Athlon 64 boards.

[MattTech]

I'm about to build(well actually a friend is going to build it for me) an Athlon 64 based system, I had picked out the Asus K8V Deluxe but looking in the Asus K8V Deluxe thread has put me off. Is this the best Athlon 64 board? The MSI equivalent seems to also have problems, are the Asus problems rare?
If it helps my full system specs will be:

AMD Athlon 64 3200 (Socket 754) - Retail (CP-060-AM) - Would the retail version come with a heatsink/fan?

Asus DVD-E616P1 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM - Retail (CD-002-AS)

Western Digital Caviar 120GB Special Edition 8MB Cache Serial ATA - OEM (HD-009-WD)

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI - Retail (GX-017-SP)

Chieftec Dragon DX-01SLD Midi Tower - Silver (CA-033-CT)

Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3700PT TwinX (2x512MB) Platinum CAS3 (MY-021-CS)

ASUS K8V Deluxe

I am worried about the RAM compatibility, are there any other problems with these choices?
Thanks in advance for any contributions.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I don't see any problems with your choices with the exception of the memory. You might want to chose your memory from the list of approved suppliers from the Asus website. Click on the K8V and download the manual, you can see in there the list of DDR400 memory they recommend. Kingston is one that I considered but I already had 1GB of Corsair XMS PC3200 in my old system so I didn't want to buy more memory.

You probably read about the trouble I had setting my system up and getting it to work. Now that it is running I am very happy with the performance even if I haven't been able to bump my memory clock past 333Mhz.

 

[MattTech]

256M
CORSAIR
CMX256A-4000 XMS4000V1.1
CORSAIR

That's the only Corsair DDR400 memory on the list, I'm not buying sticks of 256mb.

The only 512MB options are:
KINGMAX
MPXC22D-38KT3R - I haven't heared too much about KingMax, are they a good brand?

TwinMOS
M2G9J16AGATT9F081AA4T - Are TwinMOS a budget brand? I'd rather choose quality components.

Winbond
W9451GCDB-5


Kingston
KVR400X64C3A/512

There are a few more, but out of these which would you choose?
Full list here: http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket754/k8v-d/overview.htm (Bottom of the page).

 

[MattTech]

According to guides on the RAM manufacturer's sites, it appears that the Athlon 64 boards don't really support any speeds above PC3200.

 

[MattTech]

Would it, therefore, be a better idea to go for the Pentium 4 3.2ghz with faster RAM, is this likely to result in better games performance?
Sorry to constantly add new replys but I can't find the edit button.

 

[Peter]

There is no faster speed than DDR400. Everything above is overclocking madness.

Besides, Athlon-64, thanks to its much less MHz-obsessed and more brains oriented internal implementation, isn't so dependent on ultra fast RAM as the P4 is.

Games performance is much better on the Athlon-64 than with a non-EE P4 if you believe all the reviews out there (which you can), and there's the prospect of getting a substantial free boost once 64-bit Windows is here. Oh, it is already. And the platform has a bit of a longer life to live than socket-478 which is reaching its end right now.

 

[Shimmishim]

I would recommend the Shuttle An50r as well.

It is a great board and most extreme overclockers are using it. With full volt mods, this board can really fly!

What's neat about this board is that the vdimm voltage runs off the 5 volt rail and not the 3.3!!!

 

[MattTech]

Originally posted by: Shimmishim
I would recommend the Shuttle An50r as well.

It is a great board and most extreme overclockers are using it. With full volt mods, this board can really fly!

What's neat about this board is that the vdimm voltage runs off the 5 volt rail and not the 3.3!!!

I'm considering that or the ABit board. If A64s are dropping price next week, I assume it would be best to wait until then?

 

[Vette73]

You need to check this board out.....

Albatron

It has true HARDWARE sound, firewire, TRUE sata, giga ethernet, and goes for less then $125 shipped at newegg.com
I just got this board and a Athlon64 3000+ . Have not put it together yet but the reviews are good of it.

And the Athlon64's might be dropping soon since intel dropped the price of their CPU's.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Originally posted by: Peter


and there's the prospect of getting a substantial free boost once 64-bit Windows is here. Oh, it is already. And the platform has a bit of a longer life to live than socket-478 which is reaching its end right now.

