A motherboard to last 4-5 years

frugal_guy · Post by **frugal_guy** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 1:22 pm

I built my current system several years ago and, though it technically meets my needs, I have this intense desire to upgrade.

The question here is: Which motherboard would you choose for general office/web use (not gaming) that would maximize the odds that it would still be useful in 4-5 years?

I'm frugal and wish to spend the minimum necessary to do the job right. I also want the system to be quiet and energy efficient.

To place this in context, here's my current system:
Antec SX830 tower case with original Antec PP303X 300W power supply and 2 Antec case fans.
Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 1.0 ghz CPU
256 MB PC133 memory
120 MB WD UDMA PATA hard disk
Separate CDRW and DVD drives
GeForce2 MX AGP video
Dual boot: Gentoo Linux and Windows ME (for legacy apps)

My assumption is that only the disks will be reused though I might be able to reuse the case (new power supply of course).

I'm leaning toward an Athlon 64 in the 3200-3800 range but I'm willing to consider others if they would add to the longevity of the system while remaining quiet and efficient.

OK, so what capabilities are needed for the next 4-5 years and which motherboard best supports them?

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 2:39 pm

frugal_guy wrote:OK, so what capabilities are needed for the next 4-5 years and which motherboard best supports them?

The $1m question. If you can be sure of no (or very limited) "multimedia convergence requirements" (HTPC, music, TV ...) then for Office/browsing etc your current 1GHz CPU is probably enough oomph. You could re-build with high efficiency PSU, CnQ, minimal graphics and near passive/silent cooling. The 1 risk is some new killer app that requires something you cant upgrade to.

Arguments for future-proofing: I would be tempted by a dual core which is, for you, completely unecessary now. And once you start down this slope there are numerous $50 extras you can add. By the time you have SATA and Gigabit LAN (most mobos today) I am not sure if any of the other extras can justify their cost - others can try argue that point though.

So back to your topic: I dont reckon a specific mobo is more or less likely to last 5 years: rather go for an efficient/quiet/small/elegant PC and choose the mobo that fits those requirements.

Then again, if you can calm your current desires, your Thunderbird will probably serve you fine for another 12 months, when you can either buy the same system as now for less, or get higher spec for the same cash

And of course - Welcome to SPCR!

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:43 pm

basically it goes on the cash thing.

how much are you willing to dump, dont tell me how much you want to, but how much can you.

dual core amd 3800 is the way to go currently with 2 gigs of ram, 1 gig sticks and two of them. rest is gravy. hd is a simple 250 gb samsung sata-ii drive, board, for a decent lifespan, I would get Epox anything for a cheap and great performing board. Passive northbridge is an issue with all nice boards, so that's something you would have to read about for your individual board. th actively cooled ones are killer loud.

speed is not necessary but is good to have. 2.0 dual core is great, if you have a load of cash to spend, 4400 dual core, the 2.2 with extra cache might push you a bit farther but note this:

Amd and Intel are not releasing really fast ghz chips anymore, it is all about dual cores and eventually 4 and 8 cores. Multi core will be the big thing, ghz the smaller factor. Ram of 4 gigs will be standard in 1-2 years for decent systems, if you go 2x1024 meg ram dimms, you will have 2 more open slots to put a total of 4 gigs in in a year or so.

The new socket M2 which is now called AM2 (sounds a lot better) is not going to help anyone besides big business, so the current 939 socket 3800 amd dual core will be a base standard for a few years to come.

Video card I wouldnt care about. Yes, if you read newsgroup info and forums about new Vista 64 from Microsoft, you will see it requiring a fancy vid card, not to worry though as by the time it comes out, the card that costs 150 dollars now will actually cost like 60 dollars then when you need it (1 1/2 years from now)

Fat_bloater_dave · Post by **Fat_bloater_dave** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:53 pm

Ah you’ve got to love the completely direct answers you get to questions in these forums.

