Mobo to go with AMD XP2400+?

[Taz]

You could get the ASRock SiS 746FX board, that will make you only £20 over budget

How good that will be for overclocking is largely dependant on what BIOS updates they release for it though

[Fat Tone]

I haven't heard of ASROCK before the last couple of days. Do they have a good rep? Scan have the K7S8X for £52.88. Ymm...I see it is a subsidiary of ASUS I have the Asus i-Panel deluxe which doesn't fully work with my A7M266. It would be cool if it worked properly with this.

Cheers,

T.

[Taz]

As you've found out, ASRock are the budget range from Asus, I would expect therefore the boards to be of a high quality if maybe not with all the bells and whistles you'd get with a normal Asus product.

[Paddy]

I am getting my fish tank tomorrow!

[DJ]

Is sound storm really that good? Or will the vanilla A7N8X audio be good enough?

DJ

[Marshmallowman]

I am in a similar situation I want an sis board, and the 748 sounds to good not to wait for. Mainly because nforce 2 cannot run linux/xfree with 3d/agp accel with none NV cards(xfree 4.3 can be hacked to run but it still has issues)

The epox 8rga is quite cool, while you get onboard video that you probably won't use , it does a Vdd adjustment which is said to be very good for running yout FSB greater than 200mhz.
Abit does the Vdd thing as well, but I am not comfortablke buying them just yet(they do insist the have switched capictor suppliers)

But I can wait...I want epox to make an sis 748 board(or maybe MSI)

[Belwarrior]

argghhh!!! It used to be that i can get an amd upgrade with a motherboard with an amd chipset. now when i wanna upgrade to another mb, i am flooded by choices.. (one good thing i need not choose via - not that they are that bad.. just had a bad experience with them).. not that i am complaining of course.. just that both nVidia Nforce2 and Sis 748 has a lot of good things going for them but they excel in differrent things.

My only peeve is that .. dual ddr came for amd systems first but intel systems now have FOUR ram slots for dual ddr (two pairs) while amd systems are still stuck at three ram slots (one pair)

ragu.

[Wombat]

And so what? More bandwidth than either can suck up anyway.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Belwarrior
argghhh!!! It used to be that i can get an amd upgrade with a motherboard with an amd chipset. now when i wanna upgrade to another mb, i am flooded by choices.. (one good thing i need not choose via - not that they are that bad.. just had a bad experience with them).. not that i am complaining of course.. just that both nVidia Nforce2 and Sis 748 has a lot of good things going for them but they excel in differrent things.

My only peeve is that .. dual ddr came for amd systems first but intel systems now have FOUR ram slots for dual ddr (two pairs) while amd systems are still stuck at three ram slots (one pair)

ragu.

you have som nice server boards with 16 ram slots coming for the AMD64.

[DentyCracker]

I MAY be able to give my experience with a 2400+ and an ASROCK K7S8X mobo soon(tm). I had cancelled my order at scan on Friday and told initial city links NOT to deliver it. I had hoped to buy the mobo processor and memory at the computer fair. I got processor and memory but could not get the mobo. I briefly considered to get an nforce2 based board but decided against it. Today at lunchtime I went to check my mail. Initial city links had delivered the package. I was happy to have got the mobo and called my cousin to sell him the extra processor and memory. I opened the package to find an empty mobo box with only the IDE cables inside, and a bit of packaging material with no CPU or memory inside. Called initial city links immediately. They said call scan. I called them and they said they would replace it in a few days time, as soon as I had replied to an email they sent. I didn't think this sort of thing happened in this country.

[Fat Tone]

Now that IS wierd. I've never heard of Scan doing stuff like that before! Good luck getting it sorted.

I haven't bought anything yet. My mate couldn't find what I wanted at the computer fair. I changed my mind to a XP2500+ (Barton) and an ASUS a7n8x-deluxe, and ended up with nothing.
Unfortunately, it would now seem that one of my 17" monitors is threatening to die, so I may have to spend the money there instead

Anyone care to recommend the best value monitor up to £200. I know there are a lot of cheap 19" monitors around now, but are they worth it?

[DentyCracker]

I saw the MSI nforce2 based mobo but no Bartons at the computer fairs off Tottenham Court Road. I also saw some decent 17" refurbished monitors for less than 100 quid

[Nuno]

Pay attention that a nforce2 only shines with 166Mhz fsb/Dual DDR333 and up. Don´t expect the performance gap you´re seeing on the reviews if you´re going to run a 133Mhz fsb cpu. I was browsing futuremark online result browser, and when comparing cpu tests, nforce2 boards were only marginally faster than my sis735 if running on 133Mhz fsb. On 166Mhz fsb and up, it´s a different story, they score 50% higher...

[GNEP]

By the way Tony (and anyone else who is interested...), that old MURC favorite the MSI 745 Ultra is on Scan's "Today only" page at the moment for 40 quid. As are loads of other MSI mobos. Might be worth a look (my experiences with Scan, for the record, are pretty good - even when replacing borked components). Their prices are good when ordering more than one thing at once - because postage is quite a chunk...

[DentyCracker]

We'll see what happens with this order, got a new invoice number and it is at stage 2 of 4. We'll see. Personally I think it was tampered with by someone at initial city links. I just don't trust them. Of course I may be totally wrong