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AGP board for San Diego 3700+ ?

A

AthlonPowers

Member
I'm looking to upgrade from my current system:

Athlon XP-M 2600+@2300 (1.575v)
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Corsair Value Select PC3200 (2x512, CL2.5), dual channel mode
ATI X800XL (AGP)
Antec Sonata with stock 380W "silent" PSU

to something that feels faster and I'm thinking of going all out for an Athlon64 3700+ San Diego (next week, after rumored price drop). I'm on a budget - $400 max. I won't be upgrading my X800 soon, so I'm sticking with AGP. I'll also be sticking with my Corsair VS for now too. I'll be reusing my existing DVD-ROM and (2x200gb) hard drives.

Any comments on either of these boards appreciated - or suggestions of a better alternative:
Asus A8V Deluxe - VIA as good as NVIDIA chipset? Has Promise PATA RAID.
MSI Neo2 Platinum - like arrangement of memory, don't like fan on chipset.

Do I need to upgrade my power supply to support this chip in this case with either of these boards? I don't expect to overclock right now, but I am looking for the cool and quiet approach. Any suggestions for quiet heatsink/fan also appreciated (I see XP90 talked about a lot here)

Thanks...
 
Thanks for the info.

I looked at MSI's web site and they say that max speed for memory with 4 double-sided modules is 333MHz. What's up with that? What happened to 400? Is this the same for all nforce3 boards?

Also, I noticed that newegg has the K8N Neo2-F which looks the same as the platinum besides 5.1 sound (instead of 8.x), and lacking 1394 and a couple of other little things I don't care about. It's listed as $75 instead of $119. Is this board any good? It's still based on the nforce3 ultra chipset.
 
Originally posted by: AthlonPowers
I looked at MSI's web site and they say that max speed for memory with 4 double-sided modules is 333MHz. What's up with that? What happened to 400? Is this the same for all nforce3 boards?
Click to expand...
yes, it is. that's why most people who want 2GB RAM are going the 2x1GB route. you'll have to use command rate = 2T also. you may be able to clock it up a little past 333MHz but that's what the board will default to once you put four DIMMs in there.
 
Originally posted by: Heckler 5th
Originally posted by: AthlonPowers
I looked at MSI's web site and they say that max speed for memory with 4 double-sided modules is 333MHz. What's up with that? What happened to 400? Is this the same for all nforce3 boards?
Click to expand...
yes, it is. that's why most people who want 2GB RAM are going the 2x1GB route. you'll have to use command rate = 2T also. you may be able to clock it up a little past 333MHz but that's what the board will default to once you put four DIMMs in there.
Click to expand...



I dont think that is a baord limitation. I think that is a leftover limitation of the old core revision 64's. The epox board is pretty nice for nf3 boards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123222
 
Cool... so I might be able to run all 4 slots at 400MHz? It's possible that I'll run it up to 4GB memory during the course of its lifetime, so this is reasonably important.

I was considering dumping nf3 boards in favor of nf4, although my graphics card is AGP (X800XL) and as I've only had it a short while I'd rather keep it unless there's anyone interested in buying it.
 
The RAM issue is almost a non-factor in real world performance. I doubt you'd notice the decrease in RAM speed in actual usage. I have the Epox peleejosh linked to, and it's been a solid board for me so far. There's also a version without FireWire and the extra 2 SATA ports (9NDA3J) if you want to save a little more money there.
 
The new SD/Venice cores fixed the 4 dimm 333mhz problem, so you should have no problems. Also thats only with double sided ram, yours maybe single sided, and in that case you have absolutely nothing to worry about.
 
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