What I would say is that the more expensive a motherboard you buy probably the longer its going to last. If u get a socket 939 board and a lower speed CPU (3200+) then right now they have dual cores that go all the way up to 4800+ that would run on the same board. If you get a motherboard with SATA then that is another thing that is the future (apparently) Gigabit LAN another future proof, PCIe is another but you wouldn’t really need that with your requirements.

I know how you feel I had a computer that I really didn’t NEED to upgrade but I wanted too because its fun people will tell you that you don’t need to upgrade so don’t but it doesn’t help if you are just asking what you should upgrade too. I would suggest getting a motherboard with NF4(ultra) chipset (or similar by another manufacturer) an Athlon 3200+, 512MB ram, and probably a graphics card like geforce 6200 (nice and cheep). I would also suggest getting the Seasonic S12-430 power supply which comes highly recommended here.

I’m not going to suggest a motherboard because there isn’t really much point there are all pretty much the same just take a look in the motherboard forum and there will probably be someone talking about a good motherboard they are using. In reality the more you spend the better and more future proof that it is going to be (with some exceptions of course). So just have a look around for the cheapest motherboard with the best features

and that will be the one.

Fat_bloater_dave · Post by **Fat_bloater_dave** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 4:01 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:basically it goes on the cash thing.

how much are you willing to dump, dont tell me how much you want to, but how much can you.

dual core amd 3800 is the way to go currently with 2 gigs of ram, 1 gig sticks and two of them. rest is gravy. hd is a simple 250 gb samsung sata-ii drive, board, for a decent lifespan, I would get Epox anything for a cheap and great performing board. Passive northbridge is an issue with all nice boards, so that's something you would have to read about for your individual board. th actively cooled ones are killer loud.

speed is not necessary but is good to have. 2.0 dual core is great, if you have a load of cash to spend, 4400 dual core, the 2.2 with extra cache might push you a bit farther but note this:

Amd and Intel are not releasing really fast ghz chips anymore, it is all about dual cores and eventually 4 and 8 cores. Multi core will be the big thing, ghz the smaller factor. Ram of 4 gigs will be standard in 1-2 years for decent systems, if you go 2x1024 meg ram dimms, you will have 2 more open slots to put a total of 4 gigs in in a year or so.

Ok fair enough what you are suggesting is future proofing but for what he is planning on doing with the system this really is overkill 2gb of ram to use word and surf the net really isn’t needed nor is a 3800 dual core.

if the motherboard can support those things then that is a good thing makes upgrading in the future easier but seriously when do you think a word processor is going to need a 3800+ CPU I only suggest 3200+ because that is the slowest Venice core processor you can get. As he says a 1GHz processor is still working fine.

What you are suggesting would be good future proofing for a gamer, or someone who does audio/video work.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 4:47 pm

If you're using gentoo, maybe a low end dual core would be a good idea to speed up compiling. Instead of a P120, you could get two P80's and partition them so that to split various tasks between them. They'll also likely be quieter.

That vould kind of be overkill though. Are you planning on running enlightenment?

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:01 pm

Asus A8N-E.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:17 pm

yes, good good mobo choice.

I dont think I am suggesting anything overkill at all. spending any cash on a near obsolete chip is not future proofing anything. 2.0ghz is great now, but really, it wont do a blessed thing in 3 years. the 2nd core will do wonders. I mean, if he is on a budget, I say, work 3 more months and get something. spending to then upgrade, well, doesnt really work. The chips do not fall 70%, they fall 20-30%. not a huge drop after a while. Plus, in 2 years 3800 wont even be around to buy, unless you spend a lot at a place for one. they dont just lower prices, they BOUGHT the chip at a high price, they wont give them away. my PIII tualatin, I have the 1.2ghz 256k chip. I figured that eventualy the 1.4 ghz 512kb chip would be dirt cheap, ill just toss that into my gentoo box and make it even nicer as a server.

lol, it still is expensive!! 4 years later, yup still mildly pricey. It SHOULD be worth 40 dollars, but no, it was made and sold at a high price and so it wont be cheap "logically"

I just hate to see people who buy every 5 years buy something that is near its extinction time, unless all they do is surf and chat and burn dvd's.

frugal_guy · Post by **frugal_guy** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:23 pm

Dukla_2000: Thanks for the welcome. I've been lurking around SPCR for a couple of weeks, reading reviews and forum topics. It seemed time to jump in and start participating.

