Need advice for new Mobo...

[JerryH]

Hello all, just wondering what would be a good mobo/cpu combo (AMD chip preferred) that would work well with the TX2000? I"ve read here time and time again to try to avoid VIA chipsets, so what would be a good alternative? SIS?

Thanks for any info.

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm using an MSI 745 Ultra (SiS 745) and it works with Promise RAID cards quite nicely, even with an RT.X100 realtime board in the box. This puts a lot more load on the system than most RAID cards.

The main thing is to avoid VIA chipped mainboards like the plaque, even if it's just a VIA southbridge mixed with an AMD northbridge as the chipset.

VIA's PCI to host memory bandwidth is very restricted relative to Intel, SiS or full AMD chipped mainboards and this quite often causes problems with RAID's, video editing boards etc. etc. Some of this is their hardware and some of it is some very strange timing with their PCI bursts, but in the end it's a royal PITA.

Basically the more high bandwidth hardware you have hanging off the system the more likely you are to have problems with VIA chipped boards.

Dr. Mordrid

[JerryH]

Thanks again, Doc. Just to make sure, is this what you have?

http://www.z-buy.com/product.asp?item=MB-MS6561

[Dr Mordrid]

That be it. Just make sure you upgrade the BIOS to 1.6 for 2400+ and 2600+/266 support. It screams with a 2400+, and they're pretty cheap now.

Dr. Mordrid

[Hpar_]

I am using an asus a7n8x deluxe (http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/sock...d/overview.htm) which uses the nforce2 chipset. the best amd boards out there right now are the nforce2 chipset boards, especially the asus. I cannot seem to stop the frame dropping using an old pci mistake220 with rainbow runner studio addon under wind0ws98se but it works really well with a g-series capture card and ntfs file system on windows2000. I have been reduced to the bottle neck of the pci bus and the very old and out of date rainbow runner studio on windows98se till I find the critical "pins.txt" file for a matrox marvel g400 tv agp card so I can reflash my bios correctly.

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?threadid=42501

if you want to spend the extra money get nforce2, if you want to save 20$ get the sis745 which is suppose to be good like dr.M said.

[Dr Mordrid]

Best for what? For general use OK...I'll buy that, but don't presume that's true across the board.

NForce2 boards and VIA's share a problem: a low PCI to host memory bandwidth compared to the Intel and SiS chipsets; it's just not as severe a problem as with the VIA chipped boards plus VIA's have crazy PCI burst timing which makes matters worse.

At any rate; because of their lower bandwidth NForce2 CANNOT be used with Matrox's RT.X100 realtime board (an excellent indicator since the RT.X100 uses bandwidth in gobs) and may be iffy with other high bandwidth devices. It will depend on the other components in the system.

You can use them for software realtime like MSPro7....but again watch those other components.

Also: if you go to use an NForce2 board make sure you get the latest (May 23, 2003) on NVidia's website. It addresses some MAJOR issues with their AGP/GART implementation.

Dr. Mordrid

[Sciascia]

I know that you were looking for an AMD solution, but I just bought a new P4 setup and it is sweet. The Abit IC7 and a 2.6C chip will set you back about $300, but you get 800MHz FSB, HT'ing and a pretty fast PCU that isn't too hot. The ram runs at dual channel DDR so I am getting about 6G of bandwidth. Needless to say it smokes and it wasn't all that expensive. The IS7 is supposed to be as fast if not faster and is a little cheaper. The big knock on it is that it isn't a great OC'ing MB, which shouldn't bother you or me.

Just a suggestion. I wouldn't take an AMD steup for free right now after playing with this. The main reason is the noise involved with cooling AMD CPU's, I got really tired of it. This P4 is near silent, I actually had to adjust to having it after a year of the whining of air through my old case.

[Dr Mordrid]

The newer Athlons (Barton core) run cooler, in fact my case fans are louder than the CPU fan.

Dr. Mordrid

[bsdgeek]

Much cooler in fact, I read at SilentPCReview Intel lists their max wattage as actually only 75% of the real max, putting the 3.0C at about 100W!

If you use stock fans on both, the P4 cooler will probably be less noisy, but it's really a moot point because both can be replaced with equally quiet HS/Fs.

[Sciascia]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
The newer Athlons (Barton core) run cooler, in fact my case fans are louder than the CPU fan.

Dr. Mordrid

I actually made my own PCU cooler for the Athlon, in the same mold as a silverado by noisecontrol and it was silent, but in order to keep the case cool I had a lot of noise with case fans, I tried variable fans and all kinds of stuff. I got it down to where the HD's were the bulk of the noise, but like anything else, every little bit adds up. It was just a never ending project and I decided to start over with a system that I knew would have a good shot from ground zero. I took a few performance hits in teh HD subsystem by opting for 5400 RPM HDs, but I haven't noticed it any real applications. On the other hand, the fast FSB and very wide memory bandwidth made a huge difference. I ended up faster and quieter which was what I wanted. AMD makes some nice stuff, but with the new 875p chipset I just don't think that AMD has anything that can compete right now and the price is not that much different.

[Brian Ellis]

The Intel cooler on the P4 3.06 GHz sounds like Concorde taking off

[Flying dutchman]

@sciascia:

I'd be real interested how your new mobo performs (image quality-wise) at real-time MPEG-2 capturing in WinDVR. I've read that the quality of mpeg-2 compression in real time depends heavily on CPU power.

[Sciascia]

Well, I haven't ever used WinDVR, but I do use ATI MMC 8.5 which is extremely CPU dependent and it runs without incident. With the HT'ing I can actually do other things like web browsing while I am capturing to MPEG2 at DVD specs, though I don't make a habit of it. It doesn't even strain it at all. It's amazing, my last system pulled off DVD capture, but it was one of those" hold your breath" type of things each time, it was stable but I always felt like it was taxing the system pretty hard and anything else would result in drops. I'm still trying to find something that stresses this machine to it's max outside of benchmarks.

Updated, I ran MMC 8.5 using DVD high and some pretty heavy video soap to clean up the signal from the tuner (really bad cable system out here) and it never passed 25% of CPU useage. Now that is with HT'ing so it is probably more like 50% which still isn't too shabby. I used multiple filters as well, decomb and despeckle so it isn't like it was a straight capture, it was pretty processed.

[fberger]

Just my 2 cents, after much research I came to the conclusion that a P4 with HT and 800 FSB would give me a better price/performance ratio than an AMD board. I've been with AMD forever and this will be my first Intel system. I ordered the parts last week and here's what I am getting:
- Silent case: Antec Sonata for $105
- Motherboard: Abit IS7 for $109
- RAM: 2x Crucial 512 MB PC3200 for $170
- CPU: P4 2.6 800 FSB for $225
- Disk: 2xSeagate Barracuda 7200.7 120 GB SATA in RAID0 config for $264

I'll transfer a bunch of DVD-RW, etc... from the old AMD rig.
I use MSPro 7 and believe this is the best bang for the buck. My goal is to overclock to 3.2 Ghz. I may be wrong, we'll see on Wednesday when I assemble the PC.
All I am missing is the matrox P750 which was supposed to become available a month ago but is still nowhere to be bought
I'll post MSPro scores as soon as I run Mark's tests.

Fred

[Hpar_]

Dr.M, which of those sis745 mainboards is good? there are several manufacturers. I would like to try one of those boards and see what kind of results I get. also will that board accept 3.3volt video cards like the g200marvel tv agp cards?