939 board for mid-hi end gaming

[scott81425]

I need a socket 939 mobo for a computer I am building. PCI-e is a must have. I'm looking at a total budget of approx. 800 dollars, and would like to pick up the board for >100. Can anyone make me a decent recommendation? Newegg would be the preferred provider, as most of the stuff I am ordering is coming from there. Please advise.

 

[slowpogo]

Take a look at anandtech's "Pre-AM2 Buyer's Guide":

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2753

They recommend a DFI board that goes for about $110. DFI boards generally perform really well for gaming, at least according to anandtech.

 

[scott81425]

MOBO

i was leaning toward this. but now i am not sure. they seem pretty confident in the performance of that one. what about the other aspects of the computer system? i.e. hard drive. should i go sata 3.0 with a 16mb cache? i mean, what do these REALLY offer in terms of performance upgrade over less expensive counterparts.

 

[Zap]

How about a generally good brand, plus better overclocking options than the ASRock (if that's important to you). The ASRock claim to fame is the combo PCI-E/AGP board, with M2 upgrade and low price. Well, with an Asus board so cheap and you not needing AGP...

ASUS A8N5X $75

 

[cubeless]

just built a box with a dfi nf4 infinity... <$90 and very stable and tweakable...

 

[mb103051]

best nf4 ultra board out,its an all around board meaning it does everything well.not just o/clock.asus a8n-e.had 3 other ultra boards before this one and there is no comparison.its my feeling this board is as close to being a perfect board as can be .the layout is perfect,bios is mature and troble free.not picky with hardware like dfi boards.dosent run hot like the heatpipe cooling boards.you can put a wide range of aftermarket coolers on the nf4 chipset and dosent interfear with large video cards.has decent sound onboard.all in all a very stable ,very stable board.to me sli is a waste of money,with 1 late top of the line video card game performance is pretty close to the sli version.if you have to have sli the asus a8n sli is the sister board to this one.all things apply to this board as apply to the a8n-e board.you cant beat these asus nf4 boards.very affordable too.93.00 for the a8ne and 104.00 for the a8n sli.check it out and you wont be dissapointed,i garrantee dude.

 

[indiekiduk]

Why did they put one card in the SLI motherboard in their AMD system recommendation?
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2753&p=10

Are there any decent boards that are fanless, have sata2, gigabit, firewire and are not SLI? I'm not a gamer so don't require that feature.

 

[Heidfirst]

If you could find an Abit AN8 Ultra still in stock somewhere it's basically what you want.
The KN8 SLI is too apart from the 2nd x16 PCI-E slot.
There's also a suggestion that Abit maybe making some KN8 Ultras with passive chipset cooling instead of the original fan.

 

[T2k]

Generally speaking the new uber-chipset is ATI's Xpress3200 - that wasa the reason I've bought my DFI CFX3200-DR when it came out in April...

 

[indiekiduk]

THanks the Abit AN8 Ultra did look like an excellent choice but I read the USB fails on high load and I have a few external USB hard drives that I'd be using. I went for the MSI K8NGM2-FID in the end since it has everything I want (gigabit lan, DVI out, sata2, firewire) and it seems Linux is fully supported (unlike the sound on Asus boards). I also got the 3800+ X2, 2Gb mem of Crucial, the 320GB sata2 Seagate 7200.10 perpendicular and a SonataII case. Total was £500 which I think is a bit of a bargain. If any new decent games come out I'll upgrade the video to the Gigabyte GeForce 7600GT 256MB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI S/Pipe 2 since its silent.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: Zap
How about a generally good brand, plus better overclocking options than the ASRock (if that's important to you). The ASRock claim to fame is the combo PCI-E/AGP board, with M2 upgrade and low price. Well, with an Asus board so cheap and you not needing AGP...

ASUS A8N5X $75

Well, the op said he wanted mid range, it is an Nforce 4, but it's not an ULTRA, so I think this board looks pretty decent, 25 bucks under the 100 dollar mark, FTW 'cuz it's from Asus too!