Mother Board

[dasher]

Hi All

I am seeking advice on a new motherboard. Any suggestions very welcome.

Dasher

[Dr Mordrid]

If you want power on the cheap consider mainboards using the SiS 745 or 746 or the nForce 420 chipsets.

These chipsets/mainboards have gobs of PCI bandwidth and combined with an AthlonXP 2000+ or faster will run very fast with 99% of all the video hardware/software out there.

Avoid VIA chipsets at all costs. Avoid AMD chipsets if the southbridge is by VIA (most of 'em).

VIA chipset components considerably slow PCI to host memory performance, which translates to reduced HDD speeds, hardware contention for resources and poor performance with realtime software or hardware.

You can typically do an upgrade like this for about $300-350 or less including DDR memory.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

I would suggest that if you intend to use MSP7 and money is not an important criterion, you may wish to consider one of the latest Intel offerings with the 845PE chipset, designed to get the max out of a P4 HT processor.

[wkulecz]

Since Mark's MSP benchmark page (see the "king is dead" thread) suggests memory bandwidth is a limitation and MSP7 will benefit from P4 specific features I'd suggest looking at the Intel "Granite Bay" dual channel DDR based motherboards. These do two banks of dual DDR so you can have 2GB of RAM with 4 cheap 512MB DDR DIMMs instead of needing the much more expensive 1GB DDR DIMMs. DDR-266 is all that is required, but review sites are recommending getting at least DDR-333 so you can run the aggressive CAS 2-2-2 timings. On www.pricewatch DDR-266 and DDR-333 was the same.

If you can wait, P4 with 400MHz FSB and Dual DDR-400 is on the horizon, but it'll be pricy.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

Since the P4 HT chip emulates a dual CPU the only advantage a P4 HT has over a dual AthlonXP system is SSE2.

This is an important difference at lower clocks with a single AthlonXP but with dualies....

Dr. Mordrid

[dasher]

Hi All

Thanks for the advice. I will check the wallet and availability here in Oz.

Dasher

[moreau]

Problem with these sorts of questions is that the correct answer is likely that there is no correct answer. Not that that will stop me from putting in an opinion

There are wrong answers... If you look where people have had problems, stay away from those boards. (VIA chipsets, etc.).

For my part, my experience this far with my 845PE setup has been good.

I'm using a Giga-Byte PE667 Ultra Mobo with the HT/533 2.4GHz P4 and 2x512MB Corsair XMS DDR memory.

Hope that helps.

CEM

[moreau]

... or you could just look at my sig.

[Dr Mordrid]

I totally concur with Wally that MSPro7 will take major advantage of very fast systems, and if they're dualies all the better.

What I *really* want to see is how it'll run on the AMD hammer cores. My bet is that it'll run like a cat with its tail on fire.

Dr. Mordrid