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I think I just spotted my next upgrade. I have a XP Tbred that have served me well for the past 2,5 years, and it´s actually nice to see how it still delivers actual performance on a A7N8X-X @ 2200Mhz on a 200Mhz Bus/ 1Gb DDR 400. At least it still keeps an oc´ed X800pro well fed 
I resisted the urge to get a Athlon 64, but now with the clarified socket issues, WinXP64 out and Win "vista" next year, a good upgrade path - 939 and X2 processors, and reasonable priced Athlon64 "venice", one issue remained: AGP vs PCIe. Buying a S939 AGP motherboard meaning you blocking the video card upgrade, buying a PCIe meaning you´d have to get a PCIe card, and I think my X800pro will last for some time (if it doesn´t end dying on me...)
SLI simply doesn´t interest me, brute force just isn´t the way.
So, finally I saw several reviews for a very smart chipset - the ULi (former ALi) M1695. Fast, cheap, troubleless, and with a very elegant solution - native AGP8x on the southbridge, with a hypertransport link to northbridge. Motherboards with both native PCIe and AGP, both top performers.
Here´s some reviews:
Now, fast, cheap, troubleless, and elegant solution, that remembers me of SiS 735, a killer athlon chipset at its time, and later SiS 746/FX that virtually falled into oblivion because only a few budget motherboad manufacturers went with it.
For now, I spotted Asrock making the 939Dual-Sata2, and maybe this board is the one I´m getting. I´ve already had Asrock K7S8X that served me well, and still works on my sister-in-law PC - very robust and stable, simply lacked basic overclocking functions.
I´m hoping getting one of these plus a Athlon64 3200+ venice for around 250€.
But once again I fear a relative small manufacturer well done chipset will not be widly adopted because of the big-boys (VIA, Nvidia) pressure. I will surely support it.
I resisted the urge to get a Athlon 64, but now with the clarified socket issues, WinXP64 out and Win "vista" next year, a good upgrade path - 939 and X2 processors, and reasonable priced Athlon64 "venice", one issue remained: AGP vs PCIe. Buying a S939 AGP motherboard meaning you blocking the video card upgrade, buying a PCIe meaning you´d have to get a PCIe card, and I think my X800pro will last for some time (if it doesn´t end dying on me...
)SLI simply doesn´t interest me, brute force just isn´t the way.
So, finally I saw several reviews for a very smart chipset - the ULi (former ALi) M1695. Fast, cheap, troubleless, and with a very elegant solution - native AGP8x on the southbridge, with a hypertransport link to northbridge. Motherboards with both native PCIe and AGP, both top performers.
Here´s some reviews:
Now, fast, cheap, troubleless, and elegant solution, that remembers me of SiS 735, a killer athlon chipset at its time, and later SiS 746/FX that virtually falled into oblivion because only a few budget motherboad manufacturers went with it.
For now, I spotted Asrock making the 939Dual-Sata2, and maybe this board is the one I´m getting. I´ve already had Asrock K7S8X that served me well, and still works on my sister-in-law PC - very robust and stable, simply lacked basic overclocking functions.
I´m hoping getting one of these plus a Athlon64 3200+ venice for around 250€.
But once again I fear a relative small manufacturer well done chipset will not be widly adopted because of the big-boys (VIA, Nvidia) pressure. I will surely support it.
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