Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Nilsen on August 31, 2004, 03:09:27 PM
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Is there a big difference? If so...what?
im thinking about this mobo:
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/no/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=KV8+Pro&fMTYPE=Socket%20754
thx
-edit- is abit a good brand?
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Don't you have an outboard to buy first :)
Charon
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Originally posted by Charon
Don't you have an outboard to buy first :)
Charon
No hurry with that. We have sorted it out. :)
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ABIT is a good brand. Hardocp had a tough time overclocking the Abit AV8, apparently due to the AGP/PCI bus not being locked properly which makes FSB overclocking almost impossible, however they said that it was very fast and stable at stock speeds. The benchmarks which compared it to the similiar ASUS A8V showed it to be a fast performer.
I have owned several ABIT motherboards and the only one that ever died on me was a few years ago when they used a batch of defective, poor-quality capacitors on a couple thousand motherboards, and I ended up with one of the bad ones. Other than that one manufacturing problem which they've since corrected, I haven't had any problems with Abit motherboards.
They're not the only brand in town though, so shop around for the features you want. ASUS is also good and you might find some differences between the Abit and ASUS offerings, like serial IDE raid options, different built in networking or sound options, etc.
I'm personally waiting to see how the next nvidia athlon 64 chipset comes out, and then I'll wait a bit longer until the prices drop on the socket 939 stuff. I'll probably end up getting one of the last AGP mobos since I'll want to match it with my nvidia 6800 GT, which is probably the last AGP video card I'll ever buy. Over the next year or so I'll complete my system around that vid card which probably means some sort of socket 939 athlon 64 with an AGP slot. That will set me up good to wait out the transition to the BTX form factor and all the other new tech like DDR2, PCI-x, etc.
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thx.
I'm not gonna overclock it. I just need a stable fast mobo with gigabit ethernet. Needed a firewire, but ive decided to go for a fw800 pci to match my external drive.
I guess my real question was just what the diff between regular and pro chipset is.
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From this link:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/k8-series/k8t800pro.jsp
You can see that in addition to the asynchronous bus, the hypertransport bus is running at double the speed of the non-pro. That means more performance. Later revisions are usually more stable and faster in general, so it pretty much depends on if you want to spend a couple more bucks for a faster motherboard or not. The price difference between the pro and non pro version shouldn't be too much unless you're comparing a premium mobo against a value mobo.
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I guess the one ive picked is a value board cause its one of the cheaper i could find.
Thx for clearing it up for me :)
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Don't confuse price with value :) You get what you pay for especially when there are embedded components involved. Take embedded sound for example... Between a value and a premium board, you might see a huge difference in cpu utilization and sound quality, plus the premium board will give you more connectors on the back ensuring that they can hook up to whatever speakers you have. Digital SPDIF, optical, plus the usual multiple audio-out ports, that sort of thing. How many USB ports? How good is the SATA RAID controller, and will it choke up the PCI bus or does it have a direct connection to the chipset and cpu?
That's why ya gotta shop around. There are less expensive ABIT boards for example, that offer fewer features but the ones they do have use high quality components. And there are feature packed boards that use crappy components. The Nvidia chipset boards are prime examples of this, since nvidia has included the ability to integrate very high quality sound and ethernet into the board by using features in the chipset itself, but many board manufacturers skip those built in chipset features and tack on cheap all in one chips that work but not nearly as well, and save only a few bucks per board. It's worth paying an extra $10-$20 for a board that uses good components.
That's how ABIT, ASUS, and other "premium" board makers get their loyal following, by not skimping on the bits and pieces that make up a quality board. In the end, you're often talking a difference from a $100 board up to a $130 board, but that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the overall cost of a system.
Power supplies are another component where it's a really bad idea to try to go cheap... The antec trupower series seems to have a good price/performance ratio according to the reviews, and if you skip the fancy gold anodized LED-enhanced versions, you can get a decent power supply from Antec for under $80. Enermax also has a decent reputation, but look for reviews on the web before buying.
