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Need help choosing a motherboard - PLZ

T

TygGer

Senior member
There are soo many boards out there, I have no clue as to which one is better than the next. I'm planning on using a P4 2.4 processor, and not overclocking anytime soon. Below are some of the specs I would like to have:

- I would like to be able to use PC3200 ram, dual DDR if possible.
- AGP 8x
- Would be nice to have onboard LAN 10/100 and firewire

Thanks!
 
Okay - real quick rundown.

P4 - 2.4 - I assume it is a 533MHz FSB chip

AGP 8x - i7205, 875P or any 865 chipset
dual DDR - same as above
onboard 10/100 most boards.
firewire - upto individual manufacturer

There are several 7205 boards that are out that would meet your needs and their price has dropped considerably in the last month or so. With the CPU you have this is probably a good chipset to look at if you really want AGP 8x and dual DDR. If you can wait a few more weeks you might also want to look at some of the 865 based boards that should have what you want for under $150. As far as manufactures go I have had success with Abit, Gigabyte and Asus - several members also like the Epox boards.

With the CPU you have I might recommend just going with an 845PE chipset board like the Abit BH-7. You won't notice much of a difference with your CPU by using AGP 8x or Dual DDR and you can save a bit of money - I am running DDR-400 without a problem on mine.

Several manufacturers make several revs of their boards that have different components - The highend Gigabyte 875P Ultra board does NOT have firewire but the non-Ultra board does - that is usually not the case.
 
Any thoughts on running one of the Asus P4Pe boards?

Do you think it would make much of a difference running dual DDR 400?

Thanks!
 
I have heard mixed stories on the Asus P4PE boards - I also don't care for their RAID solution. I have used their products but they are usually a bit more expensive - my first choice would be the Abit BH-7 or the IT-7 MAX 2 v 2 if you want a lot of extras such as RAID or Firewire and the Max 2 can be found for under $160. If you don't need RAID or 1394 I would take a serious look at the BH-7.

Dual DDR is not going to make a tremendous amount of difference except in applications requiring a tremendous amount of bandwidth. Spending the extra money on a better Video Card or faster hard drive might be a better investment. You need to look at the applications you want to run and decide. I run a single stick at DDR400 - 160FSB with 4to5 memory timings and have no issues. Since you have a 2.4GHz chip, unless you are looking to overclock by a large amount, this might not be the most important requirement. Memory benchmarking is nice but doesn't correlate to application benchmarks in most areas. If you look at the Anandtech reviews of the Gigabyte and Asus 875P boards you can see how small the difference was compared to a single channel BH-7 - and this was with a 3GHz CPU at 200MHz FSB.
 
Asus w/intel 7205 chipset.
That's a period after the above sentence.😀
Granite Bay CS M/Bs are really mature, yet are nearly cutting edge.
Intel keeps putting more pressure on the AMD market.
 
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