MotherBoard Help

iceshock

Junior Member
May 23, 2004
20
0
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I am seriously going into diy right now, and that i need help figuring out which motherboard would be best for athlon xp 2800+
Anyway, can someone give me some tips into what motherboard shud i use. And Please i need to know information about the motherbaord as i am quite usless about them. Can someone please explain to me the parts of a motherboard and what it does ? For e.g. raid and such .... Thanks loads..
 

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,057
67
91
Your question's a bit wide open and undefined. You need to answer a couple of questions for yourself, first. The most important ones are whether you want go with an AMD or Intel CPU, and which model. Everything else follows from that.

You have to decide between 32 adn 64 bit processors and higher performance (Athlon/Pentium) or lower cost (Duron/Celeron) chips. Base your decision on what you intend to be doing with your system. A system that would be overkill for general office work may not be good enough for graphic design, audio-video production or high level gaming. If you intend to use this system as part of what you do for your income, spending too little on an inadequate machine can be as costly as spending too much.

Once you determine the basics, check reviews of the latest boards for performance, features and support for the peripherals you intend to use. For example, most new boards come with onboard LAN, but some support Gigabit LAN, while most only support T10/100. Most new boards support USB2, but some have more ports than others. Most new motherboards support AGP 8, but some only support AGP 4. Most boards have onboard sound, but some are only support minimum AC97, and some have built in high end sound processors, and of those, some have known problems.

Also, if you need a high end graphic card, know which video cards support your intended applications and whether there are any known compatibility issues between the vid card you want to use and any motherboard you are considering.

It will be easier to give you meaningful feedback once you've defined your needs and started with a list of components you think might meet them. :)
 

iceshock

Junior Member
May 23, 2004
20
0
0
i knw that, i am going for amd ahlon xp 2800+ Graphics are all chossen, n info about motherbaords like what der raid to..and so on
 

CaptnKirk

Lifer
Jul 25, 2002
10,053
0
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Good call Mech - Got one running myself for the last 6 months.
Replaced my KX7-333R with it, but still using the KX7 in another system.
May move up to the AMD 64 3000 in an Abit with the KV8 'Pro', like where it's heading.
 

Sk8Joe01

Member
May 20, 2004
26
0
0
my understanding of RAID is this, (tho i get raid 1 and 0 mixed up), riad 0 is where you take two HDDs and make the computer think they are one, which doubles your read/write rate and capacity. RAID 1 is where you take two HDDs and make exact mirrors of eachother, ie: super safty mode. RAID 0+1 is where you take 4 HDDs and coupple two of them, then make mirrors with the other two.