Current generation of Athlon Mobo's - which?

[KuroNeko]

I need to build an Athlon-based editing PC (Athlon Thoroughbred 2700, FSB333)

Which mainboard is suitable for this purpose? It muts support the FSB333 officially, not via OC, and must have temperature overheat protection.

And of course it must be able to handle capture cards well

Any tips?

edit: any tips on good cooling solutions (with not too much noise) for these Athlon 2700+ also very much appreciated.

Thx
Neko

[Greebe]

The only MB I would suggest isn't on the market just yet. MSI's new 746FX/963 chipset MB will be released on Dec 2nd. It boasts huge PCI bus bandwidth, integrated 6 channel audio, 10/100 nic, Firewire, USB 2.0, ATA133 amoungst many other features

[bsdgeek]

Where did you hear Dec 2? (Just curious...)

[K6-III]

Epox 8RDA+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe

Integrated firewire USB2.0, Firewire, and NVidia APU (kickass onboard sound)...and none of them hog PCI bandwidth, instead being connected to the NB via Hypertransport....

Seeing as the SIS746FX chipset, has been delayed (again) , I wouldn't quite call it an option at this time...

As for cooling, go for an Thermalright AX7 (if you can still find it) with an 80mm Panaflo on top...

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm with Greebe. That new MSI SiS 746fx based board's going to be murder. It's definitely on my Christmas list.

Dr. Mordrid

[KuroNeko]

Thanks for the replies. The nForce2 chipset did come to mind, but I know the first nForce had troubles with many cards...

DOes anyone here use an nForce2 mobo, and how compatible is it with the picky editing cards from Pinnacle, Matrox etc?

Neko

[Greebe]

I have a friend who is in close contact with MSI (beta tests for them). Normally I just bite my tongue on info like this, but as of this last week I've also seen the same info posted on a couple of French hardware sites and on ocworkbench.com forums, essentially verifying what he had told me earlier.

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by KuroNeko
Thanks for the replies. The nForce2 chipset did come to mind, but I know the first nForce had troubles with many cards...

DOes anyone here use an nForce2 mobo, and how compatible is it with the picky editing cards from Pinnacle, Matrox etc?

Neko

The boards best used with the Matrox RT.X cards are those based on the Intel and SiS chipsets, both P4 and AthlonXP. They co-dominate the Matrox "recommended" list, with the SiS based boards for both CPU's offering tremendous bang-for-buck.

AMD's 761 chipset has been iffy, tending to be on the "minimum spec" list.

VIA chipsets are specifically EXCLUDED from the Matrox compatability list because of their horrid PCI bus performance. Yeccchhh.

From what I've read on the Pinnacle support site they don't like VIA chipsets much either.

No nForce boards are on the recommended list, but this is mainly due to lack of testing; none of the RT.X100 betas had one and the boards pretty new so..... Unfortunately that puts nForce users in the position of unofficial beta testers

I've had great luck with my SiS 745 based system and the RT.X100 and anticipate even better results with the SiS 746fx.

Dr. Mordrid

[KuroNeko]

The SIS sounds nice, but not currently available, I'd like to wait even longer before I use a new chipset & boards, allowing some time for designs and BIOSes to get stable.

Unfortunately, that is too much time to wait for the current system.

Doc, does your MSI SiS board have a overheat protection? I found the Asus SiS board does, but can that one be recommended (very few users I believe, Asus isn't a big SiS user)?

On the other matter, I checked AMDs 'recommended CPU cooler' list. Quite a shock, I only found 2-3 coolers suitable for 2400+ or higher. Only the Taisol is available here, and from what I'm told it's a very noisy one.

What coolers can be recommended for a 2600+? Is the one in the AMD Boxed package any good?

Thx all!

Neko

[Prospero]

I'd like to find more info on the SiS 746fx chipset, but am not having much luck. How is it supposed to achieve this extra PCI bandwidth? I recently determined my Via chipset board had to go, and am in the market for a replacement. The Nforce2 boards look good except for some users having AGP slot issues (seems to lose contact with the card easily, on the Asus board). Any info on the 746fx would be appreciated, Google didn't help much.

Prospero

[Dr Mordrid]

It's due to the SiS 963 southbridges 1 GB/s MuTIOL interconnect and distributed arbitration system, which helps prevent PCI devices from stepping on each other.

http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/oa/socketa/746.htm

VIA has a high speed interconnect that runs about half this fast on the KT-400 chipset, but its absolutely horrid arbitration mechanism causes the data flow to choke.

The practical result of this comes down to throughput. One way to test this can be just to benchmark a fast RAID arrays sequential writes using different mainboards on the same basic system. I've done this and got the following results;

System spec: AthlonXP 2000+, Fasttrak SX4000 RAID 5 (4 x 160g Maxtor), 1 gig DDR333, Win2K SP-2.

Gigabyte GA-7VRX (KT-333): 68-74 mb/s sequential writes

MSI 745 Ultra (SiS 745): 92-98 mb/s sequential writes

And the SiS 745 only has a 533 mb/s southbridge interconnect.

Dr. Mordrid

[Greebe]

Doc, does your MSI SiS board have a overheat protection?

I can answer this for Doc. Yes it does

I found the Asus SiS board does, but can that one be recommended (very few users I believe, Asus isn't a big SiS user)?

I believe Asus underestimated this chipset/were offered additional incentives from a competing manufacture (VIA) whom they become accustom to using for many years now.

P.S. additionally I'd like to add that MSI has been very good with their BIOS for the 745 chipset with very little problems even with version 1.0. Also like to add that they are much better at supporting their MB bios's then ASUS has been with their's.

MSI has been producing very high Athlon MB's now since the first gens hit the market in '99... I for one have their first (MS-6167 in this machine) and their lastest to date (MS-6561) in my main system (see sig)

[Prospero]

Thanks Doc. My only past experience with SiS chipsets, was with an old K6 chipset. It was less than stellar, so I had sort of discounted them. The PCI bus was so bad, it wouldn't even run a TV card. Nice to know they learned a few things since then. The 746fx sounds like what I'm looking for.

Prospero

[Dr Mordrid]

Well...now the SiS chipsets are so fast with PCI that they can run an RT.X100 realtime video editing board with ease while the VIA KT-xxx's can't even get out of the gate with 'em, and the RT.X100's hammer the PCI bus bigtime.

Dr. Mordrid

[DentyCracker]

Kewl. I'll definitely be getting on of those MSI boards as soon as they become available, and an athlon 2400+