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What motherboard for opteron 146 w/ AGP 8x

L

luquire

Junior Member
i want a new motherboard that will support my ati 9600 video card that is 8x agp. I have found a opteron 146 (OSA146BNBOX). I have not gotten my ram yet so i dont think that will be an issue. I am using this for gaming and overclocking. I have searched that board but all the boards i find only support pci 16x.
 
When you check the comments on newegg they all say thay there are a lot of problems with the AGP slot. I have a pretty good video card and I dont want this board to down play it. It also says that it does not have very good controls for overclockers. I want to overclock the hell out of my opteron.
 
Originally posted by: luquire
When you check the comments on newegg they all say thay there are a lot of problems with the AGP slot. I have a pretty good video card and I dont want this board to down play it. It also says that it does not have very good controls for overclockers. I want to overclock the hell out of my opteron.
Click to expand...

I have no problems with my AGP 6800GT in that motherboard. Its performance is as good or better than it was on my old motherboard. However it's true that the overclocking options aren't the greatest (then again, you can't expect too much from a $65 motherboard) - mainly, the voltage options are somewhat lacking. There is a simple "conductive pen" voltmod that you can do to increase the available Vcore to 1.55V (I did it; it's not really hard)...I've got my Opty 170 running at 2.6GHz with no problems right now.

If you really want to do "extreme" overclocking though, you might want to look elsewhere...in which case, your only S939 w/AGP option is the nForce3 chipset (maybe DFI's board).

I started a thread about this motherboard last summer (here in the Motherboards forum) - it's grown to 1200+ posts, but you might want to skim through it if you're really interested in the board.
 
Well, I seriously suggest you to get rid of 9600, and upgrade to PCI-E system. I mean.. I can understand if you have something like X800XT AGP, or 6800GT AGP like SynthDude2001, then it's worth to keep the card until next upgrade. But 9600.. it just doesn't make much sense to me, especially since you will use OCed Opty.

Anyway, my suggestion is that just get rid of 9600, and get PCI-E card similar to 9600 performance, i.e X600 or 6600. Then buy a fine PCI-E NF4 mobo that will support your Opty. NF3 may be a good choice, but it won't OC as high as nForce4 for sure.
 
Heh I beg to differ as to the Nforce4 boards clocking better than the NF3 Boards 😀
For a Very nice NF3 board, I really liked the Gigabyte K8NS 939 Ultra, it would do 315htt no sweat, and had lots of features, including Dual Lan and Dual Bios. I can understand people still wanting to stay agp for now, heck maybe all he Needs is the 9600. Ever think of that?

Anyhow, like I say the Gigabyte is nice, and i also had good luck with an MSI Neo2-F. I like the board I have now in my sig, but many did have reported problems with thiers, tho I have None.

Good luck on your quest 🙂
 
i think a lot of the bad comments come from people using the wrong AGP driver for their motherboard. i have a radeon x800xt and it runs perfect for me
 
So the only reason I was wanting to stay with the 9600 is because I wanted to save money but there may be another way to save money. I have a gig of pc2700 ram. Is there anyway i could use that on an opteron 146 supported board. I always forget about the rule on ram (does your ram speed have to be equal to or greater than the fsb).
 
Originally posted by: luquire
I have a gig of pc2700 ram. Is there anyway i could use that on an opteron 146 supported board.
Click to expand...
yes

I always forget about the rule on ram (does your ram speed have to be equal to or greater than the fsb).
Click to expand...
It doesn't really matter on K8 as it doesn't penalise you for running a divider.
You may suffer a slight (5%?) performance loss from the lower bandwidth that PC2700 will provide.

 
Originally posted by: luquire(does your ram speed have to be equal to or greater than the fsb).
Click to expand...

As long as there is an FSB, yes. On AMD64 architecture, there isn't.

RAM frequency divides down from CPU _core_ clock; With an Opteron 146 running at 2.0 GHz, PC3200 DIMMs will be run at CPU/10, PC2700 at CPU/12, PC2100 at CPU/15 and PC1600 at CPU/20. There is no inherent extra penalty to any of that, just the raw win or loss from the RAM being faster or slower.
 
Don't know about the bios version. But you can use the pc2700 with your opteron. It will run slower, and you won't be able to overclock it, but it will work. Many boards default to 166 for the memory when all 4 memory slots are filled. I just picked up a gig of dual channel pc3200 Corsair for only $50 after rebate at Fry's. I recommend it. It's also on sale for $71 at Chiefvalue.com.
 
Originally posted by: Big Lar
Heh I beg to differ as to the Nforce4 boards clocking better than the NF3 Boards 😀
For a Very nice NF3 board, I really liked the Gigabyte K8NS 939 Ultra, it would do 315htt no sweat, and had lots of features, including Dual Lan and Dual Bios. (...)

Anyhow, like I say the Gigabyte is nice, and I also had good luck with an MSI Neo2-F.
Click to expand...
Someone else was asking a similar question yesterday, and I ran a check at Price Grabber. It seems that the Gigabyte s939/ AGP MB's are the ones in good supply, not Epox's MB, nor MSI's (of which I've just acquired one recently, for a build still many weeks on down the road, but the supply of new ones had seemed very finite).


🙁
 
The ASRock 939 Dual SATA II Works perfectly with my AGP 8x card... and I love that it has the PCI E slot for future upgrades (for when Vanguard comes out, of course 😉)
 
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