S939 AGP Motherboards other than AsRock?

[imported_tetrakarbon]

I am building a system to be used primarily as a workstation. I want to continue using my ATi 9800 Pro. I will buy a 4200+ x2, 2GB of low-latency ram, and one of them 150GB Raptors. I don't plan to overclock heavily, and will mostly use the computer for general multitasking and image editing. I will also want to play some games from time to time, but this isn't the focus.

But of course I need a board. The AsRock 939Dual-SATA2 has gotten a lot of ink. The thing is, I don't need the PCI-E slot since I will buy an entirely new system when I get a new gfx card. Even though I am planning on a new Raptor, I hear 3Gb/s and NCQ is unnecessary for non-server use (and does the fact that it is not integrated into the southbridge mean anything?). I am also disapointed by the 10/100 ethernet and lack of firewire ports (though I probably won't need the second). Should I ignore all this?

The other recommendation I have read is the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, though that seems to be impossible to find. Any other ideas? Should I be looking exclusively at nForce3 Ultra boards, or does the K8T800 PRO deserve a look?

Thanks very much!

-- Ned

 

[Madwand1]

Looks like the good old 939 AGP boards are gone. A newer ECS only supports 10/100 LAN too -- why'd they have to cheap out? Never mind...

You can mitigate the 10/100 LAN on the ASRock by getting an add-in NIC. Even a cheap one going through PCI will get you much better performance than 10/100 for large file transfers, and at single IDE rates, be indistinguishable from better NIC's. The ASRock also allows you to put in a PCIe NIC should you want to spend more money and squeeze out more performance.

I posted some results with inexpensive gigabit NIC's in this thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

 

[aboothman]

I just upgraded from a Neo2, or will be upgrading later today, so if you want it I would get rid of it pretty cheap.

PM me if you are interested.

 

[tcsenter]

I am building a system to be used primarily as a workstation. I want to continue using my ATi 9800 Pro. I will buy a 4200+ x2, 2GB of low-latency ram, and one of them 150GB Raptors.

It wouldn't be hard to significantly improve upon the Radeon 9800 Pro for around $100 ~ $140 in PCI Express; e.g. Radeon X800 or X1600. You're going to spend $800+ on the components listed but you want to keep a $100 video card? Its your money, here you go...


Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939

Gigabyte GA-K8U-939

ABIT UL8

MSI K8N Neo2-F

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (discontinued)

DFI LANPARTY UT NF3 ULTRA

Chaintech S1689

 

[imported_tetrakarbon]

So I thought about this, and I decided that you are probably right. How is this for a motherboard then? The Asus A8R-MVP? Supposedly better audio, pretty cheap, 4 SATA 3Gb/s, etc., etc.

And in that price range, you can't find another SLI-type thing from a reputable manufacturer (Abit/Asus/DFI/MSI/etc.).

What do you guys think?

-- Ned ruggeri