motherboard to pair with 3200+ venice?

[tjchino]

I'm building a computer for a friend and have landed on the cpu mentioned above. I'm wanting to keep it mATX and have just about settled on the Biostar TForce6100-939. I'm wondering if anyone has a better choice for board out there or has had experience with this one - good or bad.
thanks.

 

[Crashman]

It looks like a good board. I have experience with the Foxconn WinFast 6150K8MA-8EKRS2 and I know that one's a good board.

 

[tjchino]

thanks crash...
while you're dispensing advice (or anyone else who cares to weigh in)
i'm looking at an upgrade for myself... i've pretty much settled on the venice 3200+ with the hopes of oc'ing it like crazy.
i was going to go with the abit an8 w/ nforce 4 set, but i saw several less great reviews.
what board would you put with the 3200+?
also, since i'll be oc'ing, what QUIET fan would you recommend to go with it? and then lastly - memory that will go nice with the whole set up? i'd love to get a gig.
thanks in advance!

 

[Crashman]

There's so many GOOD boards out there! And so many GOOD coolers!

By the way, I use the retail boxed cooler with my 3200+ and it reaches 2.45GHz without getting hot. It won't go higher stably, and never gets hot using the boxed cooler.

If you want something quieter, you have dozens of options.

 

[fishmahn]

Many, many options... ATI chipset boards are coming out in droves (well, it appears that way...), many of them have great reviews. Since they're still new enough to not have much history on them I haven't made a decision on who's is best there...

Generally for overclocking (which the ATI's are supposed to do well also) you would get an nForce 4 chipset. DFI makes the best OCer, but it takes skill to configure it right. Epox is 2nd best and is easier to configure. ABit, Chaintech, Gigabyte, etc. are fine too - ABit has the uguru OC software for beginners. Asus usually does well, but for ocing only the top end A8N series seemed to OC well (the Premium IIRC), and you pay a premium for the premium... :roll:

Get some OCZ RAM - the Rev.2 stuff is supposed to OC like mad... but don't worry too much about ram because running on a divider on an A64 doesn't hurt performance hardly at all.

Mike.

 

[tjchino]

i've had some positive experience with epox in the past. with that in mind, here's what i'm considering...

EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra
ABIT KN8 Ultra
GIGABYTE GA-K8N-SLI

Not real sure what the SLI technology is all about.

Anyway, wonder if anyone has thoughts about which would be the best option. I would like to get a nice stable oc out of it.

Fishman, you mentioned something about not worrying too much about the RAM, which would be nice since I'm not real interested in laying down 150 for the rev.2. I'm assuming something from their Perfromance Sereies would work just fine?

Thanks!

 

[Crashman]

I've had great results from the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE, as well as the Jetway SLI motherboard (very fast, very cheap).

 

[tjchino]

i hate to be dumb about this... but what makes the "ultra" so ultra? i notice in pricing the the non-ultra boards tend to be around 30 dollars less. does it make a significant difference?

 

[Crashman]

That's quite a difference! It uses the nForce4 Ultra, rather than the nForce4 Standard chipset. I can show you how to modify an nForce4 Standard to Ultra, since all three original nForce4 chipsets are actually the same with various features disabled.

 

[Able72]

That's quite a difference! It uses the nForce4 Ultra, rather than the nForce4 Standard chipset. I can show you how to modify an nForce4 Standard to Ultra, since all three original nForce4 chipsets are actually the same with various features disabled.

Ok, so how do you mod the chipset to make it ultra?

 

[Crashman]

The big difference I spoke of was the price, not the features. Features wise, the Ultra only replaces SATA150 with SATA300 and adds nVidia Secure Networking Engine hardware support.

If you really want those features, enabling them is as easy as scraping off a blob of epoxy to uncover the bridge on the chipset, and filling the gap with a number 2 pencil.

http://www.sysopt.com/img/2005/08/evga16.jpg

In this picture, the blob circled in yellow covers the SLi mode enabler and the blob circled in white covers the Ultra features enabler.

You can read my experiment in the related review, at the bottom of This Page

 

[Able72]

So, having skimmed over your post, I see that it says you didn't actually try the mod yourself. Do you know of any reports regarding someone who has made the mod and what results they have had?

SATA 3.0 GB as opposed to SATA 1.5 GB? seems to be a rather nice bump.

Hmm, AN8 Ultra Mobo at AN8 prices. . . . would seem to be an oc'ers duty to find out if it would work :twisted:

 

[Crashman]

I don't have any SATA300 drives!

 

[fishmahn]

SATA 3.0 GB as opposed to SATA 1.5 GB? seems to be a rather nice bump.

Except that Hard drives (including the Raptor) have trouble saturating sata150...

Mike.

 

[Able72]

I see, so what your saying is, that with the current HD technology we have today, the Bus is no longer the bottle neck with SATA?

What about other interfaces?

 

[Crashman]

Various busses have been bottlenecks to various processes, but in the end it's hard drive mechanics that pose the greatest limitation.

Certainly if you're using PCI tuner cards a system that shares all PCI devices on one 133MB/s bus will have some problem getting all that data through, but even the reduced data going into the hard drive could end up choppy if the hard drive is pushed too hard.

I remember trying to capture one video at 720x480 on my PIII 800. CPU's haven't quadrupled in power since (more like trippled), so I don't see how any normal system is going to give smooth, moderately high resolution results on four inputs.

 

[fishmahn]

For IDE, As long as its an ATA/100 or ATA/133 drive and its alone on the cable, its the drive that's the limit, just like SATA. USB is slower than the drive, 1394/Firewire A is slower, B is rated faster than the drive, but I haven't seen any benchies (haven't looked either ) to see if the drive is as fast as an internal one or not.

Mike.

 

[Able72]

For IDE, As long as its an ATA/100 or ATA/133 drive and its alone on the cable, its the drive that's the limit, just like SATA. USB is slower than the drive, 1394/Firewire A is slower, B is rated faster than the drive, but I haven't seen any benchies (haven't looked either ) to see if the drive is as fast as an internal one or not.

Mike.

Ok, quick question, how do you determine how 'fast' a given HD can handle data?

 

[Crashman]

Look at some benchmarks. Typical numbers for today's fast mainstream drives are 35-70MB/s, 70 at the beginning and 35 at the end.