Good AMD upgrade mobo?

  • Thread starter Thread starter grendel
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grendel

Looking for a good mobo to upgrade to from my 800 MHZ Athlon A7V board. From
what I hear an nForce2 is the best Athlon chipset to get. Looks like the
A7N8X-X is the boards to get. Trying to spend less than $300 for mobo, CPU
and 512 MB of good DDR400 memory. (gonna get some from Crucial).
 
grendel said:
Looking for a good mobo to upgrade to from my 800 MHZ Athlon A7V board. From
what I hear an nForce2 is the best Athlon chipset to get. Looks like the
A7N8X-X is the boards to get. Trying to spend less than $300 for mobo, CPU
and 512 MB of good DDR400 memory. (gonna get some from Crucial).
Click to expand...

I got a Abit NF7-S motherboard and I am very happy with it, offers
serial ATA, and most other things you want, it is an Nforce 2 board. It
was about £100 in the U.K.
 
Get an Epox 8RDAx+ : beloved of hardcore overclockers and excellent value.

QED, eh ?

---------
Epox 8RDA3+ (224 FSB - 2.0v, 60mm NB Sink, 19CFM)
XP1800 DLT3C (10.0 - 2240 MHz stable - 1.78v, 40CFM Volcano 9+)
2 x OCZ 256MB PC3700 (448 - 7-3-3 / 2.0 dual - 2.9v)
Gigabyte Radeon 9700 Pro (383/362 - 1.5v, 40CFM)
Air - 44/64C

3DMk03 - 5,805
3DMk01 - 17,990
 
Ok IF I buy AMD I want to spend LESS than $200 for both CPU and mobo.
Both the Abit and Epox are more than $100 just for the mobo. I may
take the Asus since it's less than $90. I don't overclock. I want
stability. I don't want to risk premature hardware failure to get a
few more 3dMarks or FPS. If the Pentium 4 800 FSB comes down a little
more to about $150 then I'm going with an Intel board and CPU. If I
could get the mobo and CPU for like $250 I'd go Intel.
 
The Shuttle AN35N-Ultra 400 is a rock stable no frills board with the
nForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP chipset
that is dirt cheap. The Soltek nforce2 boards are also excellent buys and
offer different extras depending. I've built a system with the Shuttle $66
(shipped at the time) and the Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL. The Soltek RL is $99 or
$96 w/out raid now in US. Both were instant runners with no problems on set
up.Again it depends on what you want but the Soltek is an excellent
overclocker if you'd ever use it while the Shuttle really can't be beat for
the price.
 
Ok IF I buy AMD I want to spend LESS than $200 for both CPU and mobo. Both
the Abit and Epox are more than $100 just for the mobo. I may take the
Asus since it's less than $90. I don't overclock. I want stability. I
don't want to risk premature hardware failure to get a few more 3dMarks or
FPS. If the Pentium 4 800 FSB comes down a little more to about $150 then
I'm going with an Intel board and CPU. If I could get the mobo and CPU for
like $250 I'd go Intel.
Click to expand...

If you aren't going to raise the voltage or change the multiplier, then
the ASrock K7S8X is one of the best choices. It will take all AMD cpu's.
$49. Based on the SIS746FX chipset. Had mine for about a week. I don't
think this board can be beat for the price.
 
If you aren't going to raise the voltage or change the multiplier,
then the ASrock K7S8X is one of the best choices. It will take all AMD
cpu's. $49. Based on the SIS746FX chipset. Had mine for about a week.
I don't think this board can be beat for the price.
Click to expand...

I would also look at the Shuttle AK32E. At NewEgg it is $52. The user
reviews of it by those putting a Athlon XP+ processor on it were so
strong that it became my choice to upgrade from an older Soyo. So far,
it is excellent. You can change the fsb, have a few limited changes for
VCore, but cannot change the memory, AGP, or PCI voltages (which some
overclockers like to do.) It will take either 2 DDR or 2 SDRAM, but not
at the same time. Interesting, well designed board. Sound on board but
no NIC. I hadn't looked at Shuttle until recently and had been
recommending Abit, EpoX, or Soyo. But Shuttle has a number of
interesting boards, both Via and NVidia chipsets.

--
Dennis Roark

(e-mail address removed)
Starting Points:
www.home.earthlink.net/~denro
 
If you want a good mobo all the whistles and bells go with the Asus
A7N8X Deluxe....BUT make sure it's version 2. Otherwise go with the
EPoX 8RDA+. Crucial mermory is good budget memory. After buying mobo
and memory should leave you with about $80 for the CPU. You should be
able o pick up a AMD Athlon 2200 for that price. Shop around and try
and get the best deal in one place so you save on shipping. BTW, what
about the heatsink?


Darth
 
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