Re: Can someone please recommend a motherboard?
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:51:07 -0500
billysardell@xxxxxxxx wrote:
I would like a motherboard and the fastest AMD chip that would
work in my full size ATX case and also be able to use the
three sticks of Kingston PC3200 1gb. If the board supports
and AGP videocard that would be great. Anybody have ideas
for me please? TIA
Well, we can start by reviewing the technologies that go with AMD.
That'll give you some idea where you stand.
S462 - Athlon, AthlonXP
- Traditional Northbridge and Southbridge for chipset.
Memory controller is on the Northbridge chip.
- Processor is, just a processor.
- Chipsets taking 3 DDR DIMMs were available.
- AGP slot for video
From this point forward, AMD moved the memory controller to
the processor. So the processor type, determines the kind of
memory you must use.
S754 - Athlon64
- Uses up to three sticks of DDR (good so far)
- Some chipsets with AGP slots available (Nforce3, and others)
- Stopped making these some time ago.
- Processors are single core. No dual core S754 were made.
Top bin processors are still worthy for gaming. At least,
until you get one of the newer, multithreaded games.
S939 - Athlon64, also dual core X2
- Uses four sticks of DDR. Revision E or later allows any
combo you want, 1,2,3, or 4 sticks. Before Rev E, allowed
sticks were 1,2, or 4 sticks.
- AGP or PCI Express video available. In particular, some
Asrock boards supported both types of video.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=939Dual-VSTA&s=n
- Stopped making these some time ago. Towards the end, only
PCI Express video could be found. For the most part, the AGP
capable ones dried up.
Example of an S939 board with AGP, would be Asus A8V Deluxe
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=238&l1=3&l2=15&l3=68&l4=0
http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpu_support_right_master.aspx?type=1&name=A8V%20Deluxe&SLanguage=en-us&cache=1
AM2 - Athlon64, also dual core X2
- This is the current platform for AMD
- Uses DDR2 RAM only.
- AFAIK, all video is PCI Express
- Least reuse for someone coming from one of the other generations.
If you decide to accept these challenges, in order to reuse your components,
you must:
1) Buy an obsolete processor. S754 or S939 (to support DDR memory)
2) Find a motherboard which is no longer being manufactured, for that processor.
It just means looking on Ebay for a good motherboard. The retail S754 or S939
motherboards, if you can find them now, might be the "bottom dweller" kind
(PCchips etc).
On the other hand, if you go with AM2.
1) Full price range of processors available - $40 to $210 (for a 6400+)
2) Motherboards starting at $43 and stretching to $234 (Crosshair). Example
GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813128034
3) DDR2 RAM starts at $25 per 1GB stick.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146580
4) Replacing your video card is probably the part that sucks.
If going DX10, don't buy cheap (8800GT looks interesting - shipping soon).
If happy with DX9, this is a compromise solution.
SAPPHIRE 100196L Radeon X1950PRO 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 $155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814102075
The situation on the Intel side seems to be similar now. Not too long ago,
you could find some motherboards that could handle an FSB1066 Intel processor,
and had an AGP slot and took DDR RAM. An example would be Asus P5PE-VM. But
it looks like those kinds of boards have also died up at retail, so that would
mean more Ebay searches.
As they say, the writing is more or less on the wall. AGP/DDR are history.
HTH,
Paul
.
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