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General discussion

new system--motherboard recommendations

Oct 11, 2004 11:50AM PDT

Hi, I'm building a new system, and I'm asking for recommendations for a motherboard.
I bought a cpu/mobo combo, and got a crappy mobo.

What I'm building around is:
Athlon XP 3000+ barton (333FSB)
1 gb dual channel PC3200 DDR ram (400FSB)
Ati Radeon 9800 pro 256 video card
Hercules gamesurround Muse 5.1 DVD sound card (is this crap ?)

Features I'm looking for are:
dual bios or an easy way to en/disable dual channel for ram (depending on what I'm doing)
integrated lan
2 SATA channels
4 PATA133 channels
firewire

I'll be running win98 and linux.
I'll be using it for gaming and video editing

thanx

Discussion is locked

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Read the articles on mobos for AMD
Oct 12, 2004 6:57AM PDT
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Re: Read the articles on mobos for AMD
Oct 12, 2004 8:54PM PDT

thanx

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BTW let us know what one you decide to get!!!!
Oct 13, 2004 8:24AM PDT

We really are interested.

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video card vs chipset
Oct 14, 2004 10:36PM PDT

OK, I went back to AMD's site, and after wading through the 7 pages of recommended mobos, I pared the list down to these:

Abit
KW7-G
NF7

albatron
KX18D ProII

asus
A7N8X Deluxe
A7V880

biostar
M7NCD ULTRA

chaintech
7NJL6
7NJS Ultra ZENITH

dfi
LANPARTY NFII ULTRA
NFII ULTRA INFINITY

epox
EP-8RDA3+ Pro

giga-byte
GA-7VT880-L
GA-7VT880 Pro
GA-7N400 Pro2
GA-7N400-L
GA-7N400
GA-7N400-L1
GA-7N400 Pro
GA-7NNXP

leadtek
WinFast K7NCR18D-ProII

msi
K7N2 Delta2 Platinum
K7N2 Delta-ILSR

shuttle
AN35N

soyo
SY-KT880 DRAGON 2
SY-KT880 Dragon 2 v2.0


What I need to know is if there is a consensus on what
chipset I should go with, via or nvidia, to avoid conflicts with my ATI video card.
Then I can start scanning reviews of the remaining choices.

Thanx

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Basically all of the articles that I read
Oct 15, 2004 6:49AM PDT

favor the NVIDIAn Force ultra BUT by only the slightest of margins.

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I favor gigabyte but they are
Oct 15, 2004 7:04AM PDT

usually somewhat more expensive. They have the dual BIOS, but at least on the one that I use at work, the CMOS chips are soldered on the board. I'm not certain that I would rather have a single BIOS on a plug in CMOS chip. In emergency one can get a new chip. The good thing is that their ITE gigaraid chip allows rhe ports to be used for ATA drives or ATAPI drives.

Don't get dual bios and dual channel memory mixed up. The way to go from dual chamnnel memory setup would be to open the case and move one of the memory sticks to the non dual channel slot. taint automatic.

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Your user name scares me. What happens if I
Oct 15, 2004 7:08AM PDT

led you to the wrong mobo???

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Re: video card vs chipset
Oct 17, 2004 4:57AM PDT

My question is...does my video card brand (ATI) determine which brand of mobo chipset I'll get the best results with?

So far, after posting this question in 8 different forums, I've got:
11 it doesn't matters
1 "I had a problem once"
vs
the one post that made me start this line of inquiry

Thanx

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(NT) (NT) It's time for YOU to make a decision!!!!!!!!
Oct 17, 2004 6:31AM PDT