Author Topic: Mobo for 2.5GHz P4? (Read 311 times)

LLv34_Camouflage · « **on:** December 27, 2002, 06:21:41 AM »

Hi guys,

Santa promised me a new computer, with the following vital specs:

P4 2.53 GHz (533MHz)
Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
1 GB DDR
19" monitor, 1600x1200 gaming resolution.

What kind of mother board should I get, which chipset? What AGP8x boards are there? How much faster would AGP8x be than AGP4x in the above rig? What about onboard sound vs offboard?

Any other good tips or advice?

Thanks,

Camo

bloom25 · « **Reply #1 on:** December 27, 2002, 10:39:19 AM »

How much faster would AGP 8x be over 4x? Not much at all, probably less than a 1% improvement in very high end benchmarks. There are very few boards available for the P4 that support AGP 8x. I don't have the time to look and see what's out there right now.

As far as chipsets go, I'd look for an Intel 845PE based board so you have support for HT enabled P4s (>3.06 GHz). That is the newest Intel chipset for the P4.

woodfordb · « **Reply #2 on:** December 27, 2002, 01:59:01 PM »

For 8x AGP look at the newish intel 7205 (Somthing like that) chipset. Granite Bay is its code name, It supports dual channel DDR ram at 200/266 but as its dual channel its supposed to be almost as quick as the 850e's with PC1066 rambus.

or wait for the new new one in feb that supports higher dual channel DDR Ram (333/400)

The 845PE is a nice board, the asus one gets rave right ups.
As for supporting HT (Hyper Threading) most of the 850, 850E and 845 boards out there do with a bios update

Check out http://www.tomshardware.com for some good reviews on all p4 boards.

Regards

Mandrill

LLv34_Camouflage · « **Reply #3 on:** December 29, 2002, 12:36:56 PM »

Thanks for the tips guys!

Why Intel, why not SiS or VIA chipset?

Camo

woodfordb · « **Reply #4 on:** December 31, 2002, 02:11:59 PM »

The reason people recomend intel is because they are the most stable with the p4 chip. SIS I think is pretty quick and cheap, but at the end of the day its nice to have the Chipset made by the same people as the CPU. Somthing AMD has lacked (The 750 & 760 with true AMD north & south bridge chips never did flood the market) and in general is one of the reasons why some people experience problems. Though the new Nforce 2 motherboards from Nvidia should sort these problems out.

regards

mandrill