Author Topic: Bloom? (Read 394 times)

SKurj · « **on:** August 17, 2003, 12:31:33 AM »

Heyas

Awhile back I posted on the board about my next upgrade. You mentioned I believe the ASUS A7n8x deluxe revision 2.

I am looking at possibly going to nforce 2 and want a board that will have some life, and will give me an excuse to not bother with creative sound cards.

If I have the name of the board correct, is the retail packaging very clear which revision the board is? I have seen the board listed locally, but no mention of revision is mentioned, I'd hate to go buy the board thinking it was rev 2... and find out later its not. And ya can't always trust the salesman...

SKurj

Kaz · « **Reply #1 on:** August 17, 2003, 03:43:38 PM »

Dunno if this will help.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=asus+a7n8x+deluxe+version+2&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=a8edc2ea.0306290414.601e7095%40posting.google.com&rnum=2

bloom25 · « **Reply #2 on:** August 18, 2003, 01:52:06 AM »

You can tell if it's a revision 2.0 in 2 ways:
First, the box usually has a sticker that says 400 MHz FSB ready.
Second, if you look at the board itself near the bottom PCI slot it will say Rev 2.0.

I think it's only right to mention that the Athlon 64 comes out next month. (It will use a totally different socket.) It's highly likely that the 3200+ Athlon XP will be the last Socket A processor that will fit in that board.

beet1e · « **Reply #3 on:** August 18, 2003, 03:17:23 AM »

Skurj - you buy stuff like this at retail stores??? I reckon on saving about 30% by shopping at the mail order outlets. Which are probably still more expensive than US stores - lol.

But one of my suppliers provides this information about the A7N8X deluxe V2. (scrollable page) I think all the information is there.

Bloom - this is the board I want to buy - in about a month's time. I was going to get the XP2600 to put in it, as this will be quite adequate for my needs and is about £280 (~$450) cheaper than the XP3200. I'll get the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro.

But given the introduction of the Athlon 64, what is the future of this mobo?

I liked Bloom's thread about windows installation tips, and have saved it as a .MHT web archive for reference when building that new system. I downloaded W2000 SP4, but couldn't find out how to download IE6 SP1.

One last Q about processors. The XP2600/XP3200 etc are Socket A processors, as is my current Athlon 1.2GHz, but on some boards these are identified as Socket 462. What does that mean?

SKurj · « **Reply #4 on:** August 18, 2003, 01:21:26 PM »

Sure do beet1e I buy retail in case of any problems.

I know I pay a little more, but I feel its worth it.

And btw... I can buy an XP2800+ Barton retail boxed for less than half the price of that 2600 you quoted from the same store...

SKurj

bloom25 · « **Reply #5 on:** August 18, 2003, 05:23:14 PM »

Socket A and Socket 462 are the same thing.

It's hard to say what AMD plans to do with the current generation Socket A processors. I have heard they are planning to badge all 2600+ and lower processors as Athlon FX (probably to differentiate them from the Athlon 64 stuff and to compete with the Celerons from Intel). I think it's safe to say that AMD will continue to make Socket A processors for at least another 9 months or so, similar to the situation with the K6 series processors, but I wouldn't get my hopes up on seeing anything faster than a 3200+. Also, just because the Athlon 64 launches on September 22 doesn't mean that it will be affordable at that time. It's hard to say just how long it will take for that to happen.

The situation is similar on the Intel processors. There's a very good chance that the next Pentium processor (codename Prescott - could be named Pentium 5) will be released in the late October early November timeframe, but it looks as if it will use so much power that it will not fit on all but a select few current i865 and i875 based boards. The numbers floating around are 103W maximum heat dissipation. That's more power than nearly all current boards can provide.

Basically, if you are looking at buying a system right now you are faced with the prospect of little to no upgrade path.

bloom25 · « **Reply #6 on:** August 18, 2003, 05:37:30 PM »

Beetle, download the ie6setup.exe (about 500k usually) as you normally would from Microsoft's site. Once you've got it downloaded, go to start -> run and browse for it. Open it with:
ie6setup.exe /c:"ie6wzd.exe /d /s:""#E"

(Copy and paste the last part of that starting with the /c if you need to.)

Here's an exact paste from my run menu just to show you how this might look:

C:\temp\temp2\ie6setup.exe /c:"ie6wzd.exe /d /s:""#E"

This will give you the option to choose your OS and save everything to a folder. You can then burn that folder to CD. To install it, just run ie6setup from that folder (you can do it off the CD if you like).