best amd 64 bit 939 core motherboard NON SLI

aowen512 · Post by **aowen512** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:35 pm

not going to go for the sli, so whats going to be my best solution here

preferably name brand motherboard(support!) but really name anything that i should be taking a look at

thx for your help guys and looking forward to the replies

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 3:05 pm

There's a sapphire board that has the Ati x-press chipset, it's white, no sli.

DFi nf4 ultra-D is pretty good. if you have one of the older revisions, you can mod it to sli with a pencil.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:17 pm

EPOX. go look at their website, pick a board. they are very fast boards, very stable, rival the DFI. very cheap too

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:40 pm

I usually stick with ASUS motherboards. An ASUS A8N-E would be the nVidia version without SLI. Solid ASUS quality plus nVidia chipset. The only problem is the fan on the northbridge heatsink. I'd replace it with a Zalman nortbridge cooler. It should be far enough away to avoid any interference with video card heatsinks. The ASUS A8V Deluxe is also a good option, but has a VIA chipset (its very stable, but has less features than nVidia chipset).

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:14 pm

stromgald wrote:The ASUS A8V Deluxe is also a good option, but has a VIA chipset (its very stable, but has less features than nVidia chipset).

Well, it is stable. Sort of. But I learn more about it every day. Here are some of the stuff I encountered not related to features, or lack of them.

It freezes occasionally if I turn on AGP Fast Write

It freezes occasionally if I use a USB keyboard (specifically the Saitek Eclipse).

It freezes during POST if I plug a Microsoft USB Fingerprint Scanner into a USB hub.

Once after upgrading the BIOS the machine refused to POST. I did clear the BIOS after flashing, apparently it didn't like the BIOS default. Had to boot up with only 1 stick of RAM and change the BIOS setting before it would boot again.

I cannot get SMART readings for the second SATA drive. Which means I can't monitor its temperature.

And of course it is AGP. The A8V-E (PCIe) is not as well regarded when I looked into it a while back. May have improved.

Anyway, it is definitely not the best non SLI motherboard around. But in some recent test (Tom's Hardware, IIRC) it draws the least power among socket 939 chipsets.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 12:27 am

I'm kind of partial to the DFI boards. Just be cautious of the Socket 939 DFI nForce3 motherboard -- last I heard it was pretty flakey, but maybe they've worked all the bugs out in a new BIOS or motherboard revision. As far as I know all their nF4 solutions have been pretty solid, though. No board is perfect, but I do think the DFI boards come closer to perfection than most.

aowen512 · Post by **aowen512** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 6:12 pm

well i currently have a 6800gt agp that overclocks pretty good but im kind of drawn between keeping it and gettin nf3 or getting rid of it and go for pci e, though i will have to purchase another card blah!! no money... are the nf4 boards so much better than the nf3 boards(agp)??

i hear around from a 5-15 percent boost in graphic card performance from agp - pcie but with my card doing pretty well 425/1200 (stock 350/1100 i think) i would really like ot hang on to this thing

just throwing out some of my thoughts and trying see where you guys are coming from

thx for the replies so far KEEPING COMING!

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:32 pm

Performance boost from AGP to PCIe? Not really possible since the AGP interface is not the bottleneck as far as GPU performance goes, at least not yet. As new faster graphics cards come out, that might change. I'm not sure about the Gigabyte 7xxx series, but the older 6xxx series shouldn't have a performance jump between AGP and PCIe.

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:35 am

Performance boost from AGP to PCIe? Not really possible since the AGP interface is not the bottleneck as far as GPU performance goes, at least not yet.

There are faster graphics cards on PCIe, so in that sense an AGP board would limit your speed. Games get bigger all the time, not that long ago textures used to fit in 32MB. I wouldn't be surprised to see 1GB of textures very soon. Doom3's highest setting needs 512MB.

AGP definitely is a bottleneck when the card has insufficient memory.

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:48 am

In a sense what you say is true. The problem with AGP is mostly due to manufacturers shifting to PCIe, not the limitation of the interface. The nVidia 6800 NU/GT/Ultra seem to be the best cards on AGP right now and have the same performance whether it has a PCIe or AGP interface with the motherboard. Its just that you can't find new high end graphics cards such as the 7800 or new X1800 series from ATI on AGP, they're all on PCIe.

Devilsown · Post by **Devilsown** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 12:25 pm

aowen512 wrote:well i currently have a 6800gt agp that overclocks pretty good but im kind of drawn between keeping it and gettin nf3 or getting rid of it and go for pci e, though i will have to purchase another card blah!! no money... are the nf4 boards so much better than the nf3 boards(agp)??

i hear around from a 5-15 percent boost in graphic card performance from agp - pcie but with my card doing pretty well 425/1200 (stock 350/1100 i think) i would really like ot hang on to this thing

just throwing out some of my thoughts and trying see where you guys are coming from

thx for the replies so far KEEPING COMING!

How about the Asrock 939 with ULi M1695-chipset?
I've tried finding some users on here to discuss its silence capabilities in the '3000b system advise' thread, but sadly haven't found any. Check for more info that thread..

aowen512 · Post by **aowen512** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:20 pm

well from the way you guys talk, my 6800gt agp i should keep unless i wanted to upgrade from that, inwich i would have to buy a pciexpress

so i will stay with the agp motherboard, does that limit me to nf3 or are there nf4 boards that support agp??

aowen512 · Post by **aowen512** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:52 pm

right now, im thinking about going wtih the MSI K8N Neo2-F, which basically the very well done K8N Neo2 Platinum but with nvidia chipset instead of the via, inwich nvidia is waht i prefer

looking for benchmarks etc to see how this thing holds up

keep the replies coming

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:52 am

aowen512 wrote:so i will stay with the agp motherboard, does that limit me to nf3 or are there nf4 boards that support agp??

If there are any nForce4 with AGP support, I suggest you investigate a little to see how it is implemented. A few implementations create the AGP slot on the PCI bus, and performance suffers because of it. ECS has a VIA K8T890 chipset board with AGP and PCIe using such a solution, I believe.

AsRock motherboard with both AGP and PCIe done properly (but not nForce4)

XFX 7800GT PCIe for $300 after rebate at NewEgg is mighty tempting

Edit: Lots of it, some for clarity.

aowen512 · Post by **aowen512** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:38 pm

i really liked the board you gave me the link to, and im excited to see if any other companies will come out with ULi boards as well

thx for your reply and keep em coming!