Well first, even with a 64 bit operating system you still need 64 bit programs to run on it. 32 bit programs on 64 bit machines run slower then on 32 bit machines. Expecting a boost switching to 64 bit is like expecting a boost playing windows games on an emulator on a mac. Second, what's here is a buggy beta with no driver support. Third, neither socket 754 or 478 have a decent life expectancy so chances are by the time you want to upgrade they will both be fully dead anyway.

 

[Peter]

The point in the AMD 64-bit CPUs is that they're exactly NOT slow in running 32-bit programs, since they still natively understand that instruction format - at full performance, unlike Intel's Itanium. This still remains true when a 32-bit program is run in a 32-bit "sandbox" on a 64-bit operating system, as everyone can witness when running a 16-bit Windows program on 32-bit Windows NT, 2000, XP. These run in a 16-bit "Windows on Windows" sandbox, and do so no slower than if you'd run them on their native operating system. In fact, the underlying newer operating system's effectiveness still shines through into that sandbox, because graphics core, file system, memory management and all that still run in 64-bit code even if invoked from inside the 32-bit sandbox.

 

[MattTech]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
You need to check this board out.....

Albatron

It has true HARDWARE sound, firewire, TRUE sata, giga ethernet, and goes for less then $125 shipped at newegg.com
I just got this board and a Athlon64 3000+ . Have not put it together yet but the reviews are good of it.

And the Athlon64's might be dropping soon since intel dropped the price of their CPU's.

I can't buy from Newegg as I'm in the UK. Is the motherboard good though? I don't care about what is on-board.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu

Originally posted by: Peter


and there's the prospect of getting a substantial free boost once 64-bit Windows is here. Oh, it is already. And the platform has a bit of a longer life to live than socket-478 which is reaching its end right now.

Well first, even with a 64 bit operating system you still need 64 bit programs to run on it. 32 bit programs on 64 bit machines run slower then on 32 bit machines. Expecting a boost switching to 64 bit is like expecting a boost playing windows games on an emulator on a mac. Second, what's here is a buggy beta with no driver support. Third, neither socket 754 or 478 have a decent life expectancy so chances are by the time you want to upgrade they will both be fully dead anyway.

I'm running a 32bit OS and applications on a Athlon 64 and it is much much faster than the Athlon XP 2800+ it replaced. So, I would look at the reviews of this chip before making a statement like that. It is not slower I can assure you of that.

 

[Boonesmi]

did you read the new review (on the anandtech main page) about the new aopen AK86-L?

that looks to be about the best socket754 board you can buy today

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Boonesmi
did you read the new review (on the anandtech main page) about the new aopen AK86-L?

that looks to be about the best socket754 board you can buy today

Yes, looks promising (if they did manage to implement PCI/AGP lock). Too bad I already bought the K8V from Asus.

 

[Boonesmi]

Originally posted by: JulesMaximus

Originally posted by: Boonesmi
did you read the new review (on the anandtech main page) about the new aopen AK86-L?

that looks to be about the best socket754 board you can buy today

Yes, looks promising (if they did manage to implement PCI/AGP lock). Too bad I already bought the K8V from Asus.

even if for some reason they didnt get the pci/agp lock working... i would still pick that board for its overclocking potential

 

[MattTech]

I'm leaning towards the Abit board at the moment, it has better RAM support than the ASUS and MSI. I haven't seen reviews anywhere else for the Aopen and I'm not too sure of the AOpen brand.

 

[Draccius]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the performance of a AOPEN AK89 for a non-overclocker? I was going to go with a K8V Deluxe, but this has made me look at that decision again. It looks like a very good board.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: MattTech

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
You need to check this board out.....

Albatron

It has true HARDWARE sound, firewire, TRUE sata, giga ethernet, and goes for less then $125 shipped at newegg.com
I just got this board and a Athlon64 3000+ . Have not put it together yet but the reviews are good of it.

And the Athlon64's might be dropping soon since intel dropped the price of their CPU's.

I can't buy from Newegg as I'm in the UK. Is the motherboard good though? I don't care about what is on-board.

Just got it runnning now. GREAT board and AWESOME sound. I would tell anyone to get this.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

even if for some reason they didnt get the pci/agp lock working... i would still pick that board for its overclocking potential

Presuming the lock is indeed functioning, there's still the matter of the CPU, and particularly, the ram voltage being so whimpy to be addressed before I'd buy it. 2.7v isn't much voltage for pushing a high overclock 1:1 on with most ram.