Board/System recommendation - Abit / Dfi / Jetway

[kyp275]

I'm building a new system in a few weeks, and right now I'm just starting to gather up the pieces. Kinda stuck on a few parts though, and the motherboard is one of them.

I'm pretty sure I'll end up getting one of these 3:

Jetway 939GT4-SLI
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D

I'm looking for some decenet OC, though nothing too extreme. Stability is also major issue. I'm going with watercooling this time around, which brings up a problem with spacing since the chipset is located right behind the pci-e slots, and there's not enough room for the block with the video card in the slot Does anyone know if the second slot on the Abit board can function at a full 16x lane? or will it only do 8x like on the other boards? and are there any real performance hit at all?

here are the rest of the stuff I'm planning on getting, feel free to offer any alternative suggestions:

Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2xMaxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB
eVGA Geforce 7800GTX
PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W
BenQ DW1640
Antec P180
BenQ 1640
NEC 3540
Audigy 2 ZS Gamer's
memory = undecided

any suggestion would be appreciated

NEC 3540A

 

[Tambora]

You may wish to consider the regular Abit AN8sli. Has the heatpipe cooling for the Nforce chip which is a lower profile if a waterblock is an issue. Works well on my AN8 Ultra. Of course the board color is different and the AN8sli does not have the Fatality's drive bay accessory.

 

[imported_killuminati]

Jetway 939GT4-SLI :

Originally posted by: Tambora
You may wish to consider the regular Abit AN8sli. Has the heatpipe cooling for the Nforce chip which is a lower profile if a waterblock is an issue. Works well on my AN8 Ultra. Of course the board color is different and the AN8sli does not have the Fatality's drive bay accessory.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2506

btw the 3vga and Jetway mobo are teh same .
Jetway is suppliing OEM mobo to 3vga .

Get the Special offer nowadays from 3vga , mobo free with graohics card .
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130234

Peace & ciao !!!

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: kypd275
I'm building a new system in a few weeks, and right now I'm just starting to gather up the pieces. Kinda stuck on a few parts though, and the motherboard is one of them.

I'm pretty sure I'll end up getting one of these 3:

Jetway 939GT4-SLI
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D

I'm looking for some decenet OC, though nothing too extreme. Stability is also major issue. I'm going with watercooling this time around, which brings up a problem with spacing since the chipset is located right behind the pci-e slots, and there's not enough room for the block with the video card in the slot Does anyone know if the second slot on the Abit board can function at a full 16x lane? or will it only do 8x like on the other boards? and are there any real performance hit at all?

here are the rest of the stuff I'm planning on getting, feel free to offer any alternative suggestions:

Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2xMaxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB
eVGA Geforce 7800GTX
PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W
BenQ DW1640
Antec P180
BenQ 1640
NEC 3540
Audigy 2 ZS Gamer's
memory = undecided

any suggestion would be appreciated

NEC 3540A

Get the eVGA version of the Jetway board. Great bundle going on right now--you buy the GTX video card, but the mobo will be FREE. Deal at NewEgg.

Chuck the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer and get the Bluegears HDA 7.1 Digital X-Mystique. Look it up on NewEgg. Much higher quality sound -- especially in analog, and far more stable drivers. Everything else looks good. Really nice PSU you are going after.

Memory recommendation would be OCZ Plat Rev. 2 PC3200. Will overclock decently, and is TCC5 based. Secondarily you could opt for the OCZ Gold or Gold VX, but be darn sure your board can support voltages in excess of 3.2v vDIMM and you are prepared to used active cooling pointed at the DIMM slots--if you want a 1:1 overclock at 2-2-2-7 timings, that is.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Chuck the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer and get the Bluegears HDA 7.1 Digital X-Mystique. Look it up on NewEgg. Much higher quality sound -- especially in analog, and far more stable drivers. Everything else looks good. Really nice PSU you are going after.


Thats not an accurate or true statement at all!

Better than the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer....nope!!
As good--possibly~!!

 

[tropic]

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Chuck the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer and get the Bluegears HDA 7.1 Digital X-Mystique. Look it up on NewEgg. Much higher quality sound -- especially in analog, and far more stable drivers. Everything else looks good. Really nice PSU you are going after.

Thats not an accurate or true statement at all!

Better than the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer....nope!!
As good--possibly~!!

I have them both... honestly cannot tell the difference between them on my Klipsch speakers, but I like the feeling that I gave money to one of Creative's competitors. Realtime Dolby encoding is nice, but the fact that it converts from digital to analog to do it is kinda upseting. You should also use the updated drivers for the X-Mystique Gold.

Edit: BTW, is the "Gamer" edition I originally bought just the 2 ZS with a bunch of aging games included?

