Need an AMD Motherboard, suggestions?

[ahsia]

I am planning to get an Athlon 2100+ Tbred, and I already have a stick of Mushkin PC3000 which I know overclocks well. Which motherboard should I get? Should I go with an nForce2 board? Or a KT400? I am looking to overclock the heck out of the Tbred. Thanks for the help...

 

[Insane3D]

The Nforce2 would be your best bet right now IMO. If you are looking to overclock, look into either the Epox 8RDA+ or the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. The Epox 8RDA+ will generally o/c better than the Asus, but the Asus is no slouch either. It basically boils down to what features you want and how important o/c'ing is to you. The Asus has a more robust feature set with nice extras like S-ATA, dual LAN, and included digital output (Coax SPDI/F), but the Epox is a good deal cheaper with slightly less "frills" if you don't need the extras.

Both boards would be excellent choices to build upon considering the components you have, but if overclocking is most important, the Epox is the one to get IMO.

I hope this helps..

 

[poldi1]

I would suggest the same two boards) A lot easier than the P4 situation).

 

[ahsia]

Thanks for the suggestions.... let me throw a few more things into the mix though....

I really would like to have 4 IDE channels. RAID is not important, but would be nice. I have two optical drives, and plan to have more than 2 hard drives. From what I saw, nForce2 boards don't have RAID? Is that right?

Also, do I need to two sticks of memory to take advantage of the nForce2 chipset DualDDR architecture? Would I suffer in performance if I only had one stick?

Thanks for the help...

 

[RideFree]

From what I saw, nForce2 boards don't have RAID? Is that right?

Not quite right, Chaintech nForce2 M/B has 1 raid channel.

Also, do I need to two sticks of memory to take advantage of the nForce2 chipset DualDDR architecture? Would I suffer in performance if I only had one stick?

What you would suffer is a loss (from 2 sticks to 1) that is probably not even discernable with the naked eye, regardless of how "good" your eyes are. However, the benchmark boys swear by the two stick solution...(and sometimes swear at them).
Also, the EPoX and Asus answers from Insane and Poldi1 are right-on.