Whats the best mobo/cpu combo?

Keeks

I'm in the market for a new mobo/cpu, and i'm just wondering what is the best one to get at the moment. It will mainly be used for gaming. I'm looking for a price v preformance comparison.

astrofool

probably an athlon XP 1800+, kr7-133 (raid version if u want to put more hard disks on), and a gef3 ti200, 256 of pc2100 ram would make a fairly mean and relatively cheap machine.

Would recommend getting a nice big case with a 300w psu with it, you'd save alot of money going for that than trying to go for a competing p4 variant with the same performance (rdram needed really)

Stonemason

Go for a SL-75DRV4 or even a SL-75DRV5 (Soltek)though the v4 is proven the v5 is still very new and i would wait to see what bugs fall out first if any .XP 1800 or even a XP1900 they are dropping in price almost weekly.One thing alot of people over look is the case think of it this way get a good case and you can have it for life (more or less).Ive built a couple of systems using the Soltek board and ive never had any problems with them be warned they have a good few dip switches on them .
check em out here.

http://www.soltek.de/English/home/01.htm


Stone:D

ps anyone know of a really good really quite Heatsink+fan (from actual experience)

JustHalf

Originally posted by astrofool
a gef3 ti200

Personally I'd wait for the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 to come out.

Kairo

I wouldn't recommend Abit..unless you plan on doing some serious overclocking. They have all the features. I recently bought a KR7A-RAID and I've been getting nothing but memory dumps, system hangs and unexplained restarts (WinXP)

I've heard good things about the new MSi K7n420. Coupled with a nice Nvidia card, running at 6x AGP...it should do the trick

Personally I'd wait for the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 to come out.

Thats the GeForce 4 Ti4600...and it already is out.

BabyEater

There is a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 comming out , cheaper than Ti 4600

I also have the Abit KR7A not a bad board i was getting a couple of system restarts but nothing major

JustHalf

Originally posted by Kyro
I've heard good things about the new MSi K7n420. Coupled with a nice Nvidia card, running at 6x AGP...it should do the trick

8x you mean?

Originally posted by Kyro
Thats the GeForce 4 Ti4600...and it already is out.

Or the 4200, which is out later.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/ti4200/default.asp

YES

Stonemason

The special edition GF3 TI 200 (128mb) cards running about at the mo suposed to be really pretty gold heatsink and stuff havent anything on them performance wise yet though:D.


Stone

Keeks

Originally posted by Stonemason
gold heatsink and stuff .

is that a bit expensive...:)

Stonemason

Not compared to the diamond incrusted ones


Stone

saik

personally, i'd go with the AMD XP 1900+, 512 DDR memory, the abit board and a gf4 4400.
the gf4 4400 *is* essentially the gf4 equivalent of the gf3 ti200
it also represents the best value for money.

reasoning behind the abit board : you gotta get techy at some stage : D, valuable life skills etc

astrofool

the gef4 ti4200 IS the equivelent to the Ti200, it's out in a couple of weeks.

Ti200's are going cheap right now though, and if you were offered the choice of a Ti200 and a Gef4 mx, which would u choose ?

no, he means AGP6x, which is what the onboard (crap bandwidth) graphics run at on an nForce board (100mhz instead of 66mhz for the agp bus, it's still 66 with an external card).

Had no problems with abit boards myself, try turning the memory timing's down a bit, will most likely fix that, the Abit's are more tweakable, but need good memory to do it, it's not the board's fault, the memory can't keep up, i added active memory cooling and it's been solid as a rock with 3 dimm's full (1 gig) at most tweaked settings. Try lowering the CAS latency, or changing command rate to 2T (1T WILL crash with lower quality memory).

A good motherboard is worth it in time saved.

Keeks

Originally posted by astrofool
i added active memory cooling and it's been solid as a rock with 3 dimm's full (1 gig) at most tweaked settings.

What is active memory cooling?

po0k

strapping one of those metal plates over the dimm with the heatsinks attached to the top with a fan (hence 'active') pushing air through. Has lost relevance today as just about any cooling solution needs a fan. Might have meant something a few years back when you had a Pentim100 with a solid heatsink....

JustHalf

Originally posted by astrofool
no, he means AGP6x, which is what the onboard (crap bandwidth) graphics run at on an nForce board (100mhz instead of 66mhz for the agp bus, it's still 66 with an external card).

I'm not too sure about what you say is actually the case, but definitely it's not running at AGP 6x (whatever the hell that is, considering the fact that you can only feasibly double- quad- or octuple-"pump" the bus) with an external card. Which is what they said, right here.

Coupled with a nice Nvidia card, running at 6x AGP...it should do the trick

astrofool

it's not a standard it's an acronym. it runs at the speed AGP6x would run at if it was ever a standard. i.e. if they changed the spec of the AGP bus to 100mhz instead of 66mhz, agp 4x would be 6x, 2x would be 3x, 8x would be 12x.

And yes it is the case, nvidia did it to improve performance slightly with the onboard graphics, (not that AGP does make a huge difference), nice marketing ploy, read a few of the in depth reviews on the nforce, the initial ones, anand or tom did them afaik. It's just an overclocked bus, but nvidia built in from the start to run at 100mhz.

He just got it wrong anyway about adding a card in, and it being 6x.

8x will be out soon, but will probably be as meaningless as 4x was, most cards still run in 2x mode when driver's/bios aren't set right, and the frame rate difference is usually less than 1fps. Marketing ploy really

tho the CS heads seem to think 4x is the holy grail when trying to get more fps :rolleyes: "my friend told me..."

JustHalf

Not only are you clearly wrong, but you're trying to prove your point in the most pedantic (and incorrect) way possible.

Uh oh, it seems like:

Lump

Originally posted by Kyro
I wouldn't recommend Abit..unless you plan on doing some serious overclocking. They have all the features. I recently bought a KR7A-RAID and I've been getting nothing but memory dumps, system hangs and unexplained restarts (WinXP)

I've heard good things about the new MSi K7n420. Coupled with a nice Nvidia card, running at 6x AGP...it should do the trick



Thats the GeForce 4 Ti4600...and it already is out.

I agree, Abit are crap.


John

astrofool

http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535&p=2

look for this line:

The IGP also has an internal AGP bus that can be clocked at 100MHz (instead of the 66MHz clock for normal AGP buses) for transfer rates equivalent to an AGP 6X mode.

This page was clearly made for JustHalf

JustHalf

This is the "kinda-like" pseudo-science crap that pisses me off.

It's speed is 4x the AGP bus speed. It's closer to 4x AGP than 6x AGP in this regard (as it's not 6x anything, but 4x the bus speed).

*sigh*

astrofool

gwahahahaha

looks like we should turn that "pedantic man" into an avatar for you JustHalf

4xAGP, AGP is not the bus speed, i have never ever been able to clock my bus at AGP. 4xAGP is a standard as is 2x, as 8x will be, 6x is a way of describing an overclocked AGP bus as that's what it's transfer rate. Why the hell would I say two different things are the same and give them the same name? that's just the stupidest thing ever.

Gerry

Indeed, I have an agp 3x bus on my own machine, since the agp bus is at 102 mhz instead of 66. I think overclocking the agp bus can bring more benefits than going from 2x to 4x, since the latency for small transfers is reduced.

JustHalf

Perhaps I should sleep more.

Confusion over up and down follows.

azezil

I use the Epox 8kha+ meself, I like it!