Which motherboard/chipset for 64 3200+

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Steve

I'm about to get an Athlon 64 3200+ and would like to know which
chipset/motherboard best suits it (under £100). Also, are these
motherboards for AMD's happy to accept just 1 memory module? I don't know
whether to get 2x256 DDR400 or 1x512 (leaving more ports free).

Many thanks for any help or advise.

Steve
 
" Also, are these motherboards for AMD's happy to accept just 1 memory
module? I don't know whether to get 2x256 DDR400 or 1x512 (leaving more
ports free). "


That depends whether you're opting for a socket 754 or 939 setup. Skt754
chipsets don't utilise dual-channel memory control, so you would be better
off with one 512MB DIMM there.

If you're opting for a skt939 chipset, you'll see a little performance
increase with 2x 256MB DIMMs running dual-channel. However, if you want to
upgrade to 1GB, you'll find it easier if you have a single 512MB DIMM.

If you're in no particular rush to build this system, then I might recommend
you wait for the new skt939 Nforce4 motherboards to arrive. If you've
roughly budgeted for a skt754 Athlon64 3200+, you may find that it's better
in the long run to have a skt939 Athlon64 3000+. You would have much better
upgrade potential, as skt754 doesn't look to be going further than the
3700+.

If you are building this system from scratch, you could get an Nforce4 SLI
PCI-Express motherboard and a PCI-E graphics card. In theory AGP still has
lots of life left in it, but I fear that newly-released high-end AGP cards
will soon become more expensive than their PCI-E counterparts. This
happened with the move from PCI to AGP, and it's bound to happen again this
time around, especially now that both ATI and Nvidia are building
motherboard chipsets.
 
I'm about to get an Athlon 64 3200+ and would like to know which
chipset/motherboard best suits it (under £100). Also, are these
motherboards for AMD's happy to accept just 1 memory module? I don't know
whether to get 2x256 DDR400 or 1x512 (leaving more ports free).

Many thanks for any help or advise.

Steve
Click to expand...

Get an Nforce 3-250GB based board, the MSI K8N Neo 2 is the consistant
favorite of the review sites. Don't get an Nforce 4 based board now, the
Nforce 4 is brand new and still has bugs. If you are prepared to wait for
3 or 4 months the Nforce 4 becomes an option, by then Nforce 4 will have
had a couple of stepings and the bugs will be worked out. Also there will
be a wider variety of PCI Express graphics cards by then as well as some
SATA-2 drives. You won't see any performance differences between an Nforce
3-250 system and an Nforce 4 system. The current generation of graphics
cards are basically the same for AGP and PCI Express and the AGP-8X
interface isn't a bottleneck. Likewise disk drives are a very long way
from being limited by the bandwidth of SATA-I. The fastest current
generation disk drive transfers at 60MBytes/sec, SATA can do
150MByte/second. However there is one feature that was added to the SATA
controller of the Nforce 4 that does have important benefits for servers
and that is support for SATA NCQ (Native Command Queueing). NCQ allows a
disk drive to reorder requests so that they can be executed in an optimal
fashion. For servers where there can be many simultaneous unrelated disk
requests, NCQ can more than double the performance of a disk. For desktops
and workstations where there are very few disk accesses, NCQ will make
very little difference. The way to get high performance in a workstation
is to add a lot of RAM. If you have a lot of RAM all or your commonly used
applications will remain in the disk cache which means that the disk is
only accessed the first time you launch the application, after than it
launches from memory.
 
I'm about to get an Athlon 64 3200+ and would like to know which
chipset/motherboard best suits it (under £100). Also, are these
motherboards for AMD's happy to accept just 1 memory module? I don't know
whether to get 2x256 DDR400 or 1x512 (leaving more ports free).

Many thanks for any help or advise.

Steve
Click to expand...


At the risk of incurring the wrath of the dual channel junkies...

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2206&p=6

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=13-136-147&DEPA=0


"Based on features, overclocking performance, flexibility and value,
the DFI LANParty UT nF3-250Gb certainly deserves our Gold Editors
Choice. While the DFI does not displace past selections of Socket 754
motherboards, there is no doubt that the DFI is the 754 motherboard
that will most please the computer enthusiast. DFI may be a relatively
new name to the performance arena for some, but make no mistake about
the fact that this DFI nF3 250Gb is the best overclocking Athlon 64
motherboard we have tested. It achieves this distinction with ease,
effortlessly taking our reference memory to DDR616. It continues to
please with decent performance at stock speeds and the full
implementation of nVidia nForce3-250Gb features."

Of course it's just a shitty socket 754 that no respecting computer
EXPERT would endorse on this newsgroup ;)
 
Steve,

Well, I was very interested in seeing the responses to question. Not sure
anyone really answered them. I too am planning to build an Athlon 64
(probably 3000+). I want a STABLE and FAST board, but it must be micro ATX.
I have been researching the various available chipsets and CPU combos.
However, I am not seeing a real big difference in performance. I think I
have narrowed it down to a Gigabyte motherboard using either the VIA K8VT800
or the VIA K8VM800 chipsets. (Yes, socket 754). The boards are GA-K8VT800M
(without video) or GA-K8VM800M (with video). I don't plan on using the
onboard video, but instead plan to install an ATI 9600. These boards cost
about $80 US at Newegg.com.

Not sure if this helps, but I thought I would respond in hopes that someone
out there might comment on this motherboards and the VIA chipsets.

Dennis

PS. The problem with building a micro ATX system is you only have the VIA,
SIS, and old NVidia 150 chipsets to choose from. Or did I miss one???
 
 
Many thanks to all of you for your time in replying. I've opted for 3000+
and 2x512DDR

Thanks again!

Steve
 
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