AMD Nforce4 Motherboard help! Or maybe go Intel

[gate1975mlm]

I am going to have someone build me a PC. I really want Nforce4 but the 2 things bugging me are the fact that the Onboard Chip set cooler is noisy and I am hearing about lots of peope having problems. Like there SATA DMAX hard Drives not showing up. Because of this I almost want to go intel instead. What should I do? What I do with my PC is Surf the net, Download music and videos, Burn DVD's and play some games mainly Sports ands racing games. Not really into games like Doom 3. From what I have told you what do you think I should do? All so just to add when I do play my sports or racing games I would like to play them at the highest settings and at least 1280 by1024. Iam looking to spend no more then around $850 for CPU,Motherboard and Memory. The other stuff I already have. But I also want 64Bit and i see Intel now has a 64Bit CPU also.

This is what I have so far for my soon to be build system!

1.Cooler Master PAC-T01-EK (Black) Praetorian Aluminum Computer PC Tower Case
2.Enermax 470Watt PEG475AX-VE-SFMA Power Supply
3.LeadTek Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT PCI Express!
4.2 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 S-ATA 150 300GB 16MB Cache 7200RPM SATA Hard Drives Total 600GB
5.Thermaltake Hardcano 12 HDD cooler and LCD
6.4 Nexus 80mm Real Silent Case Fans!
7.Pioneer DVR-A08XL 16X DVD+-RW Drive
8.LG Electronics 52X32X52+16 Combo CD-RW+DVD Drive
9.Atech Pro-8MX Card Reader
10.NEC Floppy Drive
11. Audigy 2 ZS

 

[MalfurionStormrage]

I, like you, have been waiting for nForce4 and KT890 to not be so problematic. Like you, I have also chosen to go the Intel route. What I'm getting:

ASUS P5GD1 (Intel 915 chipset, 800 MHz FSB, DDR support only)
Intel 3.2 GHz 2 MB cache EM64T chip
2x512 MB Corsair TwinX DDR400 PC-3200 RAM (2-2-2-6)

All for less than $700. I could have gone cheaper by buying all mail order, but I like my local computer supply dealer and can exchange some of the parts from my wife's old machine to the new one.

Unless you plan on getting an Extreme Edition chip or plan on extreme overclocking, there's no real point in buying into DDR2 with the standard 6x0 series chips as they're all on an 800MHz FSB.

If you want to stay in the AMD camp, you can buy the Soltek board. My choice had been the ASUS A8V-E, but the fact that it only had two SATA ports was a deal-breaker for me. I have been waiting forever for the non-SLI version of the A8N-E...

Also, if you plan on staying in the AMD camp, you may want to wait for the Venice core. It will run more efficiently and adds SSE3 extensions.

All my 0.02 USD, IMO, YMMV, etc.

 

[kextyn]

I've been waiting for the Nforce4 Ultra board from Asus since about October. I finally just paid a little extra and got the A8N-SLI last month. I can not be any happier. Before I did anything I flashed to the 1003 BIOS and have only had a problem with the nforce NIC only running at 10mbps. I didn't bother with it because I had a second gigabit NIC onboard. Its just a driver issue so I'm sure it'll work if I actually try. But I never understand why I see so many people unhappy with their nforce4 board.

Just stop waiting and buy something. The longer you wait the more you're going to wish you got this or that months ago.

 

[MalfurionStormrage]

I see no point in paying extra to pick up an SLI board when I have no need nor no desire to go SLI. I don't need to reward nVidia's SLI logo program because the motherboard manufacturer that I like the most can't get their s--- together and produce a non-SLI motherboard with the nForce4 chipset.

There are four competing SLI standards right now. I have no interest in choosing any of them until there is an actual standard.

 

[Silversierra]

I have the Chaintech Vnf4 ultra, no noisy chipset fan on it, it's passive which = silent, but also less cooling ability. People are getting good oc's on this board with the new bios release. I didn't use sata, but I read on this forum a guy used a sata dvd drive with this board, and numerous people have used sata hard drives it seems.