When Nforce4 boards are out in retail stores?

[Thermalrock]

and that makes you believe theyll bridge an pcie chipset to agp? i dont get it.

 

[Jim Bancroft]

Does anyone know of some rough U.S. street prices when the first boards come out?

 

[Thermalrock]

ultra ~199 sli ~250 is what i read on inquirer.net

 

[PCBliss]

im just saying that the A8V and the NEO2 are supposed to be the best boards out for 939, and i dont really care for either one. You said there are plenty of good 939 boards out, and i dont agree with that.

 

[Thermalrock]

Originally posted by: PCBliss
im just saying that the A8V and the NEO2 are supposed to be the best boards out for 939, and i dont really care for either one. You said there are plenty of good 939 boards out, and i dont agree with that.

care to share why you dont think theyre good? or why you wouldnt want pci-e which will make your comp alot better adding possibility to upgrade it with an hdtv card and alot of other nice stuff that agp/pci boards cant.

 

[PCBliss]

The MSI board is very quirky and its the luck of the draw if you get one that works or overclocks at all. The A8v is nice but i can only hit 282 HTT on it which is a bit dissapointing (to me). I would be happy if DFI would make any sort of 939 board.

 

[gobucks]

nVidia said it will continue its nForce3 line for its AGP chipets, while nForce4 will be PCIe. Whether there will be an updated nForce3 is not for sure, but rest assured, there will be no AGP nForce4. As for the AGP selections right now, if it's the lack of retail boards with good features that is the problem, then new chipsets won't solve that. The nForce3 250GB is a great chipset, there just aren't a whole lot of good implementations of it. Overall, I agree with Thermalrock. Unless you've got a 6800 or X800 video card already, there is no reason to hold onto your old video card, since even the sub-$200 cards are better than the very best of last generation's hardware. Plus, if you do have one of the aforementioned cards, your system is either pretty damn new or you wasted money on a card that would be bottlenecked by your slow system. If it's new, then just wait for a more compelling upgrade, like dual core or something. If it's old, then it wasn't very smart for you to buy a $400+ card that you can't take full advantage of. I think that the only use for PCIe graphics right now is for upgradeability, although that's enough or a reason for me. As for the expansion slots, I think these are a huge deal. They will enable peripherals never before possible, without saturating the entire bus. If you are a person who likes to add new functionality to your computer from time to time (i.e. TV tuners, new controller cards, sound cards, faster ethernet, USB, or firewire cards, etc.) then not waiting for a good interface to allow this is practically guaranteed to cause a pissed off you in a year or so.

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: PCBliss
The MSI board is very quirky and its the luck of the draw if you get one that works or overclocks at all. The A8v is nice but i can only hit 282 HTT on it which is a bit dissapointing (to me). I would be happy if DFI would make any sort of 939 board.

They are, and from what I was reading will not include agp, only pci-e. It should be out after the first of the new year.

 

[gobucks]

BTW, while we're speculating on prices, remember that computer hardware is usually cheaper in the US relative to the exchange rate with regards to the rest of the world, so I don't expect $200 + for a non-SLI board. nVidia stated they were planning on the following price ranges: SLI =~$200, Ultra =~$100-$150, vanilla=~<$100. I imagine that any preliminary prices will be jacked up for those who just can't wait to slap their money down for one, and that they won't stay that way for long, once lots of places get them in the channel.

 

[Thermalrock]

the 6800 agp is no reason to stick with agp just sell it and get a pci-e one the money you lose wont be that much plus you geta working video processor which however you shoulda had in the first place but didnt get.

 

[pookguy88]

what are some good midrange PCI-E cards right now?

 

[gobucks]

The 6600GT is fantastic! One of these babies is going in my system for sure. The XFX dual-dvi version is only $187, and it packs more power than the 9800XT! In fact, it's almost as fast as the 6800, which is $100 more. I think this particular version also has 1200MHz GDDR3, or 200MHz faster than stock, giving it almost as much bandwidth as the 6800 (6800 uses 700MHz DDR, but a 256-bit memory bus). Oh, and it has SLI and a working video processor. If you like ATI, the X700XT is good, but you can't buy one yet. The best you could get for the prices of these cards on AGP is the 9800 Pro (128MB), which is substantially slower, particularly in new titles. All in all, the 6600GT is the best thing to happen to midrange since the GF4 Ti4200 or the 9500 Pro.

 

[Thermalrock]

i asked in video but noone seems to know if i run two 6600gts as sli cluster will my encoding decoding benefit? like will sli and the two video processors encode faster than just one? i need to know this.

 

[sexualrug]

As far as I know, that is not the case.

 

[Thermalrock]

thanks a bunch thats gonna save me 199 bucks next week.

 

[sexualrug]

If you want the most detailed information/explination on graphics cards from the most knowledgable people I have found, check the beyond3d forums.

 

[KDKPSJ]

Originally posted by: Thermalrock
i asked in video but noone seems to know if i run two 6600gts as sli cluster will my encoding decoding benefit? like will sli and the two video processors encode faster than just one? i need to know this.

Absoultely no benefit at all.. Video card/processor has nothing to do with Encoding/Decoding time, it's 80% up to CPU and 20% up to memory.

 

[Compddd]

I would much rather have the Asus A8N-E Premium over the MSI K8N Neo4 Platnium after having gone through the stuff I went through with this Neo2.

 

[gobucks]

SLI will really only help in graphics, not with the video processor, especially considering the problems with the 6800 video processor. Of course, you can't be to mad that SLI doesn't help in those functions. Decoding is kinda hard to split up, not to mention it's not terribly taxing on the system to begin with. Basically, the use for it is to watch DVDs or WMA files while still being able to do all kinds of other stuff with your computer. Encoding is not handled by the video processor, either.