~El~Jefe~: At this point in my life, it's not how much I can spend, but how much I'm willing to spend. I can afford to buy what I want, but only because I seldom buy everything I want.

Fat_bloater_dave: Thanks for noticing the frugality in my request. It's often hard to find the balance point. If I pick to slow a CPU, I will probably have to upgrade before the 4-5 year horizon. If I go too fast, the price/performance ratio gets skewed.

mathias: To be honest, I don't know whether a dual core 3800 would compile faster than a single core 3800. I tried enlightenment and found it to be beautiful but a pain to configure and the eye candy slowed it down alot.

m0002a: Yes, the Asus A8N-E looks like a contender but please see my nforce 4 comments below.

That said, socket 939 looks like a given.

Since the items that have been upgraded since I built my current system were the memory and disk, it seems to make sense to get a motherboard with 4 DDR slots so that I can add memory later without throwing away what I purchase now. This way I can start with 1 GB and add more later if needed.

BTW: I think I read something about the switch to the AM2 socket being necessary because of AMD's need to support something like DDR2. Do you think that will make current DDR memory hard to come by in a couple of years?

If I wanted to upgrade the disk in a few years, PATA is probably not going to be an option. Do you think SATA I will continue to be viable or should I get a motherboard that supports SATA II?

Gigabit LAN seems like a good idea at this point, but I'm only dealing with a home network here and I suspect that I can add this later if necessary.

Since AGP seems to be fading fast, I suspect PCIe make's sense though it would require me to replace my current card (I know, it's only about $50, but remember I'm frugal

)

Though nforce 4 boards look good, and appear to be well supported in Linux, my understanding is that they won't run Windows ME thus requiring me to spend another $100 to upgrade to XP Home. Do Via boards have the same constraint? Also, the northbridges on nforce 4 boards seem to run hot, often requiring potentially noisy fans. Heat also can mean wasted energy, though I don't know if it would be measurable.

There have been a couple of suggestions for dual core. I haven't looked for benchmarks on this. Is a dual core 3800+ likely to be any faster than a single core 3800+?

mg1394 · Post by **mg1394** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:52 pm

I really suggest you get your head around the software you want to run. If you insist on staying with WinME and the legacy software that it supports, then I would not consider a hardware upgrade at all. Drivers and support software simply will not exist. Both Linux and Windows software needs to be within the current or prior releases or you will quickly be cut-off by some (say, security) issues.

Mccoyness · Post by **Mccoyness** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 6:01 pm

Seems you are approaching your upgrade sensibly. I personally tend to get the best I can afford but this does my finances no good at all.

The ASUS A8N-E has an fan cooled nb I personally would avoid this mb cos I don't trust a zalman heatsink to keep the nf4 tame under strain (overclocking). On the nf4 side I would opt for an Asus or Abit with a heatpipe cooler.

I'm am currently considering the Asus A8R-MVP based on the ATI crossfire chipset. It has a very good feature set for the price.

As for CPU I think you will be torn. You don't really need a fast processor but dual core sytems will make multi tasking feel more responsive. Most current software is single threaded and does not benifit from dual core chips however if you believe the chip makers this will change soon.

To be honest what kind of premium are we talking for a 939 mb with PCI-Express GbLAN and SATA2 $20-$30 perhaps if that. If you are intent on future proofing you should hedge your bets.

In all honestly tho I think its a bad time to upgrade. For a start you don't really need to. You may also find it more economical to wait until the next generation of M2 DDR2 Athlons appear and drive the prices of the current generation dual cores into reality.

Are the Opteron 165s still cheaper than the X2 3800? If so you get socket 939, dual 1.8Ghz cores and 1mb cache for your money which can't be bad.

