Need to find a good 939 AGP Mobo SOON

[fustercluck]

Hey fellas and chickadees. I'm on the hunt for a 939 AGP 8X Motherboard, as i don't feel like buying a new video card already just so i can use a PCI-E mobo. Unfortunately there's not many options out there for me. Only thing that i'm even considering is the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2, which people generally like as a value mobo. I love that it's agp and PCI-e for so cheap, but i did a lot of research and it really limits you on overclocking. I've never had a decent overclock with my past systems, and i'm dying to just overclock the snot out of something. I'll be getting an opteron 146 or 148 most likely. I really don't see anything out there for me though, am i screwed? Or is there a mobo out there for me? Thanks for looking.

 

[o1die]

Go with one of the epox nforce3 boards. Around $85 at newegg. They have excellent adjustments in the bios for overclocking. Or via makes an 890a chipset that will use many (not all) agp cards and pci-e. But again, the via ecs board doesn't offer overclocking options like the epox.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

What happened with DFI's NF3 Ultra D motherboards? They were very late to market with it, and now it seems to have already been dropped from production? Were they unable to fix the BIOS on it adequately?

 

[fustercluck]

Originally posted by: o1die
Go with one of the epox nforce3 boards. Around $85 at newegg. They have excellent adjustments in the bios for overclocking. Or via makes an 890a chipset that will use many (not all) agp cards and pci-e. But again, the via ecs board doesn't offer overclocking options like the epox.

Alright, thanks. I think i'll go with this one here: here - Just hope it's compatible with the rest of my system (besides cpu and mobo in sig). Mainly I'm worried about my corsair value ram being compatible, read something that said that mobo onlyu supports dual channel ram or something weird.

Reviews say it overclocks well. I figure by the time i get a PCI-E video card i'll need to buy a new mobo anyways.

 

[CKDragon]

Who said the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 was a bad overclocker?

I've got my A64 3800+ X2 (stock 2.0Ghz) running at 2.45 with the RETAIL fan. And if you look around a bit that seems like par for the course. I highly recommend it for your situation (because it was also my situation )

CK

 

[evilharp]

Originally posted by: Kiwi
What happened with DFI's NF3 Ultra D motherboards? They were very late to market with it, and now it seems to have already been dropped from production? Were they unable to fix the BIOS on it adequately?

The DFI nForce3 board was a nightmare for most users. There is quite a bit of discussion regarding the board on the web, and most of it is negative.

jacktackle, if you want nForce3 and overclocking, the Epox board mentioned by o1die is a good bet. Another choice is the MSI Neo2 Platinum, it can overclock like a champ - but - like the DFI board, there have been some bad stories floating around about that board.

Gigabyte put out a few nForce3 boards (I have the GA-K8NS Ultra-939), and they are super stable. They can overclock well, but the Ram voltage is limited to 2.7v. Of course, the ram voltage can be tweaked with voltage mods (advanced).

Whichever board you get, check the xtremesystems forums to see how the board has performed, and the problems people have had.

 

[fustercluck]

Originally posted by: CKDragon
Who said the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 was a bad overclocker?

I've got my A64 3800+ X2 (stock 2.0Ghz) running at 2.45 with the RETAIL fan. And if you look around a bit that seems like par for the course. I highly recommend it for your situation (because it was also my situation )

CK

That's pretty nice. Though i'm crossing my fingers that i don't get a crappy opteron (which I have a good chance of getting probably) and am able to overclock it past 2.8 ghz, 2.0 to 2.8 is a lot, don't think the ASrock would let me go that high.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: jacktackle

Originally posted by: CKDragon
Who said the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 was a bad overclocker?

I've got my A64 3800+ X2 (stock 2.0Ghz) running at 2.45 with the RETAIL fan. And if you look around a bit that seems like par for the course. I highly recommend it for your situation (because it was also my situation )

CK

That's pretty nice. Though i'm crossing my fingers that i don't get a crappy opteron (which I have a good chance of getting probably) and am able to overclock it past 2.8 ghz, 2.0 to 2.8 is a lot, don't think the ASrock would let me go that high.

Yeah, you'll almost certainly need to voltmod the board if you want that high of an overclock on the ASRock board. (There's a really long thread around here about the motherboard that I started, that has links to some of the voltmod info, among other things.)

For what it's worth, I'm still not sure what I want to do either. I'm still on an Athlon XP/nForce2 platform, with an AGP 6800GT overclocked to Ultra speeds. I want to upgrade to an Opteron 165 now, but my video card is still reasonably fast so I don't want to dump it yet. In any case, even if I did want to upgrade, nothing that's out right now is fast enough (over my 6800GT) to justify the price to me, so I'm waiting.

So, one option is to get the ASRock board and voltmod it - but I've never even touched a soldering iron before and I'm quite certain that I'd probably destroy the board. So maybe I could pay some else around here to do it for me, who knows. But then once I got a voltmodded board, it should overclock fine. The other option is to get a NF4 board like a DFI, a "real" overclocker. Then I would have to trade my video card for a PCI-E 6800GT. From looking at the general prices in FS/T lately, this wouldn't be too bad, I shouldn't lose too much if any money, but it sure would be a hassle.

So...basically I'm in the same situation. I could get a NF3 board, but I'd just end up tossing it in six months when I upgrade my video card...

 

[fustercluck]

It's a tough situation. Yours sounds a little tougher. There's just no Mobo out there for us that says "BUY ME!". After looking around a lot the EP-9NDA3J looks to be the best for me, just have to find out if it works with my ram and such, and then, i'll buy it along with a 146 opty.

 

[Greenman]

You can mod the ASRock board with a conductave pen, no need to solder anything.
The only thing thats keeping me from ordering this board right now is the cold boot issue. It seems it's still a problem even with the 1.4 bios.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Greenman
You can mod the ASRock board with a conductave pen, no need to solder anything.
The only thing thats keeping me from ordering this board right now is the cold boot issue. It seems it's still a problem even with the 1.4 bios.

Oh yeah? I guess I've had trouble keeping up with all of the developments lately...can you do this for both the Vdimm and Vcore mods? If it's really that easy now, I may end up going with that...