Hello! Bear with me, I want to explain my situation FULLY:
Well, allow me to make a long story short. Basically, a family member now has his own system built from spare parts. This is a 700Mhz Thunderbird, old Soyo KX133 board, new HD/CDRW, etc. Well we will clearly be updating this system in the summer and I was contemplating how this could be useful to me. Basically, I have a few conflicts with my NF7-S board that related to my Audigy2 card, and my Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive. I do realize that it goes over the PCI bus (the SATA), and that snarls my plans. I plan to add on a video-related PCI card and I am sure things will be getting even worse in the summer, and so to alleviate this I was going to change boards. I was intending on getting some Mushkin or Corsair DDR400 memory and keep it at 3200+ speeds (I have a 2500+ right now). I also use an 80mm ThermalTake Smart Fan II on top of a Thermalright SLK-800(A) heatsink.
Now, I am not a hardcore gamer. I may be a power user, but my days are NOT spent playing games. I have played the UT2K4 demo on here, I also play CS, BF1942 (includes Desert Combat) and Enemy Territory on a GF4 board. I play them sparingly because more often than games, I am doing work (includes compiling in linux, and compiling programs for a college course in Windows XP), listening to music, watching movies and stuff like that. On the KT333-based 1800+ in another room, it does this stuff flawlessly (with 1GB of RAM).
My hands-on experience with that one, and the fact that my friend has a lot better experience with Native SATA on his P4 system in linux than I do with this stupid Serial ATA controller leads me to consider a KT600 board. I have read on VIA's site that the KT600's SATA is in the southbridge, and someone else told me that it is native and is not on the PCI bus. Now THAT would be very very very useful for me in the future. I have read reviews and I have calculated that my performance drop would be 5% (not noticable), and performance would INCREASE in things I do most (probably because I have unresolvable conflicts right now).
What board would you guys say is good to get? I am thinking of looking at my favorite two: Gigabyte and Abit. How is MSI's KT600 board? The other PC is a KT3 Ultra2-based system so I am inclined to look into MSI as well. I am not doing any extreme overclocking (just to 2166 or 2.2Ghz), so i'm not too concerned about giving the other person my NF7-S board. I am going to do this in the summer though, so do you think this 'KT800' chipset will be out in force by then? I have only seen the press release and I like that as well. KT600 or KT880? What do you think. Please do not recommend the DFI Lan Party NFII boards (someone did another place) or any other NF2 board. I have used them and while they appear to be fast, I don't notice any speed difference compared to the other system, and I am sick of those nForce drivers anyways.
Thank you for reading my big post! Take your time
Well, allow me to make a long story short. Basically, a family member now has his own system built from spare parts. This is a 700Mhz Thunderbird, old Soyo KX133 board, new HD/CDRW, etc. Well we will clearly be updating this system in the summer and I was contemplating how this could be useful to me. Basically, I have a few conflicts with my NF7-S board that related to my Audigy2 card, and my Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive. I do realize that it goes over the PCI bus (the SATA), and that snarls my plans. I plan to add on a video-related PCI card and I am sure things will be getting even worse in the summer, and so to alleviate this I was going to change boards. I was intending on getting some Mushkin or Corsair DDR400 memory and keep it at 3200+ speeds (I have a 2500+ right now). I also use an 80mm ThermalTake Smart Fan II on top of a Thermalright SLK-800(A) heatsink.
Now, I am not a hardcore gamer. I may be a power user, but my days are NOT spent playing games. I have played the UT2K4 demo on here, I also play CS, BF1942 (includes Desert Combat) and Enemy Territory on a GF4 board. I play them sparingly because more often than games, I am doing work (includes compiling in linux, and compiling programs for a college course in Windows XP), listening to music, watching movies and stuff like that. On the KT333-based 1800+ in another room, it does this stuff flawlessly (with 1GB of RAM).
My hands-on experience with that one, and the fact that my friend has a lot better experience with Native SATA on his P4 system in linux than I do with this stupid Serial ATA controller leads me to consider a KT600 board. I have read on VIA's site that the KT600's SATA is in the southbridge, and someone else told me that it is native and is not on the PCI bus. Now THAT would be very very very useful for me in the future. I have read reviews and I have calculated that my performance drop would be 5% (not noticable), and performance would INCREASE in things I do most (probably because I have unresolvable conflicts right now).
What board would you guys say is good to get? I am thinking of looking at my favorite two: Gigabyte and Abit. How is MSI's KT600 board? The other PC is a KT3 Ultra2-based system so I am inclined to look into MSI as well. I am not doing any extreme overclocking (just to 2166 or 2.2Ghz), so i'm not too concerned about giving the other person my NF7-S board. I am going to do this in the summer though, so do you think this 'KT800' chipset will be out in force by then? I have only seen the press release and I like that as well. KT600 or KT880? What do you think. Please do not recommend the DFI Lan Party NFII boards (someone did another place) or any other NF2 board. I have used them and while they appear to be fast, I don't notice any speed difference compared to the other system, and I am sick of those nForce drivers anyways.
Thank you for reading my big post! Take your time
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