Need hot new ASUS MB for intel CPU

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MeNotHome

I need to build a new cad station.
What is the hot new board for an Intel CPU.
Needs to be able to hand 2-3 gig of ram.

Also, I need a board that is available now.

Thanks for any advice
 
MeNotHome said:
I need to build a new cad station.
What is the hot new board for an Intel CPU.
Needs to be able to hand 2-3 gig of ram.

Also, I need a board that is available now.

Thanks for any advice
Click to expand...
Have you done any research of you own?
I find www.newegg.com a good place to go.

Jim M
 
It looks like two that should be considered are the
Asus P5AD2 and the P5GD2.?

Anyone have any comments on these two? I need quick machines and
stability. The reason I asked the question here is usually the people
that frequent this group know about any boards that may not be stable.

Thanks for any advice or comments
 
MeNotHome said:
It looks like two that should be considered are the
Asus P5AD2 and the P5GD2.?

Anyone have any comments on these two? I need quick machines and
stability. The reason I asked the question here is usually the people
that frequent this group know about any boards that may not be stable.

Thanks for any advice or comments
Click to expand...

It depends on how you define "hot" :-)

http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040810/index.html

You can either get good performance using an existing DDR based
board, or go with a 3.4 or 3.6GHz Prescott LGA775, and get "hot".
The way things are going, a high end Intel solution will be running
in thermal throttle mode all the time, unless maybe there are
some good water block or other exotic cooling solutions. AFAIK
water blocks for LGA775 are not available yet, and neither are
third party HSF combinations. The motherboards themselves are
shipping again, as one poster was asking about a thermal problem
with a LGA775 a few days ago.

For LGA775, it is too early to make comments about stability yet.
There aren't enough boards in the field, to make any comments.

On the desktop front, one advantage of DDR2, is that a new
generation of memory chips is being used that allow roughly
double the memory density. This means 1GB modules are more
common in this tech, than in DDR. And the memory runs cooler,
due to the use of 1.8V instead of 2.5+ volts.

The CAD applications I've used were all single processor type
applications, so a dual or more processor board wouldn't help.
(If you are running simulation or crunch-style apps, then it
can help.) Maybe your CAD applications are different. You
could shop for a dual Xeon or a quad Opteron, if you have the
budget. Apparently,there are Xeon processors now with FSB800,
and the NCCH-DL can run them. (For Opteron, Tyan has a selection
of Opteron multiple processor boards.)

ftp://download.intel.com/design/Xeon/datashts/30235501.pdf
http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Socket604/NCCH-DL/e1636_ncch-dl.pdf
http://forums.2cpu.com/search.php (Search for FSB800)

If you do decide to go with a 3.4 or 3.6GHz LGA775 processor,
try to do as much reading as you can, on finding decent cooling
solutions for them. Buying a computer that overheats your disk
drives, and runs in thermal throttle mode all the time, isn't
the answer.

HTH,
Paul
 
MeNotHome said:
It looks like two that should be considered are the
Asus P5AD2 and the P5GD2.?

Anyone have any comments on these two? I need quick machines and
stability. The reason I asked the question here is usually the people
that frequent this group know about any boards that may not be stable.

Thanks for any advice or comments
Click to expand...


How much money are you willing to spend?
Have you consider'd the athlon64's or Xeons.
 
Hi,

Something to keep in mind. You say you want 2 - 3 GB now, what about the
future?

If you get a current P4 then you are limited to 4GB and with the Intel 865
or 875 chipsets if you install 4gb you will get about 3.4gb usable due to
chipset reservations. The LGA CPU's may exhibit similar behaviour. This
leaves little if any room for later expansion.

The new xeon chips have 36 bit addressing so can bung the motherboard
resources elsewhere in RAM if you want more than 3GB. Ditto for the Athlon
64bit and opteron processors.

From all that I have read of the current new P4 incarnations, they will have
a short shelf life to be superceeded in less than a year. The heat issues
Paul raises have to be resolved before it is practical to go beyond 3.2GHz.
Toms Hardware has a fresh article that stops short of benchmark statistics
due to this and other stability issues.

Personally, if I were shopping now, I would look very seriously at the new
Athlon 64 bit or FX chips for a single processor solution. Xeon or Opteron
for a dual or better system. There is no reason not to be 64bit ready - just
carry on using 32bit until systems are mature.

I would have no qualms about getting an AMD now as they have addressed the
heat issues that used to plague early Athlons to the point where they are
leading Intel by a long shot - better performance with easy to cool systems.
If only Intel had maintained its lead.

It would help to have a handle on the current system specifications and your
own view on how much more performance you are seeking, how memory hungry the
current applications are, and what you are prepared to spend / consider. For
all we know a P4 3.2c (cool & about the same performance as the latest P4
chips) with 3GB may be ideal for you.

- Tim
 
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