mobo's

Dfran · Posted: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:02:56 Post Subject: mobo's

Should I go for DFI Expert SLI, or Asus A8N-32 SLI? And what about AM2, should I be looking at that if I'm going to do some upgrades?
thanks

knight0334 · Posted: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:22:07 Post Subject:

WIth socket AM2, look for the nVidia 570 and 590 chipsets. Try to avoid socket 939 for any total upgrade seeing how AMD is dumping, or has dumped, socket 939.

Of the two boards mentioned, maybe someone else can provide info.. I'm still running socket A. lol

FOX · Posted: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:37:08 Post Subject:

my roomate uses the asus and loves it

Dfran · Posted: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:48:11 Post Subject:

How much longer will they offer processors, etc. for the 939? At this point the DDR2 isn't that much faster right? I should maybe just upgrage my gpu now. Memory is expensive and if I'm going to invest should prob just get an am2 board, of course would have to buy cpu at that time too.

Hellfire · Rated XXX Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 3473

Right now, depending on how much you want to spend, it might be best just to upgrade the GPU (assuming you have PCI-E). I don't believe they are manufacturing new models of the 939's (could be wrong though), it is a dead end format. Figure if you switch over to an AM2 board, you have to get, CPU, MB, Memory. Figure around $500 or $600 for the three. Post your current specs and how much you want to spend and we could probably give you a better idea on your options.

If you get one of those two boards, it really depends on your skill level. If you know/want to really tweak the mb bios, the DFI Expert is a great mb. However there are many incompatibilities with it.

If you just want a really good plug-n-play mb, the Asus will probably be your best bet.

Dfran · Posted: Mon, 01 Jan 2007 16:46:20 Post Subject:

lordraptor1 · Posted: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 22:35:54 Post Subject:

before buying anything from asus visit their forums and look before you buy. there are a lot of users having problems with no help from asus and no replies from them via e-mail might as well make a long distance phone call and wait for the tech to be of no help to you. because of the lack of help from asus i am upgrading my mobo to an evge 680i this month, and if i need help all i have to due is contact 1 of 5 places

1. evga (brand of the board)
2. ecs (have the exact same board no changes as evga)
3. bfg (again same exact board no change from above 2 companies)
4. nvidia (they designed the board and sold the design to the above companies who change nothing and built it just as nvidia designed it)
5. foxconn (i read somewhere that foxconn actually manufactures the boards for evga because evga does not have the means to manufacture the boards themselves)

i like the fact that out of the 3 companies that have the 680i they are all identical with no changes to the original design, put all three boards side by side and if it did not have a sticker or a silkscreen logo on it you would not know the difference between them.

edvallie · Posted: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:41:26 Post Subject:

am2?

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2duo/index.htm

Hellfire · Rated XXX Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 3473

Core2Duo definetly has the edge right now.

I'm not an Intel fan, but have considered buying one of them for my main rig.

Dfran · Posted: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:00:03 Post Subject:

Well.... I went for the 8800GTS vid card. Haven't changed anything else yet though. Now, when I'm playing games like Oblivion, or Fear, my processor stays at 100% for most of the time. So clearly I'm bottlenecking now at the processor. I would like to get that next. I need memory too though, and DDR is getting more and more scarce. I'm worried about buying a s939 processor and then in 2 months having an even harder time finding memory. I saw a side by side comparison though, on DIY-streets, of s939 and sAM2, and the sAM2 only performed slightly better in most of the tests. I'm sure that will change as the board matures, but for now it seems like s939 will be good for a while, performance wise, providing hardware is available.