Athalon 64 MOBO

[kevykev56]

Can anyone recommend a good motherboard for an AMD ATHLON 64 3000+ SOCKET 754? I was looking at the ASUS K8VSE DELUXE VIA K8T800. I will be running it with a ATI 9600 until I decide I need to upgrade that as well.

Seems like I have heard that the ATI cards dont work well with the VIA chipset? Let me know if you have first hand experience with this.

I am kicking the thought of the Athalon 64 or a XP 32 Barton 3000+. Only will save me around $80 to go with the Barton so no big deal either way. Just looking to upgrade to something that will last for a year or so before im obsolete again.


RHIN0

[Boat]

The new DFI NF3-250 just got one hell of a review.

[Estes]

Originally posted by kevykev56
Can anyone recommend a good motherboard for an AMD ATHLON 64 3000+ SOCKET 754? I was looking at the ASUS K8VSE DELUXE VIA K8T800. I will be running it with a ATI 9600 until I decide I need to upgrade that as well.

Seems like I have heard that the ATI cards dont work well with the VIA chipset? Let me know if you have first hand experience with this.

I am kicking the thought of the Athalon 64 or a XP 32 Barton 3000+. Only will save me around $80 to go with the Barton so no big deal either way. Just looking to upgrade to something that will last for a year or so before im obsolete again.


RHIN0

I thought it was the Nividia cards that don't like the VIA chipset?

[Reschke]

I have a Gigabyte K8N Pro Socket 754 board that has worked flawlessly since I installed it and the Athlon64 3200+ with 1MB cache. The board is well laid out and easy to work with as far as adding in more RAM or hooking up new hard drives. It has IDE and SATA connections as well. One big point with it for me was the onboard LAN and sound also.

[kevykev56]

I thought it was the Nividia cards that don't like the VIA chipset?

Im not sure. It jumped in my head that I had read it somewhere. Could be the other way round. The ole memory board in my head needs an upgrade!


RHIN0

[flakbait]

You're thinking SoundBlaster cards. ATi and Nvidia both work perfectly well with a VIA chipset-mased mobo. I've got a KT266-based mobo with a Radeon 9200 on it; works great. SoundBlaster's drivers, on the other hand, utterly detest VIA chipsets. Drop an SB card in any nForce board, they'll scream. They'll scream in a VIA board too, but for very different reasons


-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]

[MOSQ]

I just built a system over Labor Day using the new MSI K8N NEO FSR mobo (Nvidia NForce 3 Gb chipset), Athlon 64 3200, and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. All these items were on sale at Fry's :

MOBO + Athlon 64 3200 combo package = $269
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro = $199.
2 x 512 PC 3200 Corsair Value Ram = $90 each.
SB Audigy $39.

A few comments on this combo:

1) It screams. It overclocks well. I have my front side bus at 220 mhz  (200 is stock). Rock solid. On the new SIS Sandra multimedia test it benchmarks faster than every reference system in the test, including all the dual processor systems, even the dual processor Intel 560 3.6 systems.

2) The mobo is picky about sound cards if you need the gameport to work for analog controllers. Some Audigy 2 gameports will not work. I had a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, no way would the gameport work. I found the SB Live! would work, then tried a plain Audigy (not the 2); it works great. If you use USB HOTAS, this is a non-issue.

2) The mobo is set up for three sticks of RAM, but three sticks of PC3200 won't work, at least not with the current bios. Plan on buying two sticks. Three sticks of PC 2700 do work.

Before you buy, read the user forum of the board you are interested in. Here's the one for the AMD 64 Nvidia MSI boards:

http://forum.msi.com.tw/board.php?boardid=28&sid=39e35222edc5cc5a97bc8f609ec702b1

There's good stuff here, such as the sticky on Basic Building Tips.

One last word of advice, the Nvidia NForce 3 chipset is new. It will experience teething problems as issues are found and corrected in new bios updates. If you don't want to be on the new edge of hardware issues, get a board with a chipset that has been around a year or more. Those boards will have most of the problems fixed, or least you'll know the limitations going in.

[jetb123]

I am getting corsair(512x2) pc3200 ram will it work on that MSI?

[Edbert]

Originally posted by jetb123
I am getting corsair(512x2) pc3200 ram will it work on that MSI?

Yup, I've got two sticks of 1024 in my K8T Neo, you can use two or four sticks, just not one or three. I have yet to try overclocking my FX53, whats the point? AH2 runs at a solid 85FPS which is my monitor's refresh rate. Maybe Doom3 could use a boost...hmmm.

[MOSQ]

The Corsair Value Ram will, other types of Corsair RAM may not. Go to the forum in my thread above and read the threads there on RAM that does Work, and Ram that does not work. They are sticky's put up by MSI. Also read the building tips thread.

I don't know what board Elbert MOL is talking about that takes four sticks of RAM, but it's not the MSI K8N NEO FSR with NForce 3 chipset for Athlon 64 processors. That board has only three memory slots. And even though it has three slots, three sticks of PC3200 RAM will NOT work. You can only use up to two sticks of PC3200.

And One stick works fine too. Lots of folks use just one stick. Read the MSI board above to be sure you're getting compatible ram.

One last note: You need a very good power supply for this board to work right. Straight from MSI regrding this particular board:

POWER SUPPLIES

No single component in a computer system is more important than the Power Supply.
With the advent of AMD's Athlon64 series of processors, this subject has to rank at the top when it comes to component selection. In an effort not to influence or possibly mislead potential PSU buyers, it is felt that we should only provide the necessary requirements that are needed for these newer processor/motherboard combinations. Absolutely of utmost importance is amperage ratings - and especially on the +12v line. A suggested safe minimum of 24a on the +12v rail. There have seen some members that are satisfied with their 18 or 20amps on +12v....but as they add components to their systems, the requirement will likely change - and a bigger supply may be needed to power their system. While you don't need more than you will use, having a buffer that allows you to do some upgrades without having to change your PSU in the near future is always a good investment.

[Edbert]

Originally posted by MOSQ
I don't know what board Elbert MOL is talking about that takes four sticks of RAM, but it's not the MSI K8N NEO FSR with NForce 3 chipset for Athlon 64 processors. That board has only three memory slots. And even though it has three slots, three sticks of PC3200 RAM will NOT work. You can only use up to two sticks of PC3200.

MSI K8T NEO2-FIR

[MOSQ]

Elbert MOL's board is a socket 939 board with the Via Chipset.

kevykev56 is asking in the original post about socket 754 boards.

jet was not specific about which MSI board, but since the discussion in this thread is about socket 754  boards I assume that's what he meant.

[Boat]

Here  is another comparison of three 754 boards.

[schizer]

ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON  ATHLON, not athalon.  ATH-LON ATH-LON

[schizer]

Originally posted by jetb123
I am getting corsair(512x2) pc3200 ram will it work on that MSI?

Dual Channel Memory is not an option on the socket 754's in fact it performs better with one memory module.  939 motherboards support dual channel