Need Motherboard info.

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BlindCowboy

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I'm doing an upgrade:

Current system is:

PII 350mhz
256mg ram
4 gig 5400 rpm
80 gig 7200rpm
CDRW
CDR
10/100 NIC
Echo Mia
Matrox Dual Monitor AGP (17"x2 CRT)
Cubase VST/32

Dedicated system. NIC card allows me access to my network, for file movement etc..


Now, i'm stepping from the stone-ages and going to a faster system. I'm going to be salvaging some of the old computer. So, I want to update to:

AMD 2400
1 gig DDR
80 gig 7200rpm
CDRW
DVDR
10/100 NIC
Echo Mia
Matrox Dual Monitor AGP (17"x2 CRT)
Cubase VST/32

And, my question is, what is the best motherboard selection out there today? I don't care about the "All in one" stuff, just AMD reliability.

Thanks,

Blind Cowboy...
 
whattaguy said:
The Asus A7N8X Deluxe is a popular one for AMD.
Click to expand...

I second that! It's Maximum PC's pick for the best AMD motherboard currently. It has two serial ATA connections, has a 400MHz front side bus, has dual onboard 10/100 LANs, six USB 2.0 ports, supports AGP 8x, uses PC3200 RAM. You won't have to upgrade that thing for a while.

Also has onboard nVidia six channel surround sound. Maybe you won't use it, but it's nice. I travel around a lot and use my computer for everything, email, web, television, digital VCR, DVD player, stereo, digital image editing and printing from my digital camera, etc. <--all of this as well as being my DAW.

I got mine for about $145.
 
Ah,

I shoulda said: I'm familiar with, and love the A7N8X. However, i'm looking for a board that's less than $60. I'm trying to clear the whole system for under $150. I've got the AMD 2000 - 2400+ running at ~$50 - $75. So, if I can get a nice yesterday board for less, than i'm happy. The A7N8X is still too much "today" for me...
 
asus is a good maker but what your mainly buying is the nforce chipset from what i've read about newer boards, yes the deluxe has a bunch of usb ports and built in nic which are nice but many makers have jumped on that wagon months ago offering about the same extras for less, i run asus and epox boards, i'd say look for a board with 2 to 4 extra ide's so you'll have plenty of room for drives down the road, the kt400 chipset does ok also but it's not as fast as the nforce, to tell the truth you most likely couldn't see the difference, speed wise with the eye, benchmarks tell the whole story...

neweggs refurb section has what your looking for imho, if preformance is what your looking for, just remember, you have 15 days to test the board for defects, after that, it's yours, no returns...

i've bought over 60 and only returned 3 i believe, run sisoft sanda burn in for a few days, if it passes the test you should have a good board...

"alot" of people know about neweggs refurb section, yeah, good boards don't last long so you need to ferquent the site to get in on a good buy...
 
The Asus and ABit boards retained the 4-hole mounting system for those who want to install industrial strength cooling that weighs more than the 300 grams allowed by AMD.

I run Alpha PAL8045 sinks with Panaflo fans on all my clients' machines. This will eat up $50 of your budget.
 
Hey BlindCowboy, what part of Houston do you live in? The Compusa store on 1960 had a sale on the 120GB HD that was the same price as the 80GB. Maxstor. I don't know if it is still on.

As for the mobo, the guy who recommended the ASUS A7N8X probably gave you some good advice. This is a good board especially if you are ever planning on running Protools. I use an ASUS A7M266 for my Protools LE set-up and it is great.
 
Another vote for the A7N8X deluxe...(even though it's a few more buck$)...
 
If you don't wanna spend alot of money you could go with a Biostar M7NCD Pro Nforce2 board and a Barton 2500+. $147 from New Egg shipped. Just built one based on the IGP board and didn't have any probs. Works great. The only thing it lacked was serial ATA , but you could just get a cheapie RAID card and a couple drives at some point if you wanted to do RAID-0.
Most Nforce2 boards peform fairly similar, and I've always had good luck with Biostars. The Barton 2500+ runs very cool, and can be overclocked like crazy. You'd probably want to get some decent PC3200 memory for it so you could overclock at some point. Guess the 2500 Barton runs 200 fsb pretty easily...

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=13-138-216&refer=pr1c3watch
 
I was in a similar situation a few weeks back , low budget, but wanted a Athlon XP compatible nforce 2 board..... check this out.


Mine has been "click and pop" free since I built it. Very stable and plenty fast for everything else you'll be using.
Stay away from the VIA chipset if at all possible, it
has been well documented on almost every board, that they don't do well in DAW's

Shuttle an35n

I got mine for under $70.00
 
Bueno!

Thanks for all the posts.. I'm currently building a Soltek for my wife w/ a AMD1800+ 512 CAS so that she can surf the internet and balance the checkbook. So, I can't replace mine until after I replace hers, and her grip on my balls is getting tighter until I say OK, and so now i'm thinking that i'm gonna blow a little on my budget and get the A7N8X-deluxe and call it a match...

