Old Man Needs Motherboard

[kpfeif]

This the second post in a series...the first one was "Old Man Needs Video Card."

I've read reviews, suggestions, the sticky Motherboard Selection Guide, but I still can't decide. Here's the story....

I play SOME games...sometimes. Not very often, however. I typically play Falcon, XPlane, and MSFS - all flight simultors. Once in a great while I'll run Battlefield 1942...that's about it. I have a 2 1/2 year old and a new baby on the way (any day now), so game time isn't available. Oh yeah - sometimes my son and I play some free demo of a Nascar race game - he just likes to drive.

I'm currently running an Athlon XP 2400+ on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. No overclocking. I'm too chicken, and frankly I'm not sure if I really need it. Running one channel with 1gb dual channel DDR400, and the third slot has another 512mb in it.

Here's what I DO do...Photoshop - lots of it. I'm a pro photographer and use it quite a bit. I also do video editing - FIREWIRE. Two big SATA drives and two big IDE (or whatever it's called now) drives.

Also, AUDIO. I do a bit of recording at home. I'd love to get a MIDI/Digital Audio interface card, but that may not be in the cards yet. Money, you know. I do use my system to serve up digital audio (via SPDIF) to my audio system. The SoundStorm on the A7N8X Dlx has served me well, but quite noisy.

Ok, I've rambled enough. I'm looking at the best "bang-for-the-buck" processor, which I think is the AMD 64 3200.

What do you think?

 

[Wentelteefje]

Starring: Old Man as Old Man... There are some boards I know of that feature both an Optical and Coaxial S/PDIF Out... The EPoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra and MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum are very good and reliable motherboards... The MSI has dual Gb LAN, whereas the EPoX has dual Firewire connectors, as opposed to one on the MSI...

 

[imported_Kiwi]

I hope you haven't made any hard and fast choice of that AMD cpu. AFAIK right now, the s939 style A64 3200 is in very short supply (read that as overpriced due to so few being available) after AMD removed the 3000 and 3200 from the current production lineup. I'm not so sure that the s754 style A64 3200 is nearly as hard to come by, or that it isn't being produced any more.

If there was any particular AS64 that was readily available and combined excellent speed with a reasonable price, and even offered decent OC opportunities, I'd say it was the Venice cored A64 3500 cpu. There's no Intel anything even close to a similar level of power per dollar!

Right now, the only thing I can recall from the post about video cards was that your son is 40 years younger than mine, and I qualify for membership in AARP. I doubted that you did.

Did you decide against purchasing an AGP video card? That opens up your options, if you can buy a PCI-e version of a motherboard. My spring, 2006 project is my own first A64 build, using MSI's K8N Neo 2 Platinum AGP MB (NF3). I already have an A64/ 3000 on hand for that one.

 

[kpfeif]

I really haven't ruled out an Intel...if that's a good option, I'll persue it.

I still have the 4200Ti video card, and I do like it. It may make good financial sense (important here) to go the AGP route.

 

[11427]

My opinion,.... with what you do, I would not even bother with an upgrade just yet. Why? I have a DFI NF4 SLI LP etc. etc. and an MSI Neo2 Plat, both overclocked OCZ/Muskin ram, ATI X800XL yada yada yada and my Asus A7N8X, 2500+ and ATI 9600XT. Guess which one I use for all my daily computing,..... the old Asus. There is zero noticable difference in anything I do. Yes, if I run benchmarks there is a difference,...... for the most part I just have no reason to switch computers. The DFI and MSI crunch numbers and stuff 24/7 but the Asus is my daily driver

 

[Zim]

MSI Neo4-F motherboard with an Opteron 146 CPU.