Machine Upgrade This Week! (Advice welcomed...)

[Gurm]

Hrm there's another thought - is the onboard LAN on this ASROCK board any good, or will I end up slapping the 3Com back in?

- Gurm

[KvHagedorn]

Is this how you pronounce that motherboard brand?

[Gurm]

Yes.

[Admiral]

If you can put a Barton on the MSI board just skip the motherboard purchase. From what I've read, the Asrock board only has default and +5% settings for core voltage, so you probably have more overclocking chances on the MSI board.
And there won't really be any speed difference for SATA.
Take the money you save from the drive and buy yourself a nice Radeon 9800 non pro.

[Gurm]

Well the issue with the board is this...

The SiS 748 has MUCH better memory handling than the SiS 745. Additionally, the MSI 745 ... 333mhz is as fast as it goes. Plus the ASROCK has USB 2.0, LAN onboard, etc. etc.

- Gurm

[GNEP]

Nope the MSI 745 Ultra won't like a Barton.

Do what I did Gurm and move from the 745 Ultra to an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe V2. Barton 2500+ (they are all mult locked - 11x for the 2500+ and 3200+) goes straight to 3200+ speeds so you just need to make sure you have memory capable of 400 rather than 333 or just run asynchronously. It's a very nice motherboard.

Although did recently pick up an Asrock board (the 746FX version IIRC) for a machine for someone else (no speed needed) - seems stable enough but I haven't seen that many jumpers in years Cheap as (PC) chips though.

[Admiral]

Well, ok, but the SATA drive isn't worth it if you don't really need the extra space.

[Gurm]

Well I've already got 240GB, I figure if I can't make do with that then I need to learn how to clean house.

I'm still torn - I know the nForce2 is supposed to be an excellent chipset, but I'm leery yet...

- Gurm

[Paddy]

go on.. test drive that puppie for me

[GNEP]

Go on... you wouldn't want to not be part of the "Asus A7N8X" club here at MURC just like you (& I ) have been a part of the "745 Ultra" club

[Taz]

The nForce2 boards seem to be very picky about memory though

[Byock]

You will be fine with Crucial memory. That is what I am running. The Nforce2 is fast and stable. I wouldn't go with anything else for AMD right now.

I have used 2 Asus A7N8X and 2 MSI Delta's. Both work very well.

[GNEP]

Also running Crucial here at the moment as I brought it over from another machine - runs fine, single stick of 512 PC2700 though so I may replace it with 2 sticks of 512 PC3200 or faster soon - possibly Corsair which the mobo's apparently also v. happy with.

[rugger]

I agree about the A78NX boards ... they are good, though, more picky about drivers then SiS boards.

If you have SATA ... get yourself a WD 10krpm raptor drive. They are the fastest for desktop use.

[DentyCracker]

K7S8XE+ has better IDE performance than any Nforce board. The SiS900 performs fine for me. The board likes Crucial RAM. Can't see a P4 combo beating it for price/performance