I'm sure your setup works great for you but even I reluctantly switched to XP I have managed to get all my apps to work one or two needed to be run in a compatibility mode but this is no hardship really. I used to keep a windows 98 partition just in case something didn't work but I never needed it. As mentioned before support is fading fast for these 4-5 year old operating systems.

frugal_guy · Post by **frugal_guy** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 7:11 pm

Oh No! Get rid of Windows ME?

How can I explain this to my wife. I recently convinced her to upgrade her Pentium 90 to a Pentium 333 that we had, but no way could I get her to give up Windows 95. (This is actually true. She has degrees in Math and Computer Science, but is a luddite anyway) Fortunately, I was also able to get her to accept dual boot with Puppy Linux and she now spends more time in Linux than Windows.

About the only thing I use Windows for anymore is tax software. I hate to throw more money Microsoft's way, but it isn't really that big a deal.

On the other hand, I emerge Gentoo (stable) updates almost daily.

After dispensing with WinME, is there general agreement that some flavor of nforce 4 is preferred?

The original topic was choosing a motherboard and from that angle, once socket 939 is picked, I don't think most motherboards care whether I go with a 3200+ or an X2 4800+ or Opteron 175. It's mostly a matter of BIOS at that point, but I obviously want to go with an MB that will get periodic updates. Are there MB manufacturers that are better at that?

Even though the CPU frequency was not part of the original question, I value the discussion.

In my experience, performance improvements in a given line of processors do not really correlate to the model numbers. The reason I have the ability to get a 3x improvement is that I'm jumping up 2 CPU lines: from Athlon, past Athlon XP, to Athlon 64. If you look at Mother Of All CPU Charts you find that in some cases, for instance the Farcry Directx 9 test, the 3800+ beats the X2 4800+.

In that test, the 3800+ Venice beats the 3200+ Venice by 10.6% even though the model number 3800 is 18.5 % higher than 3200. Plus, on Newegg at least, the 3800+ Venice is almost exactly twice the price of the 3200+ Venice.

I admit that I haven't looked at all the benchmarks at that site and there are probably some that tell a different story.

As you climb toward the newest chips, the price/performance ratio gets ugly. Sometimes it makes sense to pay $175 for a 10% increase in performance, I'm not sure that this is one of those times.

The jump from Athlon 64 to Athlon 64 X2 may be worthwhile some day, but today it appears that, at least in Tom's tests, an X2 3800+ (2.0 ghz) can easily be slower than a single core 3800+ (2.4 ghz).

On the other hand, I will take Mccoyness' suggestion and look at the Opterons. I really don't know much about them.

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 1:07 am

frugal_guy wrote:About the only thing I use Windows for anymore is tax software.

Quicken? For basic home finance/budgetting I migrated to gnucash no problem (including 18 years of historic data from Quicken). It seems to have some advanced accounting options but I cant say I have tried them.

frugal_guy wrote:After dispensing with WinME, is there general agreement that some flavor of nforce 4 is preferred?

I am probably perverse: although the past few years nVidia chipsets have had the features (and market share) edge I have yet to own one. My current objection to NF4 is the heat. How about ULI - you can stay with AGP for now and have an SLI option for later. SATA II is probably indeed a good place to be and is more or less 'free' now (on the mobo), as is Gigabit LAN.

frugal_guy wrote:... I obviously want to go with an MB that will get periodic updates. Are there MB manufacturers that are better at that?

IMHO, No. The mainstream makers tend to release BIOS updates frequently in the first 12 months and then 1 or 2 more in the 6 months after that. The lesser guys (and less popular boards) only seem to get 1 or 2 updates in the first 12 months.

I have been building my own PC for 10 years now and the 'futureproof' debate is a con (IMHO). If you fall for the hype then you essentially need a new mobo every year to 18 months. I have been there, got the t-shirt (9 mobos in 10 years) and now subscribe to the "buy cheap" school: what I save now means should the next killer app arrive it wont be just after I spent heavily on stuff that obsoleted, which has happened to me in the past. I moved to s754 2 months ago: sure you can point out the acronyms I cannot have (SLI, X2, DDR2, SATA II ...). But I did get CnQ & x86_64, and even today I note a s754 3000+ Sempron is £60 compared to a s939 3200+ for £115.

