finally, a nforce3 skt 939 board

[mdegner]

finally, i was able to get a nforce 3 socket 939 motheboard. got my tracking number and noticed it went out of stock just after i ordered it. i'm hoping my system should scream once i get an fx-53 in it next week. anyone have any suggestions on the best round ide cables to get? i would like something that lights up or has some cool color in it.

 

[Mik3y]

if u got the gigabyte board, HOLY CRAP THAT THING IS EXPENSIVE!!!! i dont see y anyone would get it over the k8t800 pro board whcih is nearly $100 cheaper. the gigabyte board was $235ish on newegg.

 

[mdegner]

yes, i did get the gigabyte board. i've been using gigabyte on my last few upgrades and have never had a problem. it was a little expensive but when a cpu costs $820, $232 doesnt seem like a whole lot. and i've never really liked the via chipsets i've used in the past.

 

[Mik3y]

haha ok. well, do u know wut color cables you want to get? newegg.com has plenty of round ide cables of different types.

 

[ncage]

Originally posted by: mdegner
yes, i did get the gigabyte board. i've been using gigabyte on my last few upgrades and have never had a problem. it was a little expensive but when a cpu costs $820, $232 doesnt seem like a whole lot. and i've never really liked the via chipsets i've used in the past.

Via has got a lot better with their chipsets since the old days. Yes their chipsets use to really suck but like i have a board with the kt266a and this was a great chipset for its time.

Then again i love nvdia in general. Great Hardware and great drivers eventhough they aren't winning the video card race right now i really still lilke them. Look at what they did with SoundStorm...and this was there very FIRST try at sound cards. Awesome if you ask me.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: ncage
Via has got a lot better with their chipsets since the old days. Yes their chipsets use to really suck but like i have a board with the kt266a and this was a great chipset for its time.

Then again i love nvdia in general. Great Hardware and great drivers eventhough they aren't winning the video card race right now i really still lilke them. Look at what they did with SoundStorm...and this was there very FIRST try at sound cards. Awesome if you ask me.

couldn't have said it better myself, i'm an nVidia fanboy at heart, although some people tell me VIA's KT600 is more stable than the nForce 2 400 Ultra (they kinda are right) i always bring up three things, drivers, SoundStorm, and dual-channel memory. and nVidia's graphics cards shine in their own sections, they still have the best OpenGL performance i have ever seen (they take it even further with Quadro boards) and i'd take nView over HydraVision anyday.

 

[mdegner]

yeah....good evaulation. i've owned both nvidia and ati video cards, and both nforce and via motherboards. really these days its all about what you prefer. i've been using ati and via for a little over a year now and will be switching back to a nforce board and a 6800 ultra. i've just had fewer issues with nvidia products. but all in all most things these days are just about what brand you prefer.

 

[golgotha]

Originally posted by: mdegner
finally, i was able to get a nforce 3 socket 939 motheboard. got my tracking number and noticed it went out of stock just after i ordered it. i'm hoping my system should scream once i get an fx-53 in it next week. anyone have any suggestions on the best round ide cables to get? i would like something that lights up or has some cool color in it.

You bastard, you stole my board!

When I added it to my basket it came up as sold out. Just like that, a matter of seconds and I lost out. Now I have to wait until next week. arrgh

That Gigabyte board sold out in ONE day. No wonder it's so damn expensive.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: golgotha
You bastard, you stole my board!

When I added it to my basket it came up as sold out. Just like that, a matter of seconds and I lost out. Now I have to wait until next week. arrgh

That Gigabyte board sold out in ONE day. No wonder it's so damn expensive.

lmao! hahaha

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
if u got the gigabyte board, HOLY CRAP THAT THING IS EXPENSIVE!!!! i dont see y anyone would get it over the k8t800 pro board whcih is nearly $100 cheaper. the gigabyte board was $235ish on newegg.

I personally like the looks of the K8T800 Pro even more than the NForce3... I have just always loved VIA chipsets for Athlons... NEVER a problem... honestly!

 

[alent1234]

i'm curious as to how it will perform. I'm looking at a socket 754 CPU in august to upgrade my P3. I've thought about 939, but so far everyone says there is no performance difference.

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: alent1234
i'm curious as to how it will perform. I'm looking at a socket 754 CPU in august to upgrade my P3. I've thought about 939, but so far everyone says there is no performance difference.

actually, there is a performance difference. the socket 939's are faster. the 3500+ is actually hte 3400+, but since since the 3400+ made its move to socket 939, it became 3500+ because the new socket actually increases performance from the 754. also, because of socket 939, amd was able to decrease their L2 cache to 512 and it thus allowed amd to keep performance with 1mb L2 cache. to me, socket 939 made a pretty big leap in performance.

 

[alent1234]

a few percentage points is not enough for me to pay that much of a premium right now. I saw the benchmarks at Tom's and AT and the difference is only a few FPS at the same rating.

 

[mechBgon]

This is the block diagram for the Gigabyte: click here

Quite the load of PCI-bound stuff there... :frown:

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
This is the block diagram for the Gigabyte: click here

Quite the load of PCI-bound stuff there... :frown:

No more a load than any other chipset. Is this only a one chip solution or a two chip solution?

With hypertransport at 800 to 1000 the pci to southbridge is no longer a bottleneck like it used to be

Actually in some test the 3500+ 939 is slower than the 3400+ so it is basically a wash except for price. I am waiting until the end of July beginning of August for prices to hopefully come down to sane levels for the 939 stuff. No more a load than any other chipset. Is this only a one chip solution or a two chip solution?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: michaelpatrick33

Originally posted by: mechBgon
This is the block diagram for the Gigabyte: click here

Quite the load of PCI-bound stuff there... :frown:

No more a load than any other chipset.

I don't think you are quite grasping the issue here... the soldered-down RAID and 1394b and gigabit controllers are not part of the chipset. They're soldered-down PCI devices. The gigabit network controller alone can eat the entire PCI bus's bandwidth all by itself and come looking for seconds. The 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus has a total bandwidth of 132MB/second in theory, and about 120MB/sec in practice, judging by my benchmarks with my SCSI cards.

So if you really got several of these hungry devices redlined up at once... Not Nice. :evil:

 

[Zebo]

I don't think you are quite grasping the issue here
-----------------
I know I'm not. Insane price premiums for indescerable performance differences over soltions costing 90% less. Geeks version of Hardware penis envy thread?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I don't think you are quite grasping the issue here
-----------------
I know I'm not. Insane price premiums for indescerable performance differences over soltions costing 90% less. Geeks version of Hardware penis envy thread?

If you're aiming that at me, as a criticism, realize that my employer has a ~$900 gigabit switch for me to plug my nF3 250Gb board into at work, and I'm not taking a half-baked, PCI-bound gigabit solution in place of the real deal, especially not when the half-baked gigabit solution is simultaneously clogging the PCI bus that my SCSI cards are trying to use. I have a half-baked PCI-bound gigaNIC now, on my K8V Deluxe.

 

[Zebo]

Not at all mech Just the whole thread is perplexing, 939's, $250 single skt mobos... stuff like that. Where people are jumping into this horrendously expensive hardware totally deviod of any cost/benefit analysis.

 

[mechBgon]

Oh, gotcha