Price Guides November 2004: CPU and Motherboards
by Adam Rader on November 18, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Intel Motherboards - 9xx
Intel chipset based motherboards have always had the advantage of very tight integration with the CPU, since the chip and chipset were made by the same company. This has always helped Intel keep everything running smoothly while controlling a few more variables. Unfortunately, even that level of granular control hasn't been enough to push buyers towards the new 915/925 based boards. Anand's recent trip to Taiwan reveals that economic conditions here in the US (and even worldwide), and more importantly, the costs of adopting DDR2 and PCI Express video cards, are all hurting the new platform's adoption rate. In the end, we still don't fully recommend making the switch to these new chipsets, and their accompanying costs, just yet. Until performance on the new platform can start to compete better with 865-based systems, as well as AMD's latest offerings, it's best to stick to the tried and true. PCI Express and DDR2 have yet to offer anything in the way of real benefit and until they do, 915/925 will continue to be more for show than for real substance.On the other hand, show and bragging rights are a major reason why a lot of enthusiasts upgrade to the latest and greatest. So for those, we do recommend the Abit AA8-DuraMAX. For what it's worth, it's one of the best performers around for the 925 chipset and isn't priced badly at all, considering that it supports all of the newest technologies that Intel is pushing.
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Chadder007 - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
"N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478. "I agree about Socket 478....Intel didn't care to give those users too much of an upgrade path and just jumped all over to the new socket way too soon with little justification to do so.
qballshalls2002 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Still waiting for the nForce4 boards to show before I go slurging again. Hehehe!aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Haha...sorry...I meant if you were trying to get to 1:1 DDR600 like a lot of Anandtechers are inclined to do. My DDR is bigger than your DDR;-)
jmke - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
" The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM... "most A64 boards features excellent memory:htt(fsb) dividers, and the impact on performance versus running memory at 1:1 is minimal
aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I agree with #8. My new 3000+ easily hits 2.4ghz which makes it $160 3800+. The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM...arswihart - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
why get Athlon64 3200+ 90nm instead of 3000+? Can't they both overclock the same, as shown in Anand's own tests?bofkentucky - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
In the 9xx board section, its is the intel 915 chipset, not 912.Pumpkinierre - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478.PseudoKnight - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
The Athlon XP 2800+ is flipping me off. I'm scared.slurmsmackenzie - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
how come the 915 chipset isn't listed? it offers pci-e without the conversion to ddr2? anandtech always puts the emphasis on the fact that an upgrade to 775 is an entire system overhaul, when 915 offers the meager upgrade of processor/mobo, or cpu/mobo/video card without a performance drop from 925x. so why a 925x board is suggested for price/performance efficiency is beyond me.