Motherboard comparisons?

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On 19 Dec 2004 21:32:37 GMT, John Oliver <joliver@john-oliver.net>
wrote:

>I'm starting to look around for a new motherboard, probably AMD Socket
>939 I can't find any good reviews, comparisons, etc of current
>models... Anandtech has a six-month old article, Toms doesn't have
>anything newer... Basically, i even need to be comparing chipsets at
>this point, as it's been some time since I've looked into this stuff.
>
>Please, no "Get this one!" without a well-explained reason why... I'm
>looking for information to make my own choice based on my requirements.

Some links to 939 reviews here, don't know how new they are.
http://www.amdboard.com/socket_939_boards.html

Ed

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 04:45:47 -0500, George Macdonald
<fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:

>My current favored mbrd brand is MSI and they have two nForce4 and two ATI
>Xpress 200 chipset mbrds just announced - there are links to reviews at
>their global Web site: http://www.msi.com.tw/index.htm. Here's one of them
>which compares the nForce3, nForce4, ATI RX200P and K8TPro, apparently from
>a Web site in U.A.E.

Sorry, but I forgot to add http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=339

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

I know a guy who repairs a lot of PCs. According to him, the best
motherboards are either Gigabyte or Intel, and Intel doesn't make
motherboards for AMD. So if I were you I would start looking on
Gigabyte's site to find something that meets your requirements.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 02:42:22 GMT, c@c.c wrote:

>I know a guy who repairs a lot of PCs. According to him, the best
>motherboards are either Gigabyte or Intel, and Intel doesn't make
>motherboards for AMD. So if I were you I would start looking on
>Gigabyte's site to find something that meets your requirements.

The people who subscribe to this NG don't need to "know a guy" and I can
tell you that your info is false. Gigabyte mbrds have improved somewhat
over the years but were among the worst ever produced a few years ago. A
current criticisms I saw was: DIMM slots so close to each other that DIMMs
with heat spreaders were jammed against each other. Their "DPS technology"
is outrageously expensive and marginally useful. It was the likes of
Gigabyte that got Taiwanese mbrds a bad name; certainly the worst example I
ever saw was a Gigabyte ca. 1993 - see my other post on their err,
attitude.

OTOH, Intel's mbrds, for desktops anyway, have gone in the opposite
direction; Intel doesn't even make mbrds for Intel now. They have always
been far too restricted on BIOS Setup options to be of any interest to
anyone who wanted more than an appliance... frustratingly inaccessible.

The best mbrds I've seen have come from Asus though I have never used
Supermicro or Tyan; more recently I've found MSI to offer good quality,
with a useful feature set at a reasonable price. I've also had good
results with Soyo and to a lesser extent, Epox.

My advice to you is to find another "guy".

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Bitstring <h0lss0tqdu7juhludes6gb8besnvirqmpg@4ax.com>, from the
wonderful person George Macdonald <fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com>
said
<snip>
> It was the likes of
>Gigabyte that got Taiwanese mbrds a bad name; certainly the worst example I
>ever saw was a Gigabyte ca. 1993 - see my other post on their err,
>attitude.

<snip>

>The best mbrds I've seen have come from Asus though I have never used
>Supermicro or Tyan; more recently I've found MSI to offer good quality,
>with a useful feature set at a reasonable price. I've also had good
>results with Soyo and to a lesser extent, Epox.

I'd second Asus. My last Epox board had voltage stability problems from
day1, and died an early death with the dreaded bulging capacitor problem
after about a year. The Asus boards go on-and-on-and-on, until I get
bored and bin them. Only downside is that Asus appear to lack somewhat
in the Bios writing department (or the converse - lots of new releases,
which you really don't want to install).

I might have tried Gigabyte back in 2001, except a pre-sales email
enquiry to (what should have been) their European sales email address
(from a link on their web site) was bounced by
<postmaster@gbt-tech.co.uk> and an email to <postmaster@gbt-tech.co.uk>
was similarly bounced.

I figured anyone who would set up <postmaster> to bounce (claiming the
bounce was from <postmaster>) was/were complete turkeys, and I should
shop elsewhere.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Outgoing Msgs are Turing Tested,and indistinguishable from human typing.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Bitstring <avqts0pdi3rdpd61un752uu68m0e8813tf@4ax.com>, from the
wonderful person Never anonymous Bud <newskat@katxyzkave.net> said
<snip>
>But I have 2 blown Asus MBs of my own, and one that belonged
>to another person, all 3 have bad HD controllers, one has several
>other problems.

Which model??

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Outgoing Msgs are Turing Tested,and indistinguishable from human typing.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:33:19 -0500, Keith R. Williams <krw@att.bizzzz>
wrote:

>> Pity you don't have that spectrum analyzer now.:-)
>
>That was a very interesting time. The differences were amazing, but
>one can see the same sorts of differences by looking at how clocks are
>treated with a nice oscilloscope.

I don't quite get it, isn't a spectrum analyser (from what I can find)
an oscilloscope? Except they seem to come with a bigger/wider?
bandwidth??

--
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If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me  
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:35:01 +0000, The little lost angel wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:33:19 -0500, Keith R. Williams <krw@att.bizzzz>
> wrote:
>
>>> Pity you don't have that spectrum analyzer now.:-)
>>
>>That was a very interesting time. The differences were amazing, but
>>one can see the same sorts of differences by looking at how clocks are
>>treated with a nice oscilloscope.
>
> I don't quite get it, isn't a spectrum analyser (from what I can find)
> an oscilloscope? Except they seem to come with a bigger/wider?
> bandwidth??

Well, sorta. An oscilloscope displays the amplitude of a signal vs. time.
A spectrum analyzer displays amplitude vs. frequency. They're a Fourier
Transform away from each other. ;-)

What George was referring to was, back when I worked on X86 stuff, one
of my responsibilities was EMI pre-compliance. I had a very nice 6GHz
spectrum analyzer and a room full of calibrated antennas to measure RFI
from motherboards and other interesting PC stuff. One of the interesting
outcomes of my year-and-a-half playing was that there was a *strong*
correlation between motherboards that had low emmissions and those that
were found to be well designed by other more complicated means. Good
engineering was evident in many ways. EMI measurements were simple (given
$100K worth of toys and a year to play ;-).

--
Keith

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Bitstring <1104512392.422653.322290@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, from
the strange, really strange, person dennis@etinc.com said

> You can't really get advice from people
>running windows, because windows is expected to lock up every few days,
>so how do you know if its a MB problem or just Windows being Windows?

Only if you are running. Win9x/Me, or if the system was
installed/managed by a complete dork. My Win2k/XP system run until I
need to reboot to install some patch or other, or until the power fails,
or until I get bored. Weeks .. months sometimes.

Lemme see, last reboot 16/Dec, Why ..
"
Restart Required: To complete the installation of the following updates,
the computer must be restarted. Until this computer has been restarted,
Windows cannot search for or download new updates:
- Security Update for Windows XP (KB885835)
- Critical Update for Windows XP (KB886185)
- Security Update for Windows XP (KB873339)
- Security Update for Windows XP (KB885836)
"

Nope, the evidence indicates that what you proposed is not, in fact,
true.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Outgoing Msgs are Turing Tested,and indistinguishable from human typing.