Motherboard features

[genki9000]

ok, i've been doing my research but still dont know much about motherboards.i just want a mobo for gaming, nothing special. i was thinking:
ASUS A8N-E MOTHER BOARD ------ $196 ------ nFORCE 4 ULTRA/HT1000/S939/4DDR/PCIEx/GIGALAN/RAID 0,1/ATX

or

ASUS A8V-E-DELUXE MOTHER BOARD ----- $202 ------- K8T890/S939/1000FSB/Gb LAN/2x1394/DDR400/PCI-EX/ATX/AUDIO

i dont know what half of the things listed at the end are, so could you guys tell me what are the basic things i need in a mobo, and what ones are just hype to avoid, thx

ps, ive got a network card, but not a sound card, so it will obviously need on board sound (which i think they do )

thx guys

 

[GML3G0]

whoa... Abit AN8 Ultra.

Just as good as the DFI IMO...

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Well there's no such thing as a "Mobo for gaming." First thing I suggest you do is read this thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1639727&enterthread=y

If I had a choice between an A8N-E and an A8V-E I'd go for the A8N-E becuase the A8V-E is known to be quite buggy, and there seemed to be instability issues and compatibility issues with the 6XXX series graphics cards...but it's been out on the market for several months now anyways so those should be worked out by now.

Now I have a question: Are you canadian? Or are you just going to a really crappy store? . The prices are quite inflated. I beleive you can get the A8N-E for about $110-$120 at www.newegg.com.

Hmm, might be a good idea if I explained to you what these "options" are:
nFORCE 4 ULTRA/HT1000/S939/4DDR/PCIEx/GIGALAN/RAID 0,1/ATX

nFORCE 4 ULTRA - This is the chipset which the board uses. See thread I linked to for more info.
HT1000 - Well .... HT is HyperTransport
S939 - This stands for Socket 939, and all this means is that you have to buy a Socket 939 processor
4DDR - Supports 4 sticks of DDR ram
PCIEx - Supports PCIe graphics cards. Not sure where the x came from
GIGALAN - Supports gigabit ethernet
RAID 0,1 - RAID is a way you can make several harddrives act in a certain way together. For example: Raid 0 is taking 2 harddrives and making one read/write half the data and the other reading/writing teh other half of the data. It's supposed to speed up your loading times and such but the performance difference is minimal, and the failuire rate is twice (becuase half the data is on one drive and the other half is on another drive, so if one drive fails all your files are screwed. Raid 1 is the opposite. The file you're writing is basically written to both drives.
ATX - This is your form factor. The mobo size is ATX, so you need an ATX case (or something larger than ATX) to fit into it.

Same for the other A8V. VIA K8T890 is your chipset. Hmm, only thing I gotta ask you is do you need firewire? A8V-E's got firewire (as well as a wireless network adapter) but A8N-E doesn't.

Other alternatives I would consider is the ABIT as mentioned above (it's got passive cooling so it wont' be as loud as the A8N-E), or the EPoX 9NPA+Ultra.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[genki9000]

thx guys, and The Pentium Guy, no im not canadian or going to a crappy shop, im Australian and for u the prices would be $150 and $155.
How do i go about finding out my case size? We bought a package from Harvey Norman, stupidest thing ever.
And ive never used firewire before, so i dont think i ever will use it