MSI K8NGM2-FID versus MSI K9NGM2-FID

[vsonerud]

I am thinking about upgrading my old Athlon XP system to a dual-core processor system for the smallest possible amount of money.

The most important decision factors for me is:

* stability (I have no intention/desire/need for overclocking )
* Reuse of my old components
* price

The MSI K8NGM2-FID seems to be a very good board, receiving almost only positive comments when reading about it, especially lately. BIOS versions seems to have matured and so on.

The MSI K9NGM2-FID on the other hand seems to be so brand new that there are few experiences from people to read about.

Would it be "safe" to assume that the K9NGM2-FID will be just as good as the K8NGM2-FID card, the only large difference being the switch from S939 to AM2 socket ?

Obviously it would be the cheapest solution for me to go for the K8NGM2-FID card, making it possible for me to reuse my existing DDR-RAM.

However, my current DDR-RAM is 2* 512 MB TwinMos PC2700 DDR-RAM which were bought far apart in time (in other words, they are not a matched set ). I am currently running them in dual-channel mode on my Asus N78X Deluxe (nForce 2 ) motherboard, and my system runs pretty stable. I have the occsasional BSOD once in a month or so (running 24 / 7 ). An overnight memtest86 run do show some very few errors. I guess this might be due to the non-matched DDR-RAM ?

Would a AMD X2 S939 be even more unstable running this non-matched DDR-RAM than my current Athlon XP 2200+ system?( if I were to run it in dual-channel mode that is)

If I were to buy a K8NGM2-FID card and it would turn out be unstable running in dual-channel mode with my current memory chips, it would be possible to run it in single channel mode yes? However, if I then later would like to add another set of 2 matched DDR modules (using 4 memory chips total) this would "force" dual channel, right? Possibly again causing unstability to the system ?


I have also yet to finally confirm that there has not been made any changes to the PCI revision support of the PCI slots between the MSI K8NGM2-FID and the K9NGM2-FID cards. The reason for my "worry" is that I definitely want to reuse my Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 card when upgrading, which is a PCI 2.1 5-volt keyed add-in card, which is NOT supported by PCI 2.3.

I am therefore very anxious to find out about the PCI revision support of the MSI K9NGM2-FID card.


I wonder how large the performance difference will be between running a S939-X2 3800 with PC2700 DDR-DIMM in single-channel mode versus a AM2 939-X2 3800 with PC4200 DDR2-DIMM in dual-channel mode?

And is this difference worth the extra cost of DDR2-RAM? And what about the "immaturity" factor of the AM2-motherboard?

 

[Madellga]

Indeed the socket 939 board is a good one. But I would not invest money in a dying platform.

The A64 should run on DDR 400, you can do it with DDR 333, but it is not going to help with performance. So, you are in the market for a new CPU, mobo and memory. Go AM2 or socket 775 with the new Core 2 Duo.

If you want to stay with AMD and if the K9 version is good as the K8, it should be a good buy for you.

 

[vsonerud]

If I were to go for the AM2 route meaning I would have to buy DDR2 RAM, one could argue that by just adding a very little amount of money could get me a E6300 Conroe CPU. And that thought, I would have to agree, surely is kind of tempting.

There is however a "slight" problem. I have yet to find a motherboard which can fulfill the following:

* Core 2 Duo ready
* Firewire integrated
* at least 2 PCI 2.2 PCI slots
* integrated graphics
* (preferably 2 IDE ports - since I have 1 IDE DVDRW and 3 IDE HDs )

The upcoming G965 motherboards all seem to have PCI 2.3 support which is NOT compatible with my Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 card.

I have also failed to locate any other motherboards using other chipsets to fulfill the requirements above.

The closest I have found are the Asus P5W DH and the Asus P5N32-SLI SE cards. They do not have integrated graphics meaning that I would have to buy a PCI-Express graphics card . And these 2 cards are also quite expensive at the moment.

In fact, the extra cost of buying one of these 2 motherboards + a decent PCI-E graphics card would almost allow me to buy a AM2 4800/5000 instead of a 3800 (together with the K9NGM2 card ), which would then be competitive performance-wise with a Conroe E6300 CPU I think?

And a fundamental assumption from the start was to keep the costs DOWN, otherwise I will not be able to afford an upgrade now anyway.

 

[o1die]

You can try pc2700, but some boards don't like it with socket 939. I would try selling it and upgrade to am2 and ddr2.