are intel mobo's good or should i better choose something else?

[xpeter]

I am planing to buy a P4 Northwood system and I am wondering if Intel's motherboards
based on the i845 chipset are the best on the market in performance or should I look
on something else? I am comparing mainly with GigaByte right now, because I have my
current system based on a GigaByte mobo and it's working fine. What' your opinion?

 

[Vette73]

If you get a 845 DDR board get one from another party. Like Shuttle, abit, etc...

But if you are going to run a P4 look at the P4X266a or P4X333 from VIA. They have a better memory controler then intel does. They are also cheaper.

 

[VSEKH]

I would stay away from Intel boards. PC Makers mainly use these boards so that users cannot overclock their systems. I would look at other motherboard makers such as Asus, Epox, GigaByte, and others. The 845e or 845G are chipsets to look at. Look at the forum for reviews and opinions for motherboards based on these chipsets.

 

[oldfart]

If you aren't overclocking/tweaking, an Intel brand 845 mobo is a very good, super solid choice. If you are going to overclock, there are many very good 845 boards from other mfgs available as well. Put a P4 on a VIA based board? Not in my worst nightmare!

 

[VivienM]

If you're not going to overclock or do anything hardware enthusiasty, then Intel boards are nice. I have one (D850MVL - I had to go RDRAM since that and PC133 was the only thing available in December...), and it's utterly rock solid. Can stay up for weeks unless WinXP flakes out from overload (I can abuse an OS quite nicely), etc.

Intel has nice Windoze-based BIOS upgrading , works very nicely. Their docs are good, too... and the boards come with a decent software bundle, IIRC. Norton Internet Security (incl. NAV) and a bunch of other stuff... (I don't remember the details, I didn't install it because I have SystemWorks 2002) Pretty monitoring utilities, too. Looks very polished.

Now, if you want tweaking features, etc, forgot it. There are none. The Intel boards are "by the book"-type boards; don't expect to get away with not having the 12V P4 connector on your power supply, for example. Intel makes them stable by being strict about everything. (You'll possibly get less DIMM slots on the DDR boards than with other brands... but the Intel board _will_ likely be stable with all slots filled)

Also, the onboard audio is probably not that great at all... (I never used the audio on mine, but I have another board with that SoundMAX stuff, and it sucks majorly. maybe they improved it since that i810 board was made, but I wouldn't bet on it too much) Get an Audigy or similar, VERY nice sound card.

I might add that I've had a few friends use Intel boards too, they never had any problems with them. Deathly stable, gets the job done, works with everything they've tried...

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: oldfart
If you aren't overclocking/tweaking, an Intel brand 845 mobo is a very good, super solid choice. If you are going to overclock, there are many very good 845 boards from other mfgs available as well. Put a P4 on a VIA based board? Not in my worst nightmare!

Anandtech rated the VIA DDR P4 chipset faster and stronger than any of the current Intel DDR chipsets.

Thats why if I was going to run a P4 I would get a Board with the P4X333 or P4X266a, why get a intel chipset that cost more, and is not as fast. If you don't need speed get a C3 computer.

Just a FYI

 

[oldfart]

why get a intel chipset that cost more

Most people prefer something that actually works well, and is stable. There is a lot to be said for quality.

Anandtech rated the VIA DDR P4 chipset faster and stronger than any of the current Intel DDR chipsets

And just how buggy is it? How is the IDE performance? If it is true to typical VIA chipsets, it will be fast in benches, but not something you would want to own. Many perple have gone over to the Intel side just to rid themselves of the VIA chipset problems on their AMD setups. I have yet to see a single member here get one of these boards. For good reason.

 

[VivienM]

Thats why if I was going to run a P4 I would get a Board with the P4X333 or P4X266a, why get a intel chipset that cost more, and is not as fast.

As someone else said, a big reason for people going P4 (although less so now with the Northwoods than it was when I got my Willamette P4 in December) and not Athlon is that they do NOT want VIA chipsets. If you have no problem with VIA, then you might as well get an Athlon XP 2100+ or something, which will probably be a decent bit cheaper than the equivalent [non-overclocked] P4.

As much as you may like VIA, I think there's a decent amount of people who don't. Why were people so excited about the nForce for Athlon? I'd say one big reason is that suddenly you could get Athlon without VIA.

VIA is nice on benchmarks, that's true, but read the fine print. Reviewers are often HAPPY when their VIA boards stay up for 24 hours. I'm not going to buy a board that crashes after 36 hours, that's plain ridiculous, higher benchmarks or not.