Best mobo for AMD Athlon? 64 X2?

[MilitaryIntelligence]

Hi guys, I'm looking to build a nice gaming/multimedia pc. I need some recommendations for a good motherboard to support the AMD Athlon? 64 X2 4800+ with PCI Express and atleast 4 memory slots that is expandable to 4GB. Thanks in advance!


I have a few questions as well. Is there much difference between the NVIDIA nForce and NVIDIA nForce Ultra? Also, would you go with ABIT or Gigabyte? My current board is an old Gigabyte GA-7DX+. It has worked well for several years, but I'm not really impressed by it.

 

[keeleysam]

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum

OR

GIGABYTE GA-K8NXP-SLI

 

[TankGuys]

I PMed you also, but I'll post here too...

If you haven't already bought the 4800, I wouldn't. It's your money obviously, and it certainly is the highest speed chip out there, but the performance increase you get over the 4400 (Or even the 3800 for that matter) comes at such a huge price premium (over 100% more expensive). Unless money is no object, it's just not a good value at all. I know that's a bit OT from your post, but I thought it was an important point to make.

 

[MilitaryIntelligence]

Thanks TankGuys! I was thinking the same thing as well. I haven't been keeping track with the latest and greatest technology so I'm not really sure what to get. I'm leaning more towards the 4400 since its more than $300 cheaper. I have about $2000 to spend on a case, cpu, motherboard, video card, and ram. I don't need the absolute best thing out there, but I want something that will blow away my Athlon XP 1700+

 

[TankGuys]

Originally posted by: MilitaryIntelligence
Thanks TankGuys! I was thinking the same thing as well. I haven't been keeping track with the latest and greatest technology so I'm not really sure what to get. I'm leaning more towards the 4400 since its more than $300 cheaper. I have about $2000 to spend on a case, cpu, motherboard, video card, and ram. I don't need the absolute best thing out there, but I want something that will blow away my Athlon XP 1700+

Yes, definitely steer away from the 4800 then. If this is any indication, we have sold 1, yes ONE 4800. Compared to a myraid of 4400's/3800's. We also haven't sold a single 4600... well maybe one, I don't remember now.

I will have to check, I saw a hot deal thread somewhere on a great price on the 7800, I'll see if I can track that down for you, that will save you another good bit of cash. If you can get that at a good price, that's another good way to spend the savings you'd have by not doing the 4800...

 

[Rudee]

I highly recommend the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium. It uses a heatpipe, thus no noisy chipset fans like other boards and it's a top performer.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

What I recommend after having built about 30 A64 systems to date...

For overall best value/stability/performance/oc-ability:

EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra

For a good stable platform and overclocking is not the primary concern:

Chaintech VNF4 Ultra
ASUS A8N-E (be prepared to replace the h/s fan though...)
AOpen nCK804Ua-LFS

Definitely go for the Ultra version of the chipset. You get SATA 3.0Gig support. It does make a difference (not a huge one), but considering the biggest bottleneck in your system is the harddisk, any improvement here is positive.

EDITED to say that I have gone to great lengths to avoid anything ABIT. Every time I try one of their boards, it turns out pretty bad--typically design issues, but their QC is top quality -- not that it matters if the stupid board won't work correctly anyway. I have been building PCs since 1989, so I have some experience on this one.

MSI is very good if you get a nondefective board. Their designs are typically top notch, but their QC is so bad that I was in a situation about two years ago where 1 out of 3 MSI boards were defective out of the box.

 

[MilitaryIntelligence]

I ended up going with the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium and Athlon X2 3800. The heatpipe was a nice feature as I'm on the 3rd chipset fan on my current board. Thanks for all the quick input guys!

 

[doc2345]

Good choice......... Hope you ordered it from Tankguys!

 

[uOpt]

You asked about ABIT. I don't buy ABIT anymore, at least as long as they use their "uGuru" chip to do temperature monitoring and other stuff, which requires you to limit your moniting software severely.