Cutting edge Athlon board

[SHENDERS20622]

Haven't been here for about 2 years and need to build a new computer. Could you give me any recommendations on some of the new motherboards out today. I am way behind on this stuff.Last machine built was in 2000.

 

[Wentelteefje]

For AMD, there are some chipsets developed, but the most succesful (and overall most performant) ones are based on the nVidia nForce4 chipset... They come in four (five?) flavors:

nForce4-4x: The budget one, currently most used for Socket 754 motherboards... These boards generally lack features like FireWire and the nVidia Firewall, but do come with Gigabit LAN most of the time...

nForce4: The vanilla offering, there are a lot of motherboards out there with this chipset... You have some Socket 754 mobo's with it, but these are generally preserved for the Socket 939 line... The boards feature the Firewall normally, but dare to come without FireWire as well...

nForce4 Ultra: The full-fledged nForce4 variant and the most expensive one (without taking SLI) for single video card configurations... These boards have all the features you want (some have a dual Gigabit LAN integrated etc.)...

nForce4 SLI: This was nVidia's former high-end offering... It is a nForce4 Ultra (with its features as well), but only differs in its possibility to take advantage of SLI, so two video cards can be used for maximum performance... These two cards divide the PCIe 16x available, so both has the speed of 8x at its disposal... This causes no inferior prestations however, as even current high-end graphics cards don't saturate the bus...

Then you still have the nForce4 SLI 16x... While this may be considered as another flavor, it's just an evolution of the genuine SLI version... The big difference is that this one offers two lanes with PCIe 16x... These boards aren't widely available yet, and don't really offer a huge bonus over the regular ones, except for their price...

All these chipsets are orientated for use with PCI-Express graphics cards... They don't offer DDR2 compatibility however... That is preserved for Socket AM2, due to halfway '06...

EDIT: You still have offerings (other chipsets) from other manufacturers, such as ULi, Via and ATI, but the nForce4 variants are the ones used mostly...

 

[Wentelteefje]

Good motherboards on these chipsets are:


Socket 754: AMD Athlon 64, Turion 64 (on some models) and Sempron (64)

Asus K8N4-E Deluxe (nForce4): It has a lot of features and is stable... It is PCI-Express only...

Abit NV8 (nForce4-4x): PCIe as well, this board had problems due to its initial BIOS, but those seem like they have been ironed out (currently version 1.2)...

EPoX EP-8NPA SLI: The first motherboard for Socket 754 that offers SLI! EPoX really proved themselves with this one...


Socket 939: AMD Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon FX and Opteron

EPoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra (nForce4 Ultra): It is among the most popular with enthusiasts, thanks to its great overclocking potential and options... It is one of the cheaper nForce4 Ultra boards as well...

DFI LanParty nF4-D Ultra (nForce4 Ultra): This is the overclocking board by excellence... It offers the most tweaking options ever seen in a BIOS, and has a very high level of performpance overall... Because of the many options, this is however not a n00b-board, and the incompatibilities with RAM and power supplies aren't that fortunate as well...

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (nForce4 Ultra): A board that was one of the first around, and has received a lot of awards etc. of reviews all around the world... It is a great board, very performant as well, it has a lot of features and overclocks pretty well (without offering the tweaking options like the ones above, however)...

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe: The first SLI motherboard available, and a very popular one... It has proven to be very stable, but not that overclocker friendly...

EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLI: A favourite among enthusiasts... Feature-wise about the same as the Ultra version...

Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe: The first one "available" on the new SLI 16x chipset... This one apparently still has some BIOS quirks... It is a very fast motherboard however, but comes at a very high price as well...

 

[SHENDERS20622]

Wow! Thanks I will try to digest this information.........I have been out of the loop!.

 

[Wentelteefje]

What kind of build were you thinking of?

 

[SHENDERS20622]

Oh just something that can crunch lots of video programs without bogging down too bad.I suspect I will use a sata drive or two,unless there is something better for speed out there now.Don't even know which Athlon to get anymore and as far as video and chipsets I'm lost.Maybe you could recommend some equipment,something you would buy if you were building a very strong system.Overclocking,which I have done in the past, old Celerons to 555mhz etc is not an issue.
Thanks for all your info so far.

 

[SHENDERS20622]

Oh I forgot. It has to be VERY quiet. Very.

 

[Wentelteefje]

Could you tell me a budget?

 

[SHENDERS20622]

Keep it under 1200.00

 

[Wentelteefje]

Deal, I'll look up for it... Are you a fan of shiny cases, or preferably sobre?

EDIT: You need a monitor too probably? LCD?

 

[Wentelteefje]

I need to ask... What do you need?

operating system
case
motherboard
processor
memory
graphics card
sound card
optical drive (1? 2?)
hard disks
power supply
monitor
speakers
keyboard/mouse

This is about it, or are there parts you already have?

 

[SHENDERS20622]

I need
motherboard
processor
quiet h/s fan
hdds
memory
dvd burner
I think I have the rest....

Oh video card

 

[Wentelteefje]

How about the case and the power supply?

 

[SHENDERS20622]

Already have a Lan Li and supply450 i think

 

[Wentelteefje]

This seems like the perfect setup for your needs...

Abit AN8-Ultra - $ 129.00 Currently out of stock, but a very good motherboard that has a passive chipset cooler... No noise...
AMD Opteron 165 - $ 345.00 23 bucks more than a X2 3800+, but it features twice the cache and is an overclocking miracle (with samples hitting as high as 3.0GHz)...
G.SKILL 2x 1GB DDR PC3200 CL2.5 - $ 169.00 No ultra-tight timings, but very good RAM at a very good price...
eVGA GeForce 7800GT 256MB - $ 275.00 Thé video card for its price... This one has VIVO capacities BTW...
2x Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA150 - $ 202.00 They're not the fastest around, but they sure are VERY quiet... You can couple 'em up in RAID for better prestations however, therefore I'd advise two...
NEC ND-3550A - $ 43.99 Pick the one that suits your case... They're all great...
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro - $ 34.99 It may seem big and bulky, but it's undeniably one of the best coolers for Socket 939... Very silent as well...

Total (without shipping): $ 1198.98 Looks pretty right to me...

 

[SHENDERS20622]

Thank you for researching these items.You really spent a lot of time on this.I will use your recommendations.

 

[Wentelteefje]

No problem mate... There are plenty of reviews about these components on the internet BTW...