Best/loaded socket 754 board?

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Currently I'm looking at the Chaintech ZNF3-150 Zenith and the Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP and was wondering about any input for either of these boards or suggestions on any other comparable part. I'm leaning towards the Chaintech at this point as it is more feature rich, I'm not liking the lack of AGP/PCI lock on the VIA boards and nothing from SiS has hit yet, and even when it does I'm not thinking they will have a part at this level.

Cost isn't a major concern(although I'm not looking to drop ~$1K on a mobo+CPU alone ;) ).
 

Peter

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Oct 15, 1999
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What you won't like about the NVidia chipset is its slow implementation of the HyperTransport link to the CPU, drastically hampering AGP performance. NForce3-250 is supposed to fix that, but it ain't here yet, and won't be for another couple of months.
 

BenSkywalker

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Oct 9, 1999
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Thanks for the replies.

I'm aware of the 600MHZ HT on the nForce 3 and the potential impact it has on vid card related performance(~2% on the high end for the high end(vid cards) in real world useage, and that is likely stretching it a bit although you can create tests that show it much higher of course). That really isn't a major concern for me at all, nor is the possibility of not having the fastest solution. The lack of the PCI lock on the VIA parts is a much bigger concern for me, data corruption is not something I deal with well(running IDE or SATA out of spec is not something I like to do, had issues in the past :) ).

I may be willing to make the trade off if there are any high end solutions from VIA that are better then what I'm looking at, but I haven't seen any yet(I'd gladly look in to any high end SiS parts if anyone can point them out, or change my position if VIA isn't full of sh!t this time when they say they will enable a PCI lock ;) ). Checking that review at TweakTown, MSI has gone to crap as of late IME, Abit looks like they are trying to create compatibility problems with K8 HSs and although the Gigabyte doesn't look bad, it lacks a decent audio solution not to mention numerous other features that the board I was leaning towards has the GB doesn't(the VIA GB is the same as the NF3 GB I was checking out feature wise, not quite up to Chaintech- only 2x SATA). I don't think the Chaintech is perfect either, I would prefer the AGP slot spaced from the PCI slots and I'd like to have Dual BIOSs along with 4 IDE channels instead of 3(although 4 SATA are more important to me).

Thanks again for the suggestions, I'm still looking around trying to find the ideal board.
 

Zivic

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Nov 25, 2002
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Why don't you pick up a Soyo K8USA MOBO? It's expensive, but comes with tons of stuff. It has the AMD 8151 (ALI M1687) chipset, which has been tested for top peformance in comparison to SIS755 reference board.

Newegg has it for $183
 

DAPUNISHER

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Originally posted by: Zivic
Why don't you pick up a Soyo K8USA MOBO? It's expensive, but comes with tons of stuff. It has the AMD 8151 (ALI M1687) chipset, which has been tested for top peformance in comparison to SIS755 reference board.

Newegg has it for $183
That's the board I was going to recommend looking into :) I read the review of it@OCWorkbench last night and it looks like a great chipset and board. They mentioned that "the ALi M1687 chipset is quite a mature chipset by itself since it was ready way before the A64 launch" I take it that's because it's AMD's own? review
 

DAPUNISHER

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The lack of the PCI lock on the VIA parts is a much bigger concern for me, data corruption is not something I deal with well(running IDE or SATA out of spec is not something I like to do, had issues in the past ).
I've seen post by users of various nF150 boards that show the lack of a functioning PCI lock so it's be prudent before purchasing a paticular nF150 based board, to try to ascertain if it does indeed have a functioning PCI lock or not.
 

Peter

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Oct 15, 1999
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"Mature" can also be read as "old". Particularly the ALi south bridge is quite aged already, the main point about that being its weakness in features. So if such a board were to have USB 2.0, any kind of ethernet, Firewire, or SATA, that'll all be on the PCI bus. I/O performance is a lot better with southbridge integrated stuff, particularly with SiS multi-threaded link technology.

That's a difference that won't show in benchmarks, because the nature of benchmarks is to focus on a single functional unit. When things start running in parallel in real life, you'll notice.
 

Vette73

Lifer
Jul 5, 2000
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Best Athlon 64 board out RIGHT NOW, IMO, would be the....

Albatron K8X800 It has SATA, firewire, usb2.0, copper heatsink on northbridge, and even a TRUE envy soundcard built into the board. i.e hardware sound.


Take a look here for $129 shipped


Of course the SiS755 chipset looks t be REALLY good, but there is only 1 board out right now and it is kinda lacking.
 

BenSkywalker

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Oct 9, 1999
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Zivic

Why don't you pick up a Soyo K8USA MOBO?

Do they have a version with better sound? The reason why I'm concerned so much about sound is that I don't like any of the available audio solutions for stand alone cards. CL has given me more problems then any other company in terms of driver issues which is a MAJOR pet peeve of mine, and the other solutions simply don't warrant the price of entry IMO(not cost, all things associated). I was a big fan of Aureal, and until nVidia gets their sound cards out or unless someone else steps up to the plate with a stand alone board to rival CL's hardware I don't want to deal with an external solution at this point in time.

It's expensive,

The price doesn't bother me in the least, if they had one with better sound for more I'd certainly consider it. If I wanted I could drop $5K building my new rig, but allowing myself to go down the 'spare no expense road' gets to be real expensive when so many shiny new toys pop up every few months. That said, last time building a rig I decided to save a few bucks on the motherboard and my wife has made it quite clear to me that I'm not to hold back at all on the mobo this time(spending an additional couple hundred bucks over a low end solution is worth it to me to avoid any headaches, even moreso to her cuz she has to listen to me bitch about it :p - she was trying to get me to buy a new mobo within a week of buying my last one, had it for almost a year now).

DAPUNISHER-

I read the review of it@OCWorkbench last night and it looks like a great chipset and board.

It looks like a nice board, I like all of the options for adjustment on the board, too bad the sound is iffy. If not for that, I think I would take that over the Chaintech. That is certainly the type of board I'm looking for though.

I've seen post by users of various nF150 boards that show the lack of a functioning PCI lock so it's be prudent before purchasing a paticular nF150 based board, to try to ascertain if it does indeed have a functioning PCI lock or not.

Absolutely, from what I've read the Chaintech board that I have leaning towards does have a PCI lock.

Marlin-

Do they have a high end version of that board, perhaps using the SiS, nForce3 or ALi chipset? Only two IDE and two SATA ports is a bit lacking IMO, and no PCI lock. Other then those issues, it looks good. Not worried about the cost.
 

Moonbeam

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Nov 24, 1999
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I'm working on the MSI K8T Neo at the moment. 4 ide drives and RAID 0n 2 SATA and 2 IDE on a third IDE controler.
 

wicktron

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Aug 15, 2002
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If you want superme overclocking, get the Shuttle AN50R because the VDIMM runs through the +5v rail, meaning, should you choose to mod your board, have up to 5v of VDIMM [which at 5v would likely kill your CPU, mobo, and RAM :)].
For light OC'ing or anything else, Asus K8V is a great choice.