Recommend a good but fast budget 939 motherboard

[simsalabim24]

Well per the suggestions of alot of you on this board I decided to sell my old motherboard and vid card and upgrade to a 8800GTS and PCI express video card, keep my ram and cpu.

see this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=2002966&enterthread=y

Anyway Im wondering what would be a good, fast motherboard that is going to support the 8800 gts and AMD X2 Dual Core 4400+ CPU S939, 400mhz PC3200 DDR Ram.

Oh I have to purchase it at a place where there paypal works, unfortunately neweggs paypal only works for some and Im not one of the lucky few. I have no problem with Tigerdirect though.

So let me just tell you I have a Biostar 6100-939 board right now and it is the suck! My friend who has lesser specs then my computer actually gets 77fps on titanquest (pretty much the only game I play). I don't know his specs yet, but he says that I have a much better system then he does.

This is what I have tried I have done a clean install updated all my drivers to the latest drivers enabled triple buffering and disable V-sync, Don't have windows defender, etc and all I can get out of my system is 66fps (using fraps) The game has a lot of noticeable stuttering outside of what fraps displays.

Anyway I think its this motherboard. For one I noticed that the southbridge does not come with a fan. It comes with a heat sink though, not sure if this is good enough.

systems specs and here they are:

Geforce 8800 GTS 640mb VRAM
AMD A64X2 Dual Core 4400+ 1mb L2 backside cache x2
2 Gigs PNY Optima PC3200 400mhz Ram 2x 1gig sticks running dual channel
Sound blaster Fatality sound card
Western Digital SATA 300mb/s 8mb cache 160 gig hdd
550watt Antec NEOHE

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[polypterus]

Do your newegg and paypal e-mail addresses match?

Anyway I have an Asus A8N5X and will throw my vote in for that.

 

[simsalabim24]

Originally posted by: FrizQuadrata
Do your newegg and paypal e-mail addresses match?

Anyway I have an Asus A8N5X and will throw my vote in for that.

That could have been the problem with Newegg Funny the tech support people didnt mention that. So I guess Newegg is back in the list of places to get the board from for now.

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[Bremen]

You have a 8800GTS and you want a budget mobo!!???

 

[simsalabim24]

Originally posted by: Bremen
You have a 8800GTS and you want a budget mobo!!???

Not a good idea? I have just spent so much money on the vid card it would be nice if I could save on the mobo. Well what mobo do you recommend then period sir. I love how mean people are on this board. Its like instead of giving me helpful info they would just rather insult you first thing. Must be nice to be god!

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Bremen
You have a 8800GTS and you want a budget mobo!!???

There's nothing wrong with the motherboard you have, except it doesn't have a 16x PCI-E slot. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even have an 8x slot. It's only got a 4x, which isn't enough for a fast video card. Just make sure that the motherboard you buy has a true 16x PCI-E slot, and you'll be fine.

 

[Jeff H]

simsalabim24, I'm going to stay out of the fray, re "what you should do ideally." Rather, if you're simply looking for a "home" for that 939 cpu, and need PCIex16, have a look at this EPoX board. For $78 you've got a board that will acccommodate your 8800 video card, whichever variant you decide on. And, the EPoX store will take your PayPal. This board fleshed out as one of the best overclocking nForce4 Ultra boards made.

The only issue you'll probably have w/ it is the chipset cooler. They're notorious for devolving into a "grinder." Replace it w/ an aftermarket cooler and you'll be good to go.

If I might ask, how did you end up w/ 3GB? Can anyone comment as to whether 3 1GB sticks takes him out of dual channel operation?

Jeff

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Jeff H
If I might ask, how did you end up w/ 3GB? Can anyone comment as to whether 3 1GB sticks takes him out of dual channel operation?

Jeff

He probably has 2 x 512 and 2 x 1gb sticks.

 

[Rockhound1]

I have an Asus A8N-E that I would highly recommend. I have been using it for about 1.5 years and I have never had any problems with it. Very stable!

I also just built a system around this motherboard (Link). It requires a little work to get it up and running smoothly, but it seems very stable and I have a mild overclock on the Athlon 64 3000+ right now (running at 2.25 GHz). I don't think you can beat it for less than $50.

 

[Boyo]

My vote goes to the Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe.

 

[simsalabim24]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Bremen
You have a 8800GTS and you want a budget mobo!!???

There's nothing wrong with the motherboard you have, except it doesn't have a 16x PCI-E slot. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even have an 8x slot. It's only got a 4x, which isn't enough for a fast video card. Just make sure that the motherboard you buy has a true 16x PCI-E slot, and you'll be fine.

Really it doesnt have a 16x slot? Why does it say it does? http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=tforce+6100-939

 

[Bremen]

Originally posted by: simsalabim24

Originally posted by: Bremen
You have a 8800GTS and you want a budget mobo!!???

Not a good idea? I have just spent so much money on the vid card it would be nice if I could save on the mobo. Well what mobo do you recommend then period sir. I love how mean people are on this board. Its like instead of giving me helpful info they would just rather insult you first thing. Must be nice to be god!

Chill man. I was just indicating my surprise and confusion. Motherboards are NOT something to scimp on. For reference I recently bought a budget board (Asus A8R-MX) which gave me no end of trouble if I used more than 2 DIMM slots or two devices on an ide channel. I regard it as a cheap $30 reminder on why I've always bought higher end mobo's even though I've never overclocked to any great extent.

As for the 16x slot another poster mentioned. Very often manufacturers will put PCIE slots on the board that operate at a lower multiple than the actual slot size (I've seen alot of 8x slots that are actually 4x, not so often with 16x slots) I'm not sure if thats the case here, or if the poster was just mistaken...

 

[simsalabim24]

Originally posted by: Bremen

Originally posted by: simsalabim24

Originally posted by: Bremen
You have a 8800GTS and you want a budget mobo!!???

Not a good idea? I have just spent so much money on the vid card it would be nice if I could save on the mobo. Well what mobo do you recommend then period sir. I love how mean people are on this board. Its like instead of giving me helpful info they would just rather insult you first thing. Must be nice to be god!

Chill man. I was just indicating my surprise and confusion. Motherboards are NOT something to scimp on. For reference I recently bought a budget board (Asus A8R-MX) which gave me no end of trouble if I used more than 2 DIMM slots or two devices on an ide channel. I regard it as a cheap $30 reminder on why I've always bought higher end mobo's even though I've never overclocked to any great extent.

As for the 16x slot another poster mentioned. Very often manufacturers will put PCIE slots on the board that operate at a lower multiple than the actual slot size (I've seen alot of 8x slots that are actually 4x, not so often with 16x slots) I'm not sure if thats the case here, or if the poster was just mistaken...

Thanks for the heads up! Appreciate it!

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: simsalabim24
So let me just tell you I have a Biostar 6100-939 board right now and it is the suck! My friend who has lesser specs then my computer actually gets 77fps on titanquest (pretty much the only game I play). I don't know his specs yet, but he says that I have a much better system then he does.

Maybe you have the RAM configured wrong. I have this same board and was about to tell you this is the one to get. I use it in my secondary system with a 3800+ X2 w/ 2 gigs of RAM and the thing flies. I am not using expensive ram either... I think it is Adata or something similar.

 

[simsalabim24]

Can you give me some things to look for to make sure its configured right?

Thanks.