Found good price point processor... what about AMD Athlon 64 motherboard?

[Stealth1024]

I'm looking at the AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Retail Box with Fan) for $298.00 and it appears to be the best performance/cost ratio for me.

What's a good motherboard here? I DESPISE onboad audio and video but I'm guessing I will have to live with audio and disable it. (!@#$) I want onboard 1gpbs LAN and SATA RAID along with other healthy features I'm sure you'll enlighten me to.

It appears to be a choice between the VIA K8T800 mb's and the NVIDIA nForce3 150 mb's:

Abit K8V-MAX3 (VIA K8T800) $209.00
Asus K8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800) $150.00
Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP (nForce3 150) $188.00
Gigabyte GA-K8NPro (nForce 150) $122.00
Gigabyte GA-K8VT800M (nForce 150) $97.00
MSI K8T NEO-FIS2R (VIA K8T800) $148.00

Big price range here. I'm looking for good performance and stability here even at a higher cost and I personally like Asus in general.

What are your thoughts? Usually I find a community standard evolves that turns out to be the best bang for the buck in the enthusiast market (A7V anyone? alright that's a little old... lol)

 

[Stealth1024]

"The one worry that is worth taking into account is the fact that AMD will significantly revamp their Athlon 64 line over the course of 2004 with the introduction of Socket-939 CPUs. Although AMD has committed to supplying Socket-754 and 940 CPUs throughout 2004, those looking to hold onto their motherboards and upgrade their CPUs beyond the next 12 months will want to wait until the Socket-939 platforms hit in the next few months. "

So will this new socket utilize a new chipset(s)?

Perhaps waiting is the best course... My 1GHz PIII notebook is getting just too slow for the stuff I do in college. A desktop would be great except I can't find a 15" WUXGA 1920x1200 pixel LCD like I can get from dell on the notebook. Why torture me on this?! arg.

 

[Viper96720]

Some of those boards are cheaper at Newegg
MSI is $126
Asus is $137
Abit is $164
You forgot ALI and SIS they have chipsets also. I got an Asus K8V and I like it.

The new socket could use the same chipset as the FX version. It's almost the same cpu they just made it so you can use unbuffered ram. But new chipsets are coming out. Via KT-880 Nforce3 250

 

[Stealth1024]

Originally posted by: Viper96720
Some of those boards are cheaper at Newegg MSI is $126 Asus is $137 Abit is $164 You forgot ALI and SIS they have chipsets also. I got an Asus K8V and I like it. The new socket could use the same chipset as the FX version. It's almost the same cpu they just made it so you can use unbuffered ram. But new chipsets are coming out. Via KT-880 Nforce3 250

VIA and NForce are the only chipset makers I tend to take seriously... I've had horrible experiences with Sis and ALI personally...


What does the KT-880 and Nforce3 250 offer?

 

[jdogg707]

The newer chipsets will mostl ikely be focused on the Scoket 939 chips with a variant for the Socket 754 which will be pushed into the low end of the market. Right now, I would get hte Via chipset due to it's full support for Hyper Transport over the nForce3 150 (1600MHz v. 600MHZ).

I would get the Asus K8V Deluxe as it has a great feature set, good price, and is an extremely fast motherboard.

 

[Markfw]

Check my sig.... I do not want the speed cripped nforce boards. SIS is OK, but doesn't have all the features I want.

 

[Stealth1024]

Do these chipsets take the 1gb ethernet controller and SATA RAID controller off of the PCI bus?

 

[Pistolero]

bump

 

[NFS4]

If you want cheap and stable (and don't particularly care for overclocking options), it doesn't get any better than this:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=1&sumit=Go&description=755%2Da&searchdepa=1

$91 shipped