Zap
Elite Member
- Oct 13, 1999
- 22,377
- 2
- 81
Here's some answers... some duplicate what others have already said so just take it as verification. All are IMO and if you prove me wrong, well, like they say, winning an argument on the internet is like winning at the special olympics...
PIB CPUs (Processor In a Box, AKA "Retail Box") enjoy a 3 year AMD warranty to the end user. OEM CPUs have a 1 year AMD warranty to the company who purchased them from AMD. Newegg may be large enough to purchase direct, but most companies purchase from distributors, which purchase direct or as surplus from other distributors or from large OEMs. However it works, just know that you as an end user only has as long a warranty as the retailer you are purchasing from is willing to warranty it. Most (but not all) online vendors warranty CPUs for 15-30 days from date of purchase.
Not all terrible, though this particular Biostar board has a less than stellar record. The Biostar claim to fame is the "fake" AGP slot. You may (or may not) be able to reuse your old AGP card while saving up for a PCI-E card. The slot, AFAIK, is just running your AGP card on a PCI slot with a fraction of the bandwidth, so performance will be impacted. AFAIK only the Asrock Dual-SATA board using the ULi chipset had "true" AGP as well as PCI-E. I didn't read up too much on the bad reviews for the Biostar, but some of them may be for compatibility issues with AGP cards.
The ECS board looks to be the Nforce 4 Ultra chipset version of the ECS NFORCE4-A939. That board... wasn't bad. I used it in my main system (used daily) for a half year and never had any real issue beyond the known USB lockup - use a high speed USB 2.0 device and experience lockups. I just used a PCI USB 2.0 card that I already had laying about. I don't know if this board suffers from this problem. There are things I don't like about this board, such as the placement of the chipset (too close to video card IMO) and the use of a hook/loop retension for chipset HSF instead of the more common push-pin. This board is likely nicely overclockable. I had good results with the NFORCE4-A939 and someone reports 290MHz HTT on this board. Yes, nice overclocks with ECS boards :Q though I only tested at highest multiplier and don't know if the board can go insane with 300+. Still, with a 11x multiplier you'll hit the limits of the CPU well before the limits of this board.
My choice, unless hampered by an AGP card, would be the ECS.
PIB CPUs (Processor In a Box, AKA "Retail Box") enjoy a 3 year AMD warranty to the end user. OEM CPUs have a 1 year AMD warranty to the company who purchased them from AMD. Newegg may be large enough to purchase direct, but most companies purchase from distributors, which purchase direct or as surplus from other distributors or from large OEMs. However it works, just know that you as an end user only has as long a warranty as the retailer you are purchasing from is willing to warranty it. Most (but not all) online vendors warranty CPUs for 15-30 days from date of purchase.
Not all terrible, though this particular Biostar board has a less than stellar record. The Biostar claim to fame is the "fake" AGP slot. You may (or may not) be able to reuse your old AGP card while saving up for a PCI-E card. The slot, AFAIK, is just running your AGP card on a PCI slot with a fraction of the bandwidth, so performance will be impacted. AFAIK only the Asrock Dual-SATA board using the ULi chipset had "true" AGP as well as PCI-E. I didn't read up too much on the bad reviews for the Biostar, but some of them may be for compatibility issues with AGP cards.
The ECS board looks to be the Nforce 4 Ultra chipset version of the ECS NFORCE4-A939. That board... wasn't bad. I used it in my main system (used daily) for a half year and never had any real issue beyond the known USB lockup - use a high speed USB 2.0 device and experience lockups. I just used a PCI USB 2.0 card that I already had laying about. I don't know if this board suffers from this problem. There are things I don't like about this board, such as the placement of the chipset (too close to video card IMO) and the use of a hook/loop retension for chipset HSF instead of the more common push-pin. This board is likely nicely overclockable. I had good results with the NFORCE4-A939 and someone reports 290MHz HTT on this board. Yes, nice overclocks with ECS boards :Q though I only tested at highest multiplier and don't know if the board can go insane with 300+. Still, with a 11x multiplier you'll hit the limits of the CPU well before the limits of this board.
My choice, unless hampered by an AGP card, would be the ECS.
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