[karajorma]

Well you all know you love these topics anyway

I'm planning to upgrade my computer and I've got a questions especially about the Motherboard. I've already got hold of the processor (an Athlon 2100) and I'm planning to get 1gig of PC2700 DDR ram for the computer. That leaves me about £150 to spend on the motherboard but it's here where my computer knowledge falls over.

Basically I need a good quality easily set up motherboard. I'll need at least 5 PCI sockets to take all the cards I've got. I've got an SB Audigy card so on board audio isn't too important. I'll be using my Radeon 7200 for the time being but it's probably the next thing I'll be upgrading (probably for a later model Radeon)

Beyond that I don't know what to go for. Anybody got any good reccomendations?

[Fineus]

I'm running a Chaintech 7NJS and love it, but I've heard the Asus is pretty good as well. Those are the only two top end boards I've heard of lately - sorry I can't remember the name of the Asus board.

[Grey Wolf]

MSI KT3 Ultra2 handles pretty well. It has support for DDR333, has 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP 4x slot, 6 USB2.0 slots, and is pretty cheap (~100 USD).

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
MSI KT3 Ultra2 handles pretty well. It has support for DDR333, has 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP 4x slot, 6 USB2.0 slots, and is pretty cheap (~100 USD).

yeah, that's my board as well, i'm planning to get 3 512 pc2700 in the near future 256 just aint enough

[Admiral LSD]

For AMD, you can't go past nForce2. nF2 is the best Athlon chipset platform to date.

As for boards, you'll want something based on the SPP North Bridge (these are easy to spot as they won't be advertised as having onboard graphics) and the MCP-T South Bridge. Examples include the Asus A7N8X Deluxe, the EPoX 8RDA+ (this is the one I have), the Abit NF7-S and even Thunder's 7NJS but I wouldn't recommend that board as it forgoes the nF2 MCP-T's onboard SoundStorm audio (which is only beaten by an Audigy 2) in favour of an inferior external C-Media audio chip. Unless you really need SATA then you can save a few bob by going for a board like the 8RDA+ (or even it's sister board the FIC AU11) which also has a sixth PCI slot (most other non-SATA nF2 boards have a CNR slot instead).

[karajorma]

SATA? Whatsat?

Yeah. I've heard a little about the nForce2 chipset being good. Is the sound from the chipset really that good? You make it sound like it's not even worth installing the Audigy board unless I want the gameport/Firewire port.

Advice sounds pretty good so far. Keep it up guys

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by karajorma
SATA? Whatsat?

Serial ATA, it's the next-generation of Hard Disk interfaces. It has a couple of advantages over the existing Parallel ATA interface like a smaller cable and a higher speed (150Mb/s atm increasing to 600Mb/s by 2007) but since drives still aren't commonplace and controllers are still tied to the PCI bus it isn't something to get really worked up about yet.

Is the sound from the chipset really that good? You make it sound like it's not even worth installing the Audigy board unless I want the gameport/Firewire port.

I can't comment on how it's actually sounds personally, my 8RDA+ is sitting in my case waiting for some RAM, a HDD and a graphics card to join it, but its on paper specs put the nForce2 APU ahead of virtually everything else and when tested, comes only a few percent behind an Audigy 2. The nForce2 MCP-T also has firewire capability and every board I've seen has had a gameport. Try both and see what happens.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD


Serial ATA, it's the next-generation of Hard Disk interfaces. It has a couple of advantages over the existing Parallel ATA interface like a smaller cable and a higher speed (150Mb/s atm increasing to 600Mb/s by 2007) but since drives still aren't commonplace and controllers are still tied to the PCI bus it isn't something to get really worked up about yet.



I can't comment on how it's actually sounds personally, my 8RDA+ is sitting in my case waiting for some RAM, a HDD and a graphics card to join it, but its on paper specs put the nForce2 APU ahead of virtually everything else and when tested, comes only a few percent behind an Audigy 2. The nForce2 MCP-T also has firewire capability and every board I've seen has had a gameport. Try both and see what happens.

Interesting...the reviews I had read (not that I focused on sound) indicated that sound quality was probably about on par with an Audigy 1 and not the second gen.  Interesting tho.

Quick question for you.  Can you run IDE and SATA devices at the same time.  I suspect I'll get the deluxe edition of the A7N8X and toss in a new SATA hard drive in oh maybe 6 months time...can I still run my current HDD + CD drives along with a SATA hard drive?

[kode]

I don't think that'd be a problem, but I don't have any experiences from it yet. we're gonna build some comps with SATA and stuff in my school soon, tho.

[karajorma]

Okay now I know what SATA is how does it work? Does it have it's own connector on the board or does it share the standard HD connections?

If the latter, can I have a SATA drive as a master and a parallel ATA drive as the slave or can I only put 2 SATA drives on the same cable?

[Fury]

Originally posted by IceFire

Interesting...the reviews I had read (not that I focused on sound) indicated that sound quality was probably about on par with an Audigy 1 and not the second gen.  Interesting tho.

Quick question for you.  Can you run IDE and SATA devices at the same time.  I suspect I'll get the deluxe edition of the A7N8X and toss in a new SATA hard drive in oh maybe 6 months time...can I still run my current HDD + CD drives along with a SATA hard drive?

1) That is because A1 and A2 has minimal sound quality difference.
2) Yes.

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by karajorma
Okay now I know what SATA is how does it work? Does it have it's own connector on the board or does it share the standard HD connections?

If the latter, can I have a SATA drive as a master and a parallel ATA drive as the slave or can I only put 2 SATA drives on the same cable?

SATA has its own connector which is smaller than the current PATA connector (7 pins as opposed to the 40/80 used in PATA). It's backward compatible with the existing PATA standard though with adaptors existing to easily convert a PATA drive to SATA (I assume it'd work the other way too but I haven't seen an adaptor for that) and commonly included with SATA controller cards/motherboards. It also forgoes the traditional "Master" and "Slave" idea in favour of a one port/drive, one cable model.

[karajorma]

Well judging from the posts on here it looks like NForce2 boards are the way to go. If I don't have to use the Audigy in the new computer that's good too (since it means that all I'd need to rebuild the old computer later would be a floppy drive and a graphics card

Anyone know of some good hardware review sites to help me pick which one?

[Admiral LSD]

AnandTech reviewed 6 nF2 boards last December and gave their award to 8RDA+ but reading the scores, they're so close it really doesn't matter which one you buy. Ultimately, the decision will come down to the board which offers the feature set you want at the price you're willing to pay.

As I posted earlier, boards based around the SPP North Bridge and the MCP-T South Bridge (this is a requirement if you want the fancy audio hardware so look out for it) are the best place to start looking. Avoid the Chaintech 7NJS as although this has an MCP-T, it doesn't implement the nVidia APU instead opting (stupidly) for an inferior external standalone audio chip.