Need Motherboard Advice for A64

[AdOgG0911]

Ok, I'm looking to upgrade to a Venice A64 3000 and need to decide what motherboard to get. My requirements are:

1. Must be an AGP board
2. Must support X2 for future upgrade so nForce3 boards are out of the picture
3. As cheap as possible without being a POS board because budget is an issue

I'm looking at the following (with approximate cost):

CHAINTECH S1689 = $70
MSI K8T NEO2-F = $94
SOLTEK SL-K8T = $97
SOLTEK SL-K8TPro = $100
ABIT AV8 = $101

What board would you get and why? I might overclock some but I don't really care about getting the best possible performance.

Also, the Chaintech board is almost $25 cheaper than the next lowest priced board. I'm looking for reasons why I should spend at least $25 more on one of the other boards.

Thanks!

 

[Peter]

The price delta is mostly because of ULi's single chip approach, and Chaintech's philosophy of making no-nonsense boards mostly for large volume OEM business (much like Elitegroup and ASRock do). In other words, I'd have no worries going with that Chaintech board. Take those $25 to upgrade something else to the next higher performance level (and scratch the overclocking).

 

[AdOgG0911]

Ok, I just found the Chaintech board for $60 shipped, which makes it $35 cheaper than the next lowest priced board. Are there any reasons not to get that board?

 

[Steve]

What kind of AGP card do you have?

 

[MDE]

Why no nForce3 boards? There's no reason they wouldn't support dual core CPUs, in fact many already do.

 

[n yusef]

Why do you thing nF3 won't support X2s? All of the name brand nF3s have BIOS updates to support X2s (the best being the MSI Neo2, and DFI nF3 LANParty), and you are getting a 3000+ first, so flashing isn't a problem.

 

[AdOgG0911]

My AGP card is a 6800GT so I don't really have any interest in replacing that right now.

I was going off of the article just posted on here about X2 motherboard support. I'm not willing to buy a board that might support X2 in the future if the manufacturer decides they feel like writing a bios update for it.

I was not aware that the Neo2 had a bios update already.

But my real question is this: the Neo2 is $125, the Chaintech board is $60. What would make me want to pay the extra 65 bucks?

I don't really need the firewire, 2 extra sata, or dual lan cards that the Neo2 has.

 

[justly]

Originally posted by: AdOgG0911
My AGP card is a 6800GT so I don't really have any interest in replacing that right now.

I was going off of the article just posted on here about X2 motherboard support. I'm not willing to buy a board that might support X2 in the future if the manufacturer decides they feel like writing a bios update for it.

I was not aware that the Neo2 had a bios update already.

But my real question is this: the Neo2 is $125, the Chaintech board is $60. What would make me want to pay the extra 65 bucks?

I don't really need the firewire, 2 extra sata, or dual lan cards that the Neo2 has.

Exactly.