OK guys, i just bought a AMD 64 2800+ & an Abit KV8 MB. I really really like this setup and everything is really stable...well kinda (get to this in just a second). Anyways i know the Via chipset on this MB doesn't have an AGP lock which is causing me problems. Currently im running at 9x223 stable as can be well until i start up a game and use DirectX than the system will crash. If i don't run any games and do my normal stuff the system is stable so the "no AGP" lock is causing problems with my system. Btw, im using a Radeon 9800 Pro. Anyways i was going to start to look for a MB with an AGP lock. My first choice was a MB with a Nforce3 250 chipset since i had an NForce2 with my Athlon XP and have been extremly happy with it. I really really wanted an abit board but since abit doesn't make an nforce3 250 board i started looking at the epox. I have always been EXTREMLY happy with my abit boards. Its the cheaper one that prices right about 100.00. Sure id like to have an asus kn8-e but im not willing to spend 40.00 more for it. Anyways i started reasearching the net to see if maybe abit was going to make an Nforce3 250 board and i seen a couple articles that they weren't going to produce one until nvidia could get thier chipset more stable. This really really worried me. I really put a lot of respect into abit and think they make some of the best boards available and if they aren't producing these boards because the chipset isn't stable....umm what kind of problems am i going to run into? Do any of you have nforce3 250 boards? Do you think your board is unstable? If Nforce3's do have a stability with thier chipsets only they or possible the motherboard manufact. will know if its a hardware or just a driver problem. If its a driver problem then its not a big deal for me because im sure they will come out with bug fixes for their drivers. Nvidia has seem to do a really good job with thier drivers from my past experience but if its a hardware problem them it has me worried that i will be left with a buggy chipset that will be fixed with a chipset revision but i will always have trouble with the board. Do you know what i mean? Anyways so the Nforce3 250 board i have looked at has been the lower end epox board.
On another spectrum, i have also looked at abit's kv8 pro. The pro version of via's chipset is suppose to have an agp lock with it but then i heard that the lock isn't working very good and there have been a lot of bugs with it. Since this is the MAIN reason i want to get a new board i would be really upset if i bought it and the system crashed because the AGP lock wasn't working up to snuf.
So here are my options:
1) Buy the epox board
2) Buy the abit kv8 pro
3) wait till more stable chipset drivers or hardware comes out.
Since this processor has overclocked so well right now it would be a same not to be able to overclock it. I didn't event try to reach its limit. My goal was just to get to the level of a 3000+ chip with it which i did. It could probably go further but i need a good agp lock to be able to do this. Currently i just lower when i play games otherwise i overclock it and its very stable.
thanks for any help,
Ncage
On another spectrum, i have also looked at abit's kv8 pro. The pro version of via's chipset is suppose to have an agp lock with it but then i heard that the lock isn't working very good and there have been a lot of bugs with it. Since this is the MAIN reason i want to get a new board i would be really upset if i bought it and the system crashed because the AGP lock wasn't working up to snuf.
So here are my options:
1) Buy the epox board
2) Buy the abit kv8 pro
3) wait till more stable chipset drivers or hardware comes out.
Since this processor has overclocked so well right now it would be a same not to be able to overclock it. I didn't event try to reach its limit. My goal was just to get to the level of a 3000+ chip with it which i did. It could probably go further but i need a good agp lock to be able to do this. Currently i just lower when i play games otherwise i overclock it and its very stable.
thanks for any help,
Ncage
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