[Liberator]

What is a good budget mobo company(under $100us)?

I know enough to stay away from Tyan.

I'd love it if I could somehow squeak an Nforce 2, but I don't think that's gonna happen.  So that leaves one of the Via chipsets KT400 or KT333.  I avoid SiS like the plague, but if someone has had good luck with them I'll listen.

[Admiral LSD]

You should be able to get an nForce2 motherboard for under USD$100. Last price I saw for the EPoX 8RDA+ was USD$92, but it should be cheaper than that now.

[Fury]

Does it have to be a motherboard for AMD processors? If not, consider Intel's 865 motherboards. There's a good roundup here:
http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/i865pe-875p-roundup/

I trust Intel's chipsets and CPU's more than AMD's these days (although AMD does mostly only reference mobo chipsets). And not the least because of AMD's current financial status.

[Admiral LSD]

Intel haven't exactly had a spotless track record lately, either. The i820, i850 and even the first revision of the i845 (which used regular SDRAM instead of DDR) all spring to mind as chipsets Intel would probably prefer people forgot. Now that Rambus is out of the way that's starting to change but even so, I still wouldn't touch 865 with a 10 foot pole, particularly if you plan on using it with an 800Mhz FSB P4.

The problem is that Intel deliberately cripple the memory peformance of the 865 in order to sell more of the 875 and it's so-called "PAT" or Performance Acceleration Technology. This doesn't sounds like such a bad thing until you realise that all PAT is is just the application of the streamlined memory access pipe Intel's been using for the 533Mhz parts for ages to the 800Mhz parts. It's nothing special, just a buzzword Intel are using to (unfortunately) mark up the price on i875. Motherboard manufacturers, notably Asus, quickly found a way to overcome this deliberate handicap but Intel responded by first telling them to cease referring to it as PAT but now by releasing a new version of the 865 chipset, the 865PE, which makes the trick Asus and other mobo manufacturers use (basically failing to tell the chipset it had an 800Mhz chip plugged into it so it used PAT regardless) impossible.

[Fury]

Yet somehow PAT is still enabled even in new 865 mobos.

[magatsu1]

I've been thinking mobos myself, as i'm not sure if mine can take DDR memory sticks.

is there a way i can check to be sure ?

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
You should be able to get an nForce2 motherboard for under USD$100. Last price I saw for the EPoX 8RDA+ was USD$92, but it should be cheaper than that now.

i took Admiral LSD (among others) 's opinions, and bought this motherboard a few days ago.  brand new, with shipping, cost me around $80.00

hasn't arrived yet, but i'll let everyone know how it works

[Liberator]

I saw this one on Pricewatch for $51.

[Admiral LSD]

• Chipset:
NVIDIA nForce2 400 + MCP

Ideally, you want to get nForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP-T or at the very least, a board with the regular (333Mhz) SPP and an MCP-T as this nets you halfway decent onboard audio, firewire, and dual-channel RAM support. Given that Biostar don't appear to make such a board I'd still recommend you spend the extra USD$30 and get the EPoX.

[Taristin]

Sadly I have this.

But Keep talking the pluses and minuses, because I want to get something new someday, as well, and I could use all the knowledge I can lay my grubby little hands on...

[Liberator]

I did a search on Pricewatch and for the NF2Ultra with MCP-T and found

this one

and

this one

for under $100.

Explain to me why, when the NF2 has Soundstorm audio and 10/100 as part of the chipset spec, everybody seems to be using Realtek AC'97 and LAN instead and the ones that do use SS are $100+.  Seems to me since the APU is built into the south bridge that you waste time and money laying a second, separate APU elsewhere on the board.  That's just me of course.

[diamondgeezer]

Got me an Asus A7N8X-X for something like 40 squids

On the down side, there's no on-board game port and the port on me SoundBlaster is apparently conflicting with the Nforce set...

[Admiral LSD]

Both those boards only have the regular MCP, at least that's what the detailed specs say.

MCP boards lack the APU (or it's disabled at the hardware level) and therefore are totally reliant on the ACI/AC'97 CODEC for audio resulting in lower performance and quality due to all the effects processing being done in software. MCP-T boards have an AC'97 CODEC (and for some bizarre reason let you use it in place of the APU if you install the CODEC drivers) as well but since the effects processing is done entirely in hardware (like any other sound card) it's light years ahead of CODEC-only solutions.

SoundStorm is really just nVidia marketing BS. It refers to nForce2 boards that have an MCP-T South Bridge (and therefore the APU), enough analog outputs for discrete 5.1 channel output without having to double up and at least SPDIF digital out to utilise the integrated Dolby Digital encoder. With the exception of the Chaintech 7NJS (which forgoes the APU entirely for a C-Media sound chip), any nForce2 board with an MCP-T is technically SoundStorm capable but unless it meets nVidia's requirements it isn't allowed to advertise this fact. The 8RDA+ is like that, it has an MCP-T (it's probably one of the cheapest boards that does) but since it doubles up the Line-In and Mic-In connectors and doesn't include an SPDIF header in the box (EPoX do sell it seperately though), it isn't allowed to carry the SoundStorm tag.

The LAN is somewhat similar to the audio in that the nForce2 chipset only provides the MAC half in hardware, it still needs another chip, called a PHY (short for Physical Layer Transceiver I believe), before it can be useful for anything. Most other boards just use a PHY on it's own (which is the purpose the chips are sold for) and emulate the MAC in software (which again the nForce2 chipset allows for if you install the PHY drivers) which reduces overall performance.

That Gigabyte board looks interesting, it seems to have disabled the onboard nVidia MAC and used a straight RealTek (probably PCI whereas the nVidia MAC connects via HyperTransport, not that it really makes all that much difference at 10/100 speeds) LAN chip which is probably inferior to the onboard nVidia MAC. I certainly wouldn't recommend that board, even if it had an MCP-T.