Which budget MB for A64 3000 (3200)+ E3

[kozaki]

Well my first post here 😛
Taking the opportunity to thank every poster I've read & learned from 'till now !!

/me buying A64 Venice (E3 stepping !) box 2morrow, that I plan to o/c a bit (on stock air).
Having read a bunch of pages, amongst which Anandtech's Multitasking benchmark on Linux 64-bit with AMD & Intel CPUs wins, since it's pretty representative of what i do day-to-day (Multitasking on a Linux 64-bit box).
Have max 500 EUR (allready have 2x512 DDR400 Value select, 19" monitor, NEC DVD burner, keyboard, firewall on Ethernet LAN). GPu's really not the priority for now.

Which components do you think i should go for ? (Price are those from my favorite retailer, may go down a bit 😉

* CPU
A64 3000+ ... : 160 EUR (or A64 3200+ ... : 200 EUR)

* MB
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 with AGP and PCIe ... : 77 EUR (or K8NF4X socket 939 nFORCE4 ... : 90 EUR) (or Chaintech VNF4 ... : 95 EUR (or DFI NF4 Infinity ... : 115 EUR)

* CASE & PSU
ATX 450W 20+4pin w/ 12Omm fan ... : 50 EUR (or Sonata II @ 115 EUR)

* HD
Maxtor 120 Gb 8Mo (or Hitachi 160 Go Serial ATA ; will get a second HD ASAP) ... : 90 EUR

* GPU
GeForce 6200TC 128MB DVI+TV OUT Rétail ... : 69 EUR (or any nVidia AGP 128MB w/ ASRock 939 ... : 40 EUR)

= TOTAL price ... : just under 500 EUR (3200+ / ASRock 939Dual, or 3000+ / Chaintech VNF4)

Any consideration would be appreciated, especially about which of the A64 to buy, chipset & Case/PSU 🙂

[EDIT] Having read *** The ULTIMATE Motherboard Selection Guide For New Users ***, it looks like choice is between nForce4*, ULI based or VIA based mobos. What about the Chaintech VNF4 or the DFI NF4 Infinity ?
* no Ultra, no SLI, as I'm on Linux behind a dedicated firewall [/EDIT]

 

[BlackPear1]

I've got the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 and it seems fine for the price, but it was a little harder to get properly configured than the DFI and Abit boards I have been using. Linux support is an obvious concern for you but I don't know anything about the ULi chipset's compatibility and driver availability. Nvidia and Via boards are probably ok in that area.

 

[kozaki]

Yes you say it right BlackPear1🙂

It appears NF4 chipset has native Linux 64-bit support, on opposite to ASRock (officially speaking).

Therafter I may go for DFI NF4 infinity maiboard --but that'll make 40 EUR less for the rest, so I googled about ULi support...

ULi M1695 & M1567 finally got support under Linux 🙂 Everything's included in kernel so far (googled quite a bit to find that : under Gentoo 64-bit > ("the uli-network driver found his way into the kernel - no patching needed anymore[/url]")
That is only since arround October 5th. Otherwise one has to DL it on ULi's homepage, as explained here

Anandtech has a very smart topic about ASRock 939

As for o/c, I found a link to ASRock Mainboards Beta BIOS (More howtos on root page)