New motherboard and cpu needed

[Pollock]

I wanted to follow up on my post.

I had a bad experience with either the asus board or the cpu.  According to Monarch they load the latest bios and fully test the motherboard.  Well I installed everthing taking my time it took about 2 hours to put together.  The pc would not boot up (no beeps black screen).  I knew i had good memory and a vid card but i removed then to see if she would boot up. Again nothing.

Before I pulled the cpu to check I called asus tech support as I never have removed a new style fan and heatsink from the board.

The heatsink was locked tight so I took asus's advice and started to rock the heatsink.  This was a huge mistake because the retail heatsink paste is lets just say more like an epoxy.

It finally broke free but it also took the cpu up with it pulling it right from the socket.  This of course hosed the chip bending the legs.  I explained this to monarch and after some convincing they agreed to exchange everything out.

Upon advice from a close friend I changed motherboards to the msi k8n neo2 platinum.

I have noticed an increase in framerates but they are not that huge of a difference over my old P4 2.4g system.

I am currently researching the proper bios settings so far it has been a hard read.  I will work on the set up and pursue overclocking.  I should have an update in a few days.

[Siaf__csf]

It's always a good idea to use an aftermarket heatsink and thermal paste.

[humble]

Originally posted by Pollock
Thanks for the data Scuzzy and Hajo.

From those figures it looks like 200 dollar upgrade may not get me to the desired settings I want to play in.  I would probably be ok without fsaa at 4x.  I still havent found the data on the AMD set up I am looking at.

Hajo,

The one thing that I hated in the past with AMD was VIA chipsets.
There were always issues.  Since AMDs success have those issues gone away?

Those were the primary reasons I went to a P4 with intel chipset, and their proven stability.  With that said If I went with intel again
It looks like I would HAVE to add extra cooling.  This would place me around 275.00 total 25 over budget (not too bad).

The AMD set up may come in under 250.00 without extra cooling needed.

I am very close to making the decision I just need the AMD data.

I agree that the 939 socket is the future but you can get a great deal on the DFI lanparty 754 board with an AMD 3200+ or similiar. Mine was $239 a month ago. It uses the nvidia chipset and has been just great.