In this marketing driven, disposable society many of us occupy it is easy to convert advertising into personal needs. My personal needs (especially for quiet) mean I have spent more on my PSU or HSF than on my CPU or mobo. Which comes back to - do you really have any needs you can identify now (other than an urge

)?

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:16 am

dood.

if you can pitch for it, dual core. whatever is cheaper is fine. I would go 2.0 512KB over opteron 1.8 however. Speed will be some factor at one point, and cache does less for amd than intel. Opterons are awesome though.

Ram is always purchasable many years later. I can still buy EDO ram.

pentium 90 sux

Windows Me is terrible. Windows XP Home is getting dirt cheap currently, works great. I have pro and it is basically just more crap that I have to turn off. I would guess that for a few years you never will ahve to consider windows Vista, so a xp home or pro purchase is a wise one.

I personally have never bought on MS product, but "kudos" to you for being an honest person.

Dual core helps all apps and all games. it reduces multasking massively, but the apps and the games only somewhat. Dual core allows for never a lockup on a file loading up, never a pause for a new browser window, etc etc. It helps massively for video encoding and for decoding HDTV content, but compiling I think is single threaded, still it speeds it all up as it allows for one to do many things without a bump in speed. All the newest latest programs will be using dual core though, it is a demand that will continue to grow quickly.

HEY. I have a board for you!!!

Asrock dual sata2 board. I thought at first it wasnt for you, now I see it has your cheap assed name all over it. it can work with agp or pci-e, you dont have to upgrade to pci-e for a while and just slap your MX nvidia on there. Also, it has a connector for an M2 socket expansion so you never have to get a new mobo either.

(hey, im cheap too, just not windows Me cheap though, thats crazy

)

Fat_bloater_dave · Post by **Fat_bloater_dave** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 3:05 am

Hmm seems like you have allot of options. As always it just seems to be how much money you are willing to spend. And what is really worth it for the money you are spending and what you plan to do with your computer.

yes the faster the processor you get the faster things are going to work, but I personally don’t mind waiting a couple of extra seconds or even mins to save a few hundred $.

You could get a 1GHz processor 5 years ago and that still runs windows XP and 90% of the programs you want to use.

With the difference between 64 3200+/3800+ Overclocking will help there, I don’t know weather you had tried it before I never had until I got my Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice) and clocked it up to 3800+ without increasing the voltage and there is no increase in temp either it just takes 15 minuets and you have saved yourself $150. Just a thought.

kamina · Post by **kamina** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 3:39 am

I don't think there will be alot of processors sold in the future which are not dualcore. With this in mind I would definatly make sure the computer I have contains one if I was planning on keeping it for 5 years.

What was the "basic" processor sold 5 years ago? I guess the top of the line processor was a P3 600 or 800, which would actually still be pretty usefull. A P3 400 on the other hand would be noticably slower. The differance between a dualcore and singlecore will be even more aparent in the future (cause multithreaded apps will become more and more common).

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:11 am

yes, I concur. Anything besides a dual core for someoen who won't upgrade in a year is a waste of money.

I heard the word speed from frugal. This is an errored way of thinking. There has not been a speed upgrade since 2 years ago in either intel or amd. 3.4 ghz is basically the top end for intel, 3.6 does exist and overheats and burns itself out. Amd has been putting out 2.4ghz for a long time, 2.8 is their top end and has trouble with 3.0 ghz. the difference between 2.4 and 2.6 is actually small performance wise, the price difference is huge though.
Both companies have given up speed and therefore speed is not an ugprade, dual core is. When it is properly programmed, dual core will run things faster than a single core. 7 processor ps3 from sony, 3 core or whatever from xbox360... etc.

if i were him i would buy a 3000 939 and then get a dual core if he will upgrade in a year.