Thanks again,

Blind Cowboy...
 
BlindCowboy said:
now i'm thinking that i'm gonna blow a little on my budget and get the A7N8X-deluxe and call it a match...
Click to expand...

You won't be sorry....'cept about your balls, that is.
 
I'd like to point out a small but crucial thing to note:
MOTHERBOARD REVIEWS IN COMPUTER MAGS etc ARE IRRELEVANT WHEN CHOOSING A BOARD FOR AUDIO!

Mant boards which are consider 'the best board out there' are not being examined from the point of view of the audio user. Often they are assessed on their use for games etc and general stability etc. Quite often a board that is the latest 'overclockers favourite' is nothing but trouble in a DAW.

AVOID - any mobo with a VIA chipset. They keep saying they have improved over the years but they have been useless for audio in my experience. Random clicks and pops are common as muck.

I recommend finding a reputable DAW supplier on the web and try to find out the mobos they use for AMD chipsets. You'll often find they are mobos that other types of user would consider quite low down in the range but remember, the more bells and whistles a mobo has, the more likely conflicts are and the more things to go wrong.

Despite what people say AMD chipsets are still a bit hit and miss when it comes to DAWS. If I was to suggest any board I would suggest trying to stick with nForce chipsets and avoid any mention of VIA.
 
Alchemist3k said:
I'd like to point out a small but crucial thing to note:
MOTHERBOARD REVIEWS IN COMPUTER MAGS etc ARE IRRELEVANT WHEN CHOOSING A BOARD FOR AUDIO!
Click to expand...

Fair point.


AVOID - any mobo with a VIA chipset
Click to expand...

True.

stick with nForce chipsets
Click to expand...

The Asus A7N8X Deluxe uses the nVidia nForce2-ST and has your aforementioned "general stability," which I think is a good thing.

I never overclock.
 
While I would get the Nforce2 money permitting, I think the Via being bad for DAW is not the case after the KT333. I built a Protools Digi001 setup with a KT333 based ECS (low budget raid board), and the thing works really good. I read alot on the Digidesign forum and people were having luck, so I tried it. The user records for hours and does all kinds of stuff with it with no probs. Supposedly the Via prob was the way they timed the PCI bus. Can't remember the details, but whatever it was is no longer a prob on newer chipsets, at least the KT333.
 
Actually, i've done alot of reading on the KT333, 400, and 600. I do believe they've cleaned up their act on these chips...

Question, though:

Would ya'll go with the A7N8X-X, A7N8X, A7N8X-VM, A7N8X-DELUXE, etc...

Just started looking for one and realized there were several options. And, I can't see what the difference is between any of them... (Firewire on the bigger ones, maybe?)

Blind Cowboy...
 
The VIA bug is documented up through southbridge VT8233a, which includes the KT333 on some boards (ABit KX7-333, etc).

This is a long line of defective southbridges that extends through several generations of chipsets. I can tell you first hand (KT133a) the PCI performance is DISMAL when compared to a full speed PCI chipset. Measurements taken during a fresh rebuild of my KT133a work horse confirm the pitiful performance.

The nForce boards are superior performers, and price competitive with VIA. Why bother with VIA, especially with such a long track record of bugs?
 
bgavin said:
The VIA bug is documented up through southbridge VT8233a, which includes the KT333 on some boards (ABit KX7-333, etc).

This is a long line of defective southbridges that extends through several generations of chipsets. I can tell you first hand (KT133a) the PCI performance is DISMAL when compared to a full speed PCI chipset. Measurements taken during a fresh rebuild of my KT133a work horse confirm the pitiful performance.

The nForce boards are superior performers, and price competitive with VIA. Why bother with VIA, especially with such a long track record of bugs?
Click to expand...

there's nothing bad or wrong with via now, do a search [now] and you'll see, your quoting from years ago...

nforce has it's bugs also least you forget, yup, google...

man, people get so onesided or onetracked minded thesae days...
 
So what do you guys think about Intel stuff? My friend said their stuff is better for a couple bucks extra. Any opinions on that?
 
Yea.

If your building from scratch, you can put together an AMD system for 1/2 of an equivalent Intel system.

Or you can buy an Intel (Dell, etc..) packaged for ~ $200.00 more than an assembled AMD.

Intel, however, has proved to be a stabler platform in the past. But, with the 266, 333, 400, and up boards, AMD has held it's own against Intel. The new arrivals of the AMD 64's are dragging behind Intels new releases, marking an upset to AMD's chance at overtaking Intel. But, with future development on the 64's platform, they may have a chance to get back in the running. AMD is more appealing to DIY'ers for it's ease in overclocking, mods, and such. Intel is more or less a what you buy is what you get kind of thing...

Stability, in a non-modified AMD is increasingly becoming a non-issue.

Blind Cowboy...
 
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