Price Guides, September 2005: Motherboards
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Howard Johnston on September 16, 2005 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
More AMD Motherboards
Over the past few months we've seen a flood of Socket 939 motherboards and CPUs come to the market. Prices of these parts have dropped close to their Socket 754 counterparts now. For mid to high range systems, we strongly recommend purchasing the Socket 939 combo. The only reasong to go with Socket 754 is for Sempron based budget systems, and the price difference is only about $50 at most.
For those looking to breathe new life into their Socket 754 rig, you can look at the MSI K8N Neo3-F [RTPE: MS-7135-010]. It features both AGP and PCIe slots, giving you the option to migrate to new components when they come out. Note that you must use an MSI-approved video card like the GeForce4 Ti4400 in its AGP slot. The AGP-like slot is actually called "AGR" (Advanced Graphics Riser) by MSI, and it runs off a tweaked PCI bus. Performance with high-end cards like a 6800GT will suffer, so unless we start to see ULi M1695 for socket 754, AGP owners are in a difficult situation as far as upgrades go.
Those looking for better overclocking options - maybe take one of the 90nm Sempron-64 parts and shoot for 2.50+ GHz - would be better off with either the DFI Infinity 754 or the ASUS K8N4-E Deluxe. EPoX 8NPAJ is another option.
If NVIDIA isn't your brand, there are other PCIe players in the market now. MSI will once again be our pick in a category this week for the ATI RS480 based Xpress 200 RS480M-IL [RTPE: MS-7145-020]. This board offers a lot of features like SATA RAID and IEEE 1394 for under $80.
Lastly, we have the nForce3 based 754 boards. If you already have a socket 754 system, there's not much reason to buy a different AGP-only motherboard, short of your current motherboard failing. The $90 DFI LanParty UT remains the best socket 754 AGP overclocking platform that we've seen, and it even supports the 90nm Sempron and Turion chips with an updated BIOS. It's still difficult to recommend, as it's a dead end purchase. EPoX, Biostar, ASUS, and Abit all make lower-cost nForce3 boards, so if you're looking for a simple replacement they may be the better choice.
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Cygni - Saturday, September 17, 2005 - link
The ULi/ASRock offering certainly looks mighty juicy in that round up... only one or two NF4 boards in its range, and they lack the features or performance of the ULi. Good stufF!XRaider - Sunday, September 18, 2005 - link
Kris and Manveer,I really like how you guys laid out the article. Keeping it all in separate sections - making it very easy to read and to find items! The old way for pricing guides were pretty much lumped into one section ...i.e. AMD boards would have all flavors tossed into one section making it difficult to search/pick out items.
GREAT JOB GUYS!! Keep it up!!
Anandtech Rocks baby!!
Crassus - Sunday, September 18, 2005 - link
Absolutely. Please keep doing it this way in future price guides.flatblastard - Friday, September 16, 2005 - link
"Springing for an nForce4 Ultra motherboard buys you a few more fancy features like the Creative Labs Sound Blaster 7.1 audio codec."I was under the impression that that codec was only available on the SLI version of the K8N Neo4 from MSI. Now I've been wrong before, and in this case I hope that I am (though not likely ;) ).
TheInvincibleMustard - Saturday, September 17, 2005 - link
I was wondering that same thing, myself ... most nForce4 mobo's I know of use Realtek's AC codec/chips in their boards ...stelleg151 - Friday, September 16, 2005 - link
What about the Jetway?flatblastard - Saturday, September 17, 2005 - link
What about it? Why is it not included in the price guide? Or do you mean that it comes with the SB Live audio codec? If it's the latter, then I think you should check out the manufacturer's website.....Here let me save you the trouble of googling it:http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/product/amd-k8/939g...">Jetway 939GT4-Ultra Specifications
mhoytech - Friday, September 16, 2005 - link
Slight slip of hand to jump ahead several months