New mobo and CPU

[alewisa]

Hi guys

Looking for some buying advice/opinion, as I upgrade (hah, rebuild!) my AMD rig.

Am looking at an nforce platform, and (eventually) 400MHz FSB Athlon. But, don;t want to buy if there is something better just around the corner. So...

1. Is there a new nforce chipset due soon? Have heard that a new version will have serial ATA 150 support in the chipset, removing the need for an external chip (and removes the burden/bottleneck of the PCI bus). Also supports native 200MHz FSB without o/cing

2. Does the 333MHz Barton run ok at 400MHz FSB? Is there a "sweet" 333Mhz Barton, one that o/c's well - I'm not lashing out on a 400MHz 3200 Athlon just yet!

Please, no "get Opteron" - I'm not an early adopter of new CPU classes - remember the P66 fiasco too well ;-)

TVMIA
Alan

 

[Corporate Thug]

the new nforce ins the up and coming nforce3 but its more of a server board

 

[MachoDonut]

All of the Revision 2.0 boards from Abit, Asus, Epox etc support 400mhz FSB. The 3200+ is the only Barton that runs at 400mhz FSB stock. And they are a bit pricey.
The prices of 2500+ Barton's have come down recently. Since you mention that you plan to overclock, that is the path that I would suggest. Mine has hit 400mhz FSB without breaking a sweat, and many others have gone well above. Just make sure that you have quality RAM to go along with it.
SATA is still in it's infancy, so I wouldn't get too worked up about it yet. By the time it's performance really starts to shine and more drives become available, prices will have dropped and you may be ready for your next upgrade.