G400TV (KT266/1800+ to SiS/nForce/2700+)

[Pace]

Hi guys,

We've got a friend on IRC who's thinking of switching from his MSI motherboard (based on a VIA KT266 chipset) and AMD Athlon 1800+, to a new Asus motherboard (based on an NVIDIA nForce2 chipset) and AMD Athlon 2700+.

Needless to say we've recommended SiS. Any thoughts? Also, any particular motherboards?

And finally, he wants to use WinXP (he's on WinMe at the moment)

[GNEP]

From pretty fast to very fast... is this a gaming rig by any chance?

[Pace]

MURC Forums > Hardware > Desktop Video > G400TV (KT266/1800+ to SiS/nForce/2700+)

Exactly which part of that did you not understand? Bah Penfold

He says he plans no gaming.

[Dogbert]

Asus A8N is a killer MOBO with tons of features (2 nics, 1394 Firewire, on board sound)...

I'd go for the A8N.

[GNEP]

Ooops! My bad! Sorry didn't notice the forum - went through the "Show new posts"...

Well, i'd have said the same as you - go with SiS.

Not a lot else to add.

[Pace]

Dogbert or anyone: How's the PCI bandwidth on those? He also has a SB Live Platinum 5.1, which might take up some of that speed

[Dogbert]

Good question. I've just read the review in www.firingsquad.com and it made a (very) good impression featurewise.

[Nethermancer]

I also have reviewed the XP2700+ on an ASUS NForce2 motherboard on my site at: http://www.hardwarereview.net

There are some Divx benchmarks as well as the usual UT2003 etc.
I hope it is of use.

[Pace]

I'll pass it on. However, looks like he wont be using his capture abilities anyway - he's capturing from DVD Going to rip instead

[Chrono_Wanderer]

lol Pace ripping is all good j/k dun wanna turn this into a warez forum

since he is getting a new CPU + mobo and seeing that he is paying some big bucks for it, IMO an Intel rig may be great for his works. i say P4 2.53B w/Asus P4G8X (Granite Bay) twinned with his old DDRs (and possible get new ones if he has only 1 stick of DIMM for dual channel use). After all intel chipsets dun suffer PCI problems like the VIAs. Just a thought.

P.S.i thought matrox dun want ppl to use Creative Labs Live (or was it audigy i forgot)...

[Kurt]

Go P4 2.8GHz and <Asus/Gigabyte/MSI/insert_name_here> Intel i845PE [about the same price range as XP2700+ & Asus A7N8X].

Granite Bay is no match for it so far, is limited to DDR266, and is generally too expensive. Verdict: - /- /-
ooops

[Chrono_Wanderer]

seeing that he/she is using only a G400TV... i guess dual channel DDR is an overkill. unless he/she has another RT card for NLE, i guess single channel is fine... which makes i845pe a good choice.