Stjopatron · Post by **Stjopatron** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 1:13 pm

My previous system, an Iwill motherboard with AMD 300 Mhz, lasted me 5 years until this summer. He still runs fine, but having income this year I turned callously capitalistic and replaced him by a new computer based on the Asus A8N-E. I am excepting it to last me 7 years during which time I will upgrade processor, RAM and graphics card. I choose A8N-E because of its plentifullness of slots and connectors and stable reputation. Don't worry to much about that screaming NF4 cooler, a long thread here on SPCR shows how to deal with it.

quikkie · Post by **quikkie** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:43 pm

If gentoos emerge allows you to specify the number of simultaneous compilations then you could increase your emerge speed by a large margin - at least 50% and possibly more for the same speed of processor.

Also it seems that you are getting confused between the X2-3800 (Manchester core) and the amd64 3800 (Venice core), the former runs at 2GHz and the later (as you already know) runs at 2.4GHz, this means that any single threaded app (i.e. the majority available today) will run a lot quicker on the venice core, because the app isn't coded to take advantage of the second core in the X2 and also because the manchester core isn't that different from the Venice core, it becomes a race of the GHz.

-Quikkie

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:53 pm

I was under the impression that compiling could be multithreaded.

quikkie · Post by **quikkie** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:58 pm

mathias wrote:I was under the impression that compiling could be multithreaded.

Don't quote me

but I'm not sure that gcc is multithreaded, however the make file can process multiple components as long as they aren't dependant on each other.

-Quikkie

tjpark1111 · Post by **tjpark1111** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 3:22 pm

i just have a quick comment. You have a tight budget, and you really don't need to upgrade right now, but you just want to. Is there anyway you can hold your desire until 2006 or something like that?

stupid · Post by **stupid** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 7:20 pm

Alot of people have already given their opinion, but I'll add in my 2 cents as well.

I am building a PC on the cheap for a friend who has a new born baby (good news), but his computer just died (bad news) so money is a bit tight. Basically the PSU died, but it didn't want to go into the afterlife by itself so it took the motherboard, and everything connected to it, (except the hard drives, that's a relief) as well. I told him to look out for those Dell sale, but he hates Dell. Oh well...

Anywaste, while dual core is the wave of the future, I think a single core CPU like the A64 3500+ is a big boost over his Athlon XP 1400+. Will a dual core feel "silkier" than a single core while multi-tasking? Yes. But since he never experienced dual core, he just will not know what he is missing. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. This also shaves over $100 from the total cost; the A64 3500+ is about $201.

He is not a big PC gamer, that's what his PS2 and Xbox are for, so I recommended the a motherboard with integrated video. The board I'm currently considering for him is the MSI K8NGM2-FID which has the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 as the graphics card. It also has a bracket for TV-Out and component out (I think) so he can hook it up to the TV if he wants. I think this motherboard is a nice little package because of the integrated video and sound combination all for about $85. I'm almost positive the Geforce 6150 will blow away his old Radeon 7000 which is dead anyway. It's a micro-ATX as well.

Memory is cheap so I'm sure I can get 512MB of CAS 2.5 RAM for less than $60.

PSU - Well he lucked out, I am giving him the smaller of my two spare PSU that I have boxed away. It's an Enermax Whisper 350W, more than enough to power the average PC. This will be my "baby gift."

So there you have it, a new PC for my friend that is powerful (at least for him), inexpensive, and upgradeable (future proof) over the next few years. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the CPU uses very little electricity, about 9W idle and 33W underload, at least according to an article I read last month at AMDboard.com.

Let's review the cost:

AMD A64 3500+ $201
MSI K8NGM2-FID motherboard $85
512MB RAM $60 (if not less)
350W PSU Freebie

Total Cost excluding shipping and my $1 billion dollar consulting fee is $346 or less.

frugal_guy · Post by **frugal_guy** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 8:21 pm

dukla2000 wrote: Quicken? For basic home finance/budgetting I migrated to gnucash no problem (including 18 years of historic data from Quicken). It seems to have some advanced accounting options but I cant say I have tried them.