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thx again
im going for an "old" case with a 350w powersupply (called Aopen H600B or something)
I find picking a mobo hardere than any other component. Memory isnt easy to pick either.
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By the way, the KV8 is "old" tech and AMD will eventually kill that processor socket. You may want to consider going with this one:
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=AV8-3rd+Eye&fMTYPE=Socket+939
The AV8 instead of the KV8. It gets you dual channel memory and AMD's latest socket design. I think there's currently a bit of a price premium on the cpu and motherboards, but that ought to settle down in a month or two if you can wait.
Supposedly socket 754 is going to be dead in the reasonably near future. You can get a cheaper and almost as fast socket 754 system, but you may not have as easy of an upgrade option in the future.
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For memory I'd probably go with crucial ballistix. It's premium stuff and you'll pay extra for it, but it's nearly the best out there.
Take a look at this buyer's guide:
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2185
Replace that AMD FX 53 cpu with something a little more reasonable, and you'd get a great system for not a whole lot more than the cheaper alternatives. Anandtech has several different buyer's guides aimed at different price/performance ranges, so I suggest finding and reading all of them. Taking their recommendations and adjusting a little bit down (or up) like going to a slower cpu or non-ultra video card can get you a really nice system that gives you the absolute most performance for your money.
And don't skimp on the power supply... 400 watts isn't too big with today's cpus and video cards.
And if you can wait a year, this might be the mobo chipset to have:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2175
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Yup, i know about the socket 754 vs 939 thing. Im on abit of a budget after making afew mistakes so ill settle for 754 with an 3200+ cpu.
So far i think this is what ill get:
ati x800pro vivo (for pipeline reasons)
amd64 3200+ boxed
ocz or geil 2x512 3200 mem
dvd rom (have new external fw burner)
aopen h600b case.
still undecieded on mobo, but either asus or abit
floppy
80gb seagate or samsung sata drive (dont need more internal storage)
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Might as well splurge, spend that extra $10, and get a 100 or 120 gig hard drive :) Or go nuts and get 160 gig for an extra $20.
The seagate barracuda 7200.7 drives are quiet and reaonsably fast. I've used western digital drives in my main computer for a long time but I just got a 200 gig seagate for use as an external hard drive for backups, and it's very quiet and pretty fast. The price for the 200 gig seagate is somewhere under $120.
http://www.storagereview.com has tons of drive reviews and rankings, and while the seagate isn't the fastest it is rated as the quietest and almost the coolest.
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i have way to much storage space (no, im not nuts :D )
if i dont get the 80gb seagate, ill go for the wd 74gb raptor drive. zoooom...
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Be aware that the raptor drives run hot and you might need extra cooling for both the drive and your case.
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Originally posted by eagl
Be aware that the raptor drives run hot and you might need extra cooling for both the drive and your case.
The 74 gig version is supposed to run abit coler than the 36gb one, but there will not be alot of stuff at all in my cabinet and ill install an extra 120mm papst fan. The graphics card also blows the heat out of the cabinet.
(http://www.netshop.no/img/produkter/13921.jpg)
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Sort of the same system Nilsen only I went with the Gigabyte K8N Pro board back in April on a 754 A64 3200+ CPU with 1GB DDR400 of Geil RAM (2x512MB). The system is stable and fast for what I want but like eagl sometime this fall after the new house is settled into I will be dropping some extra cash on a new system. Only this time my wife keeps the A64 754 based one for her business and the next new one is going to be all "Big Willy" (thats me btw) style.
Probably built around an FX-53 based CPU with no less than 2GB of RAM and one of the new PCI-E (or whatever its called then) video cards. I am planning a budget for that system to hit the $1800-$2000 mark because I will need a new monitor as well.
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Sounds great Reschke.. its gonna be über fast :)
My pc is gonna be an "upper middle class" one cause i wont use it that much. (i use my powerbook for work stuff)