for another one. Now that Soltek has motherboard with nforce4, I might try them.

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Scout

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That's an interesting point... Lots of 754 boards with passive chipset cooling, but seems like everyone who builds a 939 board puts a fan on there! Probably some herd mentality in marketing where they figure buyers want extra fans except on budget boards...

So fanless will be hard to find in the 939 nVidia... As for AGP, Gigabyte, Epox, MSI, and DFI all have 939 nVidia AGP offerings.

GIGABYTE GA-K8NSC
EPoX EP-9NDA3+ and "J"
MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM
DFI UT NF3 ULTRA-D




Scout
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pat

Expert
I guess it has to do with higher chance of overclocking with the 939.. Remember Chaintec? they first use a passive cooling on their first nforce4 motherboard, but quickly update it with active coolingbecause of failure when OCed.

OTOH, my cousin got an Asus nforce4 and replaced the active cooling with a passive heatsink.. Those vacuum cleaner aint fun after a while..

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pat

Expert
And I'll order a passive chipset cooling solution with my new nforce4 mobo too.

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zennehoy

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Well, I settled for the Asus K8N-E Deluxe, and I'm liking it so far. Had a small issue with WinXP and the new IDE controller, but I got that fixed pretty quick once I realized what the problem was; the error message only showed for a few milliseconds before the computer rebooted.

I must say that I love Cool'N'Quiet... specially the quiet part. Now all I need is a silent VGA fan. Any suggestions for a GeForce FX5700?
Thanks everyone for your suggestions!
Zen