Actually, I have Quicken 2001 running under Wine on Gentoo. I tried migrating my years of data to gnucash but it was just too ugly. I'm thinking about trying KMyMoney. It seems to be more active than gnucash these days. By tax software, I meant H&R Block TaxCut. I can't get it to run under Wine.

dukla2000 wrote:How about ULI - you can stay with AGP for now and have an SLI option for later.

There are some ULI boards that look interesting, such as the AsRock dual sata board that ~El~Jefe~ mentioned. Unfortunately, I'm not sure about the level of linux support for ULI and ULI is kind of up in the air right now since Nvidia just bought them.

~El~Jefe~ wrote:Windows Me is terrible. Windows XP Home is getting dirt cheap currently, works great.

I don't see my son's XP Home box crashing any less frequently tnan my WinME box did. Of course he does stress it a bit.
I guess dirt cheap is about $90-$100 these days. For that you can buy a fairly nice Seasonic power supply.

~El~Jefe~ wrote:I personally have never bought on MS product, but "kudos" to you for being an honest person.

I fear that I spent too many years developing software for sale to be personally tempted to cheat, but as I've gotten older I've gotten a bit less judgemental about people who see things differently.

Fat_bloater_dave wrote:You could get a 1GHz processor 5 years ago and that still runs windows XP and 90% of the programs you want to use.

Yep, that's pretty much what I did. Note that 1Ghz was not a low performance processor back then. My definition of frugal includes spending extra for extra value. For instance, I bought a Toyota Prius in 2001. With no dealer markup allowed and big tax rebates and credits, it cost me about $16.5K. It paid off well this year.

Fat_bloater_dave wrote:With the difference between 64 3200+/3800+ Overclocking will help there

I read a review yesterday that found the 3200+ and 3500+ both topping out at about 2.7Ghz. I doubt that I'll get that aggressive, but I probably will try a little overclocking.

kamina wrote:I don't think there will be alot of processors sold in the future which are not dualcore. With this in mind I would definatly make sure the computer I have contains one if I was planning on keeping it for 5 years.

My best guess is that most applications will not do a good job with multithreading any time soon. That leaves the multitasking through the operating system to show the benefits of multiple cores. I certainly run multiple applications at once, and gentoo ebuilds would benefit from multiple cores. Still, if you compare 2 processors at the same price, one single core and one dual core, most of the applications I expect to run will run slower on the dual core because , at the same price point, the dual core processor would have a much slower clock speed.
I certainly want to have a system that will be able to run dual core processors, but I'm not sure it makes sense to buy one just yet. I'm still undecided on this.

~El~Jefe~ wrote:I heard the word speed from frugal. This is an errored way of thinking.

Sorry if I was unclear. What I meant to say was processing power. CPUs today do have about three times the processing power of my Athlon 1 Ghz.

Stjopatron wrote:I choose A8N-E because of its plentifullness of slots and connectors and stable reputation.

It does look good, now that you mention it.

quikkie wrote:Also it seems that you are getting confused between the X2-3800 (Manchester core) and the amd64 3800 (Venice core), the former runs at 2GHz and the later (as you already know) runs at 2.4GHz, this means that any single threaded app (i.e. the majority available today) will run a lot quicker on the venice core, because the app isn't coded to take advantage of the second core in the X2 and also because the manchester core isn't that different from the Venice core, it becomes a race of the GHz

This is pretty much what I was trying to say, but you've made it much more clear. Thanks!

tjpark1111 wrote:i just have a quick comment. You have a tight budget, and you really don't need to upgrade right now, but you just want to. Is there anyway you can hold your desire until 2006 or something like that?

Now why did you have to say that right when I'm starting to loosen the shackles of fiscal responsibility?

It might be better to wait a year, but I've been telling myself that for a couple years now.

stupid wrote:The board I'm currently considering for him is the MSI K8NGM2-FID which has the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 as the graphics card.

I agree that the GeForce 6150 boards look nice, but I've been reading about some frustrating problems they are having on Linux.
BTW: Your analysis of the system you're putting together for you friend is anything but "stupid".

