Upgrading question

[Hermskii]

Here is the problem:

I have a EPoX 8K3A+ mobo right now. It's capacitors are LEAKING for the 2ND TIME so I'm going to go ahead and upgrade. The upgrade will not include a EPoX motherboard period.

I have a AGP video card that does everything I need it to so I don't need PCI-Express. I only play the original Unreal Tournament so my G-Force 4 ti4200 128mb video card is totallly good to go.

My chip is a XP2600. I'm willing to upgrade it to some 939 chip!

My hard drives are EIDE thus I don't need SATA but wouldn't mind having it too much either for future upgrades.

With all of that said, I think I'm looking for a 939 mobo w/ nforce3 250gb chipset. So far, MSI and DSi seem to be the ones I hear the most about. nforce 4 is out of the picture because I'm not going to upgrade my vid card yet.

I have an Audigy2 sound card that rules and network cards coming out of my ears.

That pretty much tells you where I'm at. What mobo do you suggest for my needs?

 

[o1die]

The epox nforce3 boards are the best for overclocking. Both abit and asus skipped nforce3 for socket 939, so gigabyte is the only other choice. The abit and asus boards come with via chipsets. Some nforce3 boards may not run the new x2 cpus, but I doubt the prices will drop enough for you to be interested.

 

[imported_Kensai]

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum or DFI nForce3 Ultra-D. They both smack Gigabyte and Epox boards around.
Get the DFI if you're seriously into overclocking, get the MSI for normal usage.
You'll of course want to get a 3000+ or 3200+ Venice for the best price/performance ratio.

 

[Hermskii]

Thanks for the reply but now I'm a little lost. Like I said, EPoX isn't an option being I'll never buy from them again since they replaced my bad caps with more bad caps and charged me at the same time. I didn't know ABIT and ASUS both did not make any nForce3 mobos. Am I getting something wrong here? Lets look...

My XP2600 is a socket A chip.
I thought they then upped the boards to a 7hundred something chip and soon after followed with a 939 chip which as I understand it referes to the amount of pins on it which dictated a new form of socket each time they upped the pins. I thought nForce was just a chipset that went on the boards as an option to VIA. I would have figured then that 7hundered something boards could be nForce boards as well as 939 boards. Yet in the next sentance you say gigabyte is the only choice to have nf3 and 939 on the same board.

Is the VIA chipset called KT-something? If so, it sounds to me that you would recommend a 939 KTchipset board except that they can't run the new x2 (which I assume means dual core processors). Also, wasn't there something out that was a NF3/350gb?

 

[Hermskii]

Thanks Kensai. I just got your reply as I sent in my first reply