Why do Socket 939 Boards suck so much?

[Gilbo]

I'd like to see boards with an 8+8 split where the second 8x slot is removed from the graphics side of things and made available for high end raid cards etc. Currently I'm only aware of one PCI-e Raid card and one motherboard that allows the use of it in the second SLI slot most other boards have issues in detaching the second 8x slot for other than graphics card use.

Ted, could you be more specific about which boards are having issues? I would also like to know the specific nature of the issues. As far as I know any 8x card, including RAID cards, should work in those ports, and I haven't heard anything specific to the contrary. Everyone who actually has one that I've heard of has reported that it's working.


N.B. Linux support isn't there yet for the Areca cards, but that appears to be entirely a software issue not a flaw with PCIe 8x implementation.

 

[i]

Hi Ted !

 

[Mercutio]

Never going back to VIA after Nforce 2 Ultra 400GB (Epox 8rda6+pro)
All previous boards I had in recent years were VIA based and bugs and glitches were so common. The later nforce chipsets simply work as they should out of the box.

OK, see, those are fightin' words. Via stuff has been wonderful for years and years and years. I loved the MVP-based socket 7 boards and it's never been bad since. I *can* remember when Via wasn't worth the effort, but that was a looonnng time ago. The only Via issue I've had in the last 10 years has been with Creative Labs sound cards... and I'm inclined to believe the fault is Creative's.
On the other hand, Via-based boards, just like Intel's, can be dealt with using a single system image - I can load the disk image I use on a K8M800-based Athlon 64 on a 7 year old Apollo Pro-based PII and it'll work.
I admit that using Via leads to a slight penalty in performance. I'm prepared to accept that, since Via is normally an early adopter of new technology and since Via's hardware is normally quite economical and reliable.

On the other hand, I've found the nforce chipsets to be nothing but a pain in my ass. The IDE drivers suck more than a starving whore in a chocolate dick factory, and I have regular problems related to volume control on Soundstorm-enabled boards that I can only attirbute to a problem between DirectX and the sound driver. nforce boards are picky about memory, and I even have problems with USB on both of the nforce-based machines that I personally own (both the Asus boards I have from time to time tell me that my USB2 devices are not high speed, even though they are).
Bleh.

PCI-e is really frustrating the hell out of me. I want to see mobo's and add on cards that utilise the potential bandwidth other than for silly 8x8 spilt SLI graphic cards.

Even a 1x slot is considerably faster than PCI. I'd be happy if I could slide a 6 channel SATA controller in a 1x slot, since that would be just enough to saturate the bus. Another 1x lane for a gigabit NIC and I'm having a hard time thinking what else I would do with PCI-express slots. HD video capture, maybe, but even that is doable on regular PCI.

NB fans don't bother me these days as the rest of my system has so much active cooling that one more fan is not noticeable. Easily replaced anyway with a cheap Zalman heatsink if its a bother.

Since I sell far more machines than I build for myself, another moving part is just an annoyance. When I buy boards with active NB cooling, I pull the northbridge fan off entirely and stick in an 80mm case fan instead. At least I can count on the big guy lasting longer than six months. I *do not* want someone calling me to service a PC just because the cheap-ass fan on their northbridge died.
I also don't want to stock replacement coolers. What a waste.

 

[Santilli]

Hi Mercutio

Any suggestions on passive cooling for that chipset?

Sincerely

Greg

 

[Santilli]

Hi Mercutio

Any suggestions on passive cooling for that chipset?

Sincerely

Greg

 

[Mercutio]

I won't buy a board that uses a fan on the northbridge. sometimes I end up with them, but not by choice.

 

[Santilli]

I think it's too late for that one. Anyway, Just picked up an Antec P160, and a Seasonic 400w.

I just like the size on the Antec case, and, the 120mm fan. Price was good, and so was the Seasonic. They didn't have a bigger power supply, made by Seasonic.

Been wrestling with Intervideo DVD Maker 2 all day, and, I have some how managed to accomplish a goal or two.

See how the new cable works...

s

 

[Groltz]

...The IDE drivers suck more than...(etc).

Merc, you're going to give our resident naughty-word warden fits using phrases like that.

 

[Santilli]

(both the Asus boards I have from time to time tell me that my USB2 devices are not high speed, even though they are).
Bleh.

I think we have the reason... :wink:

s

 

[Ted]

Ted, could you be more specific about which boards are having issues? I would also like to know the specific nature of the issues. As far as I know any 8x card, including RAID cards, should work in those ports, and I haven't heard anything specific to the contrary. Everyone who actually has one that I've heard of has reported that it's working.

N.B. Linux support isn't there yet for the Areca cards, but that appears to be entirely a software issue not a flaw with PCIe 8x implementation.

My appologies, In my haste I phrased that statement very poorly and it was obviously taken to mean something other than what I intended.

I meant 'possible issues' and I was generalising from what I have read so far in my travels.

It seems most mobo manufacturers customer service droids have been less than helpful with questions along the lines of "Can I run a PCI-e based raid card in the second SLI slot?" A typical response being along the lines of" We can't guaranteee it will work as the second slot is intended for a graphics card". Or, "Don't use SLI mode unless you have have 2 SLI cable video cards" etc.

Either total apathy, discouragement, or 'suck it and see' is generally the response you'll get.

Trouble is the way SLI capable boards are generally set up is that unless you're in SLI mode you dont get the 8+8 split but rather a 16+1 or 16+2 or such.

Personally, I want to see mobos that are setup in a dedicated and independant 8+8 or 4+4+8 split and targeted/promoted towards consumers other than game and frame rate junkies that want motherboards for purposes other than running expensive dual video cards. I dont play games on a PC myself and see a 8+8 split both intended towards video use as a damn waste and I'm sure I'm not alone.

 

[Ted]

OK, see, those are fightin' words.

Didn't intend to touch a nerve

Via stuff has been wonderful for years and years and years. I loved the MVP-based socket 7 boards and it's never been bad since. I *can* remember when Via wasn't worth the effort, but that was a looonnng time ago. The only Via issue I've had in the last 10 years has been with Creative Labs sound cards... and I'm inclined to believe the fault is Creative's.

I migrated through early Intel stuff both CPU and chipset into C64's and Amstrad CPC's and then Amiga's then got back into PC's with Cyrix and AMD CPU's utilising both SIS and VIA chipsets. In the early days it was fun trying to solve problems and learn along the way. As I grew older It became largely a frustrating and time consuming problem in constantly sorting out glitches and bugs, trying