Here are my preliminary criteria at this point:

Passive or quiet chip set cooling with a minimum of alterations.
Socket 939 is required
One PCI-e 16x slot is required. SLI is acceptable if necessary
Two PATA channels are required for legacy devices
Two or more SATA channels are required. SATA II is preferred
Four DDR slots are required. Well spaced for cooling is preferred
Linux support is required. WinME support is not
A popular board is preferred since it is more likely to be well tested by other users and have a critical mass for resolving issues.
Front accessible USB ports are required
Front accessible audio ports are required
Front accessible firewire ports are nice
What have I missed?

Sorry about the long post. I try to do a better job of keeping up next time.

computergeek22 · Post by **computergeek22** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 8:54 pm

What I believe is the best price performance ratio is the following setup:

Processor : Opteron 165 (@ monarchcomputers.com) ~$320 shipped (Dual Core - If you even remotely multitask, these babies make your computer feel so much faster and these are the wave of the future. In addition, if you are an overclocker, the opterons overclock extremely well.)
Motherboard: A8R-MVP ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset (use froogle) guestimation ~ $130 shipped
Memory: Cheap 2GB kit for $180, if you don't need the extra gig; get a dual channel 1Gb kit for ~120-140
Video Card: 6800GS ~$214(@monarchcomputers.com) shipped

These are the main four components to upgrade if one is looking for an upgrade. Of course a HD upgrade is also a factor, I personally would recommend a new 160GB Sata II hd ~$100 shipped.

In total your upgrade would be approximately 950 bucks with 2 gigs and a nice large Sata II HD.

BTW, I would like to commend you on your sensible attitude towards your upgrade.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 9:22 pm

yes the best performer for price is a 6800 GS. has all the shaders and technology and coolness of life. other than that, an x800XL has LESS power and heat output than a 9800 Pro has, that's a nice sweet spot too. Has nice 2d normally as well, I dont know of nvidia 6800gs 's image quality comparitively yet.

the 165 opteron would last him about 2 years as a competitive solution and probably take him 4 years just about for being decent with modern software.

with 8 cores comming out in a year and a half, one has to consider the massive extent of computer power in a very short while.

picture 8 core dual processor. 16 processors

kamina · Post by **kamina** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:47 am

~El~Jefe~ wrote:
with 8 cores comming out in a year and a half, one has to consider the massive extent of computer power in a very short while.

picture 8 core dual processor. 16 processors

8core processors are allready out. We are shortly receiving some small Sun rack servers with 1 processor each. The processors have 8 cores, each core runs 4 threads (showing to the operating system as 32 processors).

Nice part is, that they don't even use alot of power.

matva · Post by **matva** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 1:19 am

buy a evga mobo, they have lifetime warranties

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:42 am

wow. 8 cores are out. 4 threads a piece?????????????????

holy crapola.

Won't be seeing lag on that machine!

Evga lifetime warranty. thats awesome, good idea!

warriorpoet · Post by **warriorpoet** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:56 pm

My $.02

or how I would spend your money

Mobo: ABit AN8 Ultra: SATA II, socket 939, NF4 Ultra, PCI-e, silent heatpiped northbridge, stable and highly overclockable (can you tell I love mine?) $116
CPU: single core- Opteron 146 (2.0GHz, 10x mult., 1Mb L2 cache) $175, or dual-core- Athlon 64 x2 3800+ (2.0GHz, 10x mult., 512 + 512Kb L2 cache) $322
Video: Sapphire Radeon x1300PRO $104
RAM: 2Gb G.Skill $180, 1Gb Corsair ValueSelect $75
Case/PSU: Antec P150 $150
Cooling: Scythe SCNJ-1000 CPU cooling $48, Zalman vf700cu VGA cooling $28, 2x 120mm Yate Loons $14 +shipping

Add in your existing HDD and optical drives and any combination of the above should give you an outstanding computer for your needs. If it were me, though, I'd go dual core. If you do, and you are serious about overclocking, definitely move up to the Opteron 170; it's a bit more, but people are getting amazing overclocks (2.8 GHz+ on air).

A motherboard to last 4-5 years

A motherboard to last 4-5 years

Re: A motherboard to last 4-5 years