Gigabyte GA-8KNXP Ultra-64

[Krusher]

Has anyone seen the Ultra-64 version of Gigabyte's latest mobo yet for sale?

I'm wondering about how much. (Besides LOTS.)

I may either go for the U-64, or wait for the Pentium-775 CPUs to come out. But with the U-64, I can reuse most of my existing hardware.

Thanx

 

[Krusher]

Originally posted by: Krusher
Has anyone seen the Ultra-64 version of Gigabyte's latest mobo yet for sale?

It seems that the flood gates have opened on this mobo. As of 6/19, several places are selling it. Now the decision time, do I wait for one of the newer processors--and get a better SCSI interface then, or take a chance on the 8KNXP Ultra-64 now.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Krusher

Originally posted by: Krusher
Has anyone seen the Ultra-64 version of Gigabyte's latest mobo yet for sale?

It seems that the flood gates have opened on this mobo. As of 6/19, several places are selling it. Now the decision time, do I wait for one of the newer processors--and get a better SCSI interface then, or take a chance on the 8KNXP Ultra-64 now.

It has SCSI onboard? Talk to me, Spotty Where have you seen these for sale?


edit: oh wait, it's (aaack) Socket478 Still a very interesting board, but I would need to drill some holes in it to get my Socket754 processor in there

 

[Krusher]

So you'd rather go for 64-bit than onboard SCSI in other words? I don't remember what Socket754 is; maybe that's Athalon. Is it really worth 64 bit when no apps are 64 bit and you need a different version of the OS correct?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Krusher
So you'd rather go for 64-bit than onboard SCSI in other words? I don't remember what Socket754 is; maybe that's Athalon. Is it really worth 64 bit when no apps are 64 bit and you need a different version of the OS correct?

At this point it depends what you want to use the computer for. Even in 32-bit mode, the Athlon64's seem to be the better pick for gaming (all other factors being equal). They've also got good all-around performance, and my testing found that they're exceptionally good at the mundane task of antivirus scanning (think business/server users here). The Pentium4 and Xeon seem to be at their best in situations where the clockspeed is important and "muscle" is not, such as video encoding.

I have a SCSI-equipped Athlon64 (Socket754) at work, running Windows 2000 Pro (32-bit, of course) that I'm pretty fond of, although the motherboard is getting ousted in favor of an nForce3 250Gb-based board at some point, and I will probably switch to WinXP 64-Bit Edition when it comes out too. But if you want a decked-out Pentium4 system, that Gigabyte looks like the most wickedly-equipped Pentium4 board yet, so if you have the money and want PCI-X and SCSI, there you go

 

[Krusher]

Cool; thanks for the info. I see that Asus and Gigabyte released some new mobo's as well in the Intel line. Part of me would love to give AMD a try; maybe I'll give it a short wait (like a month) and see if anything newer AMD comes out w/ SCSI for example. With the Ultra-64 mobo I could re-use most of my components easily, and I'd wait awhile until Intel stops the Prescott line to upgrade my non-HT 2.4/533 Intel (OC'd to 3.15 currently).

The 64 bit processors are tempting; that was going to be my upgrade path from an older Dell 866 Slot 1. After awhile I said enough! and had to give in.

 

[mechBgon]

Remember that you can have all the SCSI you want, with any board that has PCI slots Ultra160 cards start at $35 and a dual-channel Ultra320 PCI/PCI-X SCSI card starts at $115 including cable & terminator. For a single drive, even a 32-bit Ultra160 card will give any drive on the market enough breathing room, although PCI-X is still desirable from a technical point of view.

 

[Krusher]

I have two U320 drives on a U160 card now (15K RPM); I might add a third in the future. PCI extreme would take care of that bottleneck just as well as integrated U320; once someone makes a SCSI PCI extreme card for it. In the mean time, I had no idea that Gigabyte released a flurry of next-gen Intel mobo's. It all comes down to...how much do you want to spend?