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: tropic

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Chuck the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer and get the Bluegears HDA 7.1 Digital X-Mystique. Look it up on NewEgg. Much higher quality sound -- especially in analog, and far more stable drivers. Everything else looks good. Really nice PSU you are going after.

Thats not an accurate or true statement at all!

Better than the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer....nope!!
As good--possibly~!!

I have them both... honestly cannot tell the difference between them on my Klipsch speakers, but I like the feeling that I gave money to one of Creative's competitors. Realtime Dolby encoding is nice, but the fact that it converts from digital to analog to do it is kinda upseting. You should also use the updated drivers for the X-Mystique Gold.

Edit: BTW, is the "Gamer" edition I originally bought just the 2 ZS with a bunch of aging games included?

Yup. The "Gamer" is hardware-wise no different than the Audigy2 ZS. Just the bundle.

I have had the Audigy2 ZS, the BlueGears card, and a number of Chaintech AV-710's. I can tell you that sound wise, I CAN tell the difference between the Audigy2 ZS and the BlueGears card and even the VIA Envy24HT-S based card (when it is using the Wolfson DAC in 2.1 mode). The analog sound is subjectively (to me) better than the Creative card.

Even the lowly Chaintech AV-710 has toslink right on the card, no accessories needed. So, where is the toslink output on that Creative card? Gotta look reeeeeeeel close, oops, not there. lol.

The driver issues that Creative cards CONTINUE to have is well documented and I think a simple search of the net will reveal what I am talking about without getting into the argument here.

And yeah, it feels much better to give the money to someone besides not-so-Creative Labs. Would you tolerate a video card manufacturer that re-released minor revisions to their same basic architecture for the past six years and still could not get it totally perfect after, lets say, the third year?

 

[JEDIYoda]

Wow!!

Since when is Creative labs the bad guy???

 

[Aenslead]

Abit Fatal1ty motherboards are WINNERS. No matter where you look for reviews, you always find delighted editors.

They are TOP of the line.

 

[tropic]

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Since when is Creative labs the bad guy???

Creative Labs isn't the Devil, I just won't buy anything from them. Here's a shortened list of the reasons. Some are pretty petty, but I don't think Creative Labs is doing anything good for PC audio anymore.

1. They produce hardware that's pretty high-quality, but I don't like their drivers. Lackluster performance and bugs go too long unaddressed by Creative's driver team.
2. I don't like having to install a three-year-old driver just to be eligible to install the latest driver from their site.
3. Creative's drivers and bundled audio applications have a pretty high opinion of themselves. Sometimes they think they're entitled to 100% of you CPU time.
4. When people complained that their SB Live! cards weren't playing nice on their PCI bus, Creative had nothing to say. I suppose an admission that their card wasn't designed to truly share hardware IRQs would have had an immediate ill effect on sales, but pretending the issue didn't exist was pretty low. Jeez, at least try to blame chipset manufacturers or something.
5. (probably the most petty reason of all) It pissed me off when Creative added DRM to their latest downloadable driver and then pulled the non-DRM version. I don't plan to pirate music or anything, but I'm still glad I saved 1.84.50. Kinda sad, considering the driver's over a year old.
6. Consumer-level PC audio has been pretty stagnant so far in this millennium. I haven't seen any innovation from Creative in a long time--they've been offering the same stuff for years, and they don't seem too concerned with making sure it works as well as it could. I LIKE to see new technologies and new companies make names for themselves--that's the reason I'm using an X-Mystique Gold instead of my old Audigy 2 ZS.

@ChiPCGuy:
I cannot tell the difference between the two cards--they both sound fine to me when I'm listening to music. I was kinda insulted when my brother threw out the Audigy 2 ZS I gave him, but I guess he liked the Bluegears card better. Maybe if I blew $2000 on an Energy sound system like he did I would see a difference, too.

@OP
Sorry for ranting in your thread. I also would recommend the AN8 Ultra SLI over the Fatal1ty--there's nothing the Fatal1ty offers that you would miss. For an overclocker the DFI might be a better fit--nothing OC's better, and you'll have fun getting it setup just perfect... or beating it into the ground. TCCD or UTT BH-5 memory modules are fun to play with (or CH-5 if you're willing to pipe 3.5v into your RAM), but I'm happier with 2 x 1GB sticks at Cas2-3-2-5 1T for Photoshop, multi-tasking, and other more-is-better stuff.

 

[kyp275]

Originally posted by: tropic
TCCD or UTT BH-5 memory modules are fun to play with (or CH-5 if you're willing to pipe 3.5v into your RAM), but I'm happier with 2 x 1GB sticks at Cas2-3-2-5 1T for Photoshop, multi-tasking, and other more-is-better stuff.

forgot to mention that I'm also looking into 2 x 1GB for memory ^^;; any suggestions?