Motherboard for X2 4850e

[thejamppa]

I am giving my old X2 4000+ and AMD 690G motherboard for my brother, whose 3200+ barton is showing signs of slow death.

for CPU I will get X2 4850e. Now I have P182 case, which fits Full ATX board and I am kinda fan of Full ATX board. But Gigabytes mAtx seems tempting.

Since in next upgrade I might transfer this new build in HTPC use in living room, so mATX would be beneficial in that.

Full Size Boards:

Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... uctID=2800

Asus M3A-H/HDMI
http://www.asus.com.tw/products.aspx?l1 ... odelmenu=1

Both have nice layout and more than enough space, to even later upgrade my VGA card for bigger one.

mAtx:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... MA78GM-S2H

This is loaded with features and has also nice layout. I can get USB 2.0 card and Soundcard with HD 3450 perfectly in that, but upgrading later for example two slot VGA card would require me to abandon one card. But somehow that mAtx board is very appealing.

Does anyone have experience any of these boards? I have 6 USB devices and my main use besides officer work and net use is watching movies ( DVD and HD content ) and Video content from basic Avi to H264 decoded anime. So yours basic HTPC setup for everyday use in P182 case.

2 USB devices are external HDD's. In some reviews 780G has much better trasnfer rate than old 690G board which is one major benefit for me. Last big back up session too me 8 hours backing data in USB HDD's and I am using quite a lot USB HDD's.

I have 3GB memory in board so I believe any of these boards can use 2x1gb double sided memories + 2x 512mb single sided memory combination?

[seemingly.random]

Check out the 780g review here - the 3450 seems like a negative.

I just ordered the ga-ma78gm-s2h + 65nm 5400 2.8. I'll let you know how things turn out but I'm sure there's someone here that already has one of these who can give you immediate info. Don't have any 512mb sticks to try.

I have the asus 690g and haven't been very happy with it.

Using the antec 3480 with 330 seasonic psu - not as quiet as hoped. I should have purchased about 10 of the antec 3300s for future builds...

[Licaon]

also:

ASRock A780FullDisplayPort

M3N-H/HDMI (mATX)

M3N78-EMH HDMI (ATX)

ECS GF8200A

oh, and i heard that GF8200/8300 hdd controller support is rather missing for Linux ( if it matters to you )

[Thomas]

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H reviews

[loimlo]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813138115
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813138114

I was impressed by Biostar's 690G and 7025 board before. I think Biostar's AM2+ boards are worth mentioning due to excellent boards they have made in AM2 adys.

[Licaon]

ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI Motherboard Review

[Erssa]

This is loaded with features and has also nice layout. I can get USB 2.0 card and Soundcard with HD 3450 perfectly in that, but upgrading later for example two slot VGA card would require me to abandon one card. But somehow that mAtx board is very appealing.

Does anyone have experience any of these boards? I have 6 USB devices and my main use besides officer work and net use is watching movies ( DVD and HD content ) and Video content from basic Avi to H264 decoded anime. So yours basic HTPC setup for everyday use in P182 case.

You shouldn't need USB 2.0 card with Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H. It supports total of 12 USB-ports, 4 rear USB-ports and 8 through brackets. Your case has 2 front usb-ports. So that gives you 6.

Also there's really no need to use HD3450 unless you need it for 4 display support. HD3200 IGP is just as capable as is HD3450 for movies and HD content. Tom's hardware actually overclocked it to 950Mhz and it was faster then HD3450 in gaming benchmarks.

[thejamppa]

GA-MA78GM-S2H seems good deal and go without expansion cards. Some reviews say integrated soundcard on that board is good and definately the IGP is more than enough for my needs. Since I am XP user the Hybrid graphics will do little good for me since its Vista only.