New motherboards from Asus?

[Nalyk]

With the release of the M4A (AMD chipset) and M4N (nvida chipset) series motherboards from Asus comes AM3 compatibility, but really only an AM2+ socket.
There are exceptions to this ie. straight AM3 socket boards with DDR3 capabilites, but I've seen this trend only in mobo's with an AMD chipset.
My question is if any knows of any motherboard manufacturer with intentions of manufacturing a mobo with AM3/DDR3 capabilities, but has an Nvidia chipset. And the reason I ask is I like AMD proc's but I like Nvida's driver support with their GPU's. Any feed back would be welcome.

~Nalyk

 

[theAnimal]

You don't need an Nvidia chipset to use an Nvidia GPU.

 

[Rifter]

thats true for a single GPU but you do need one to go SLI dont you? If i wanted to use nvidia GPU i would go with a SLI chipset, the only reason i personally am using a AMD chipset & CPU is because i decided on an ATI card and wanted crossifre support if i decided to use that with a future upgrade. This brings me to a question though about the x2 cards that have 2 GPUs on one card, will they run in either chipset or do you need one that supports SLI/crossfire. For example with a 4870x2 run on a nvidia SLI board?

 

[Nalyk]

While I don't need an Nvidia chipset to use an Nvida GPU, I do need one for SLI and I'd like to have that option available.

I don't know the answer to your question about the x2 GPU's. But I can hazard a guess. If I recall correctly I heard that both for ATI and Nvida's x2 GPU's that they've soldered in a hard bridge between the two cards, which is why a SLI (and whatever else for xfire) bridge isn't needed between the two. And as far as I can guess, because the card(s) would be in the same PCI-e slot it wouldn't make a difference; that is it only counts as one card in the eyes of the mobo, OS etc. Of course like I said it's just a guess.

 

[Sylvanas]

X2 cards work regardless of motherboard chipset. If you really want SLI an Nvidia chipset is your only choice, however be aware that Nvidia's current AMD chipsets are vastly inferior to AMDs own 790x/fx/gx motherboards, nobody knows how any 'future' AM3 boards from Nv will go but the fact is theyll still lack the SB750, no AOD, and judging by history, probably run hot. Not an Ideal option but I'd like to be surprised.

 

[nenforcer]

Yeah this new 980A board from ASUS looks like a step backwards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131383

compared to the 780A.

All it added was support for AM3 CPU's but no DDR3 memory slots! And they removed any video output capability!

WTF? nVidia has really dropped the ball on the Phenom 2 launch but I think the reason there are no new products is because the economy is so bad and not enough people are buying AMD products.

You would be in the minority if you made this purchase.

 

[Nalyk]

Well I guess that brings me to some new next questions then. How much better are AMD chipsets over Nvida's?
Is there really that much of a difference?
And how well do Nvidia GPU's run on AMD chipsets?
Right now I'm running a single EVGA 9800 GTX+ on an M2N32SLI-DLX motherboard with an AMD 4200+ proc @ 2.22 GHz and I've been pondering that M4N82DLX for awhile now for several reasons. First and foremost, My CPU is creating a real bottle neck as far as I can tell and the Phenom II 720 has been getting some really nice reviews. In addition to that, I'm very new to the realm of OC'ing and I'd like to try my hand at it, and the 720 has been deemed a really easy cpu to overclock.

As for my old mobo, it doesn't have an AM2+ socket so it wouldn't be able to accept the AM3 socket 720 (unless I'm sorely mistaken anyways). And beyond that, I wouldn't mind having DDR3 because the price in comparison to DDR2 has dropped a fairly significant amount since January. Also, I'd like to keep the option available to upgrade to either a 260 core 216 either in SLI or alone (as my budget dictates), or a 2nd 9800+(though I haven't had much luck finding the same gpu on newegg as they seem to have discontinued it).

However, I've been reading that ATI's driver issues aren't quite as bad as they were awhile ago, thought's opinions?

Edit: spelling

 

[Nalyk]

bump

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: Nalyk
Well I guess that brings me to some new next questions then. How much better are AMD chipsets over Nvida's?
Is there really that much of a difference?
And how well do Nvidia GPU's run on AMD chipsets?
Right now I'm running a single EVGA 9800 GTX+ on an M2N32SLI-DLX motherboard with an AMD 4200+ proc @ 2.22 GHz and I've been pondering that M4N82DLX for awhile now for several reasons. First and foremost, My CPU is creating a real bottle neck as far as I can tell and the Phenom II 720 has been getting some really nice reviews. In addition to that, I'm very new to the realm of OC'ing and I'd like to try my hand at it, and the 720 has been deemed a really easy cpu to overclock.

As for my old mobo, it doesn't have an AM2+ socket so it wouldn't be able to accept the AM3 socket 720 (unless I'm sorely mistaken anyways). And beyond that, I wouldn't mind having DDR3 because the price in comparison to DDR2 has dropped a fairly significant amount since January. Also, I'd like to keep the option available to upgrade to either a 260 core 216 either in SLI or alone (as my budget dictates), or a 2nd 9800+(though I haven't had much luck finding the same gpu on newegg as they seem to have discontinued it).

However, I've been reading that ATI's driver issues aren't quite as bad as they were awhile ago, thought's opinions?

Edit: spelling

I've never had a problem with any of ATIs drivers and I've been installing the monthly Catalysts since the 9600pro days. Conversely, my experience with Nvidias drivers has been decent but not fantastic- sometimes when I had OC'd beyond a certain frequency I'd get the 'Nvklm has stopped responding' which is pretty notorious but appears to have been fixed these days so all is well. The only drivers you will need for the motherboard come included on the CD (available on the website too- which is always a better source than a CD) and they are just for the Southbridge (windows usually picks up and installs these anyway).

Well I guess that brings me to some new next questions then. How much better are AMD chipsets over Nvida's?
Is there really that much of a difference?
And how well do Nvidia GPU's run on AMD chipsets?

It's really a night and day difference, AMD's chipsets are less problematic (Nvidia of recent has had flaky BIOS releases for recent CPUs) run cooler on 55nm process, cheaper and have all the features and support for their CPUs just to name a few. Most notably if you intend to overclock they have the SB750 southbridge which, when Enabled (through a setting called 'ACC' ) enables higher overclocks in the realm of a minimum of an extra 200mhz. So, you find your max overclock, then turn on ACC and you go even further. As for GPUs, any vendors GPU will run on any vendors boards including Nvidia/AMD - they wouldn't sell any motherboards/GPUs if certain GPUs/mobos didnt work- your 9800GTX will run just like it would on an Nvidia board. You won't have the option of SLI though (you can run 2 cards doing CUDA or PhysX if thats your thing though) but you do have the option of Crossfire with ATIs cards.

As for CPU- yes the X2 720BE is a great budget CPU at the moment, if you are going DDR3 be sure to get a Dual channel kit, you dont need triple channel kits which are for the Core i7s. Also, according to Tony's results at XS you are better off with a low latency DDR3 1333 kit or thereabouts than an expensive 1600mhz+ kit so save a few dollars there. You'd be looking at the AM3/DDR3 790x and 790FX boards ranging from $125 upwards- there is also the 790GX but you won't be needing onboard video.