"Jojo" said:
I'm having a big headache trying to decide which motherboard to buy. I'll
likely buy an ASUS or ABIT eventhough I've had bad luck with Asus boards in
the past (but looks like it's still the popular one these days). And will
probably go with LGA775 since it seems to be a replacement to the older
ones.
So now I find many different chipsets out now .. 915P, 915G, 925X, 925XE,
etc. Which one is the "most economical for end users" and thus most
popular? I do not need features like RAID or dual LAN but would like the
latest technology to maximize life of system in terms of upgrades
Also will they work with an Antec Phantom 350W PSU or will I need an
adapter?
To measure popularity, you can visit the download page.
(Note: This metric is all I've got, as you aren't likely
to find sales figures anywhere.)
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/download.aspx
Pop in the model name, and select "All" for filetype.
Then, select a file by clicking it. You will see a
web page that offers you four servers to download from.
At the bottom of the page, is a field that says how many
times the file has been downloaded.
Here, I tried to pick a representative file. The file
chosen, is the chipset driver file for the board. Now,
a customer could go to the Intel or Via website, and also
get the file, but I'll assume the same percentage of
customers stick with the Asus site.
p5ad2-e premium 925xe inf6211001.zip 1051 downloads
p5ad2 premium 925x inf6211001.zip 141 downloads
p5gdc deluxe 915p inf6211001.zip 1074 downloads
p5gd2 premium 915p inf6011002.zip 1084 downloads
p5gdc-v deluxe 915g inf6211001.zip 1145 downloads
A8V Deluxe S939 4in1_449p3.zip 5318 downloads
K8V SE Deluxe S754 4in1_449.zip 6062 downloads
The last two items are AMD boards.
Obviously, a person who can afford to buy the 925x, can
afford whatever extra it costs for a 925xe. So, that result
is easy to explain. What I cannot explain, is why the 915p
boards aren't more popular. I would expect (without checking
it), that the 915p boards are cheaper than their 925
counterparts, and judging by how price conscious people on
this newsgroup are, that should make the 915p more attractive.
Maybe the Asus 915p boards are just too expensive compared
to the competition, and some other vendor is more popular ?
Something to remember when comparing boards, is Asus has
covered many different combinations of PCI-Express/AGP,
DDR/DDR2, LGA775/S478 and so on. The price adder for some
of these options, makes a big difference to many customers,
and not many people want to buy a new LGA775 processor,
a high end PCI-Express video card, and some DDR2 memory,
when they have some perfectly good S478 processor, AGP
Video card, and DDR memory sitting around. So, what you
decide to buy, could be influenced by what parts you
currently own. If that is not the case, then buy a
p5ad2-e premium, and go "all new tech".
One you didn't mention, is the P5P800. It uses an 865PE
Northbridge, and is similar to a P4P800, only it has
the newer LGA775 processor socket on it. Since only the
socket is upgraded, you could take all the parts off a
previous generation S478 system, buy a new LGA775 processor,
and build a system that way. That might be a bit more
cost effective than going with the P5xxx crowd.
To answer your power supply question, really requires
knowledge of what video card you have in mind. A high end
ATI card uses 3.3A from +12V, and a high end Nvidia card
uses 4.5A from +12V. The TDP is 84W or 115W for the Intel
LGA775 processors (it is a function of core frequency),
and assuming 90% conversion efficiency, that is 7.8A or
10.6A from the +12V supply. So far, that means 11..15 amps
for a processor and a high end video card. Disk drives and
fans will add more amps to the requirement. Rather than shop
by total power, it is better to work out the amps needed,
and in this case (Intel P4), +12V has the heavy load on it.
If your existing supply isn't good for at least 15 amps
on the +12V output, I'd be shopping for something with more
output.
Here is a sample table of Antec Truepower numbers. You can
see that even though the total power is increasing pretty
rapidly, the current available on the +12V isn't really
going up that much. That is why I'd rather compare the
current numbers themselves, to another brand, for
shopping purposes.
VOLTAGE +5V +12V +3.3V -5V -12V +5VSB
TRUE330 30A 17A 28A 0.5A 1.0A 2.0A
TRUE380 35A 18A 28A 0.5A 1.0A 2.0A
TRUE430 36A 20A 28A 0.5A 1.0A 2.0A
TRUE480 38A 22A 30A 1.5A 1.0A 2.0A
TRUE550 40A 24A 32A 0.5A 1.0A 2.0A
Something else to note. Power is current times volts, and if
you sum all the output powers on the Truepower table above,
it adds up to more than the rated power. This is good, because
on a given computer, only one output is really heavily loaded,
and you'll run out of amperes before you run out of watts.
You will find some other brands, state their "power" as being
exactly equal to the sum of all the outputs, and that makes
their power rating worth about 60% of a properly rated supply
like the Antec above. (This is because you cannot draw the max
from all the outputs at the same time, so adding the powers
directly is not correct. The power supply is limited by
overheating, and the real power it offers stops before all
outputs go to max.) What it boils down to, is stick with
brand name supplies, if you expect to get something with
representative ratings. After all, there has to be a reason
that one company can offer a "550W" power supply for only $26.
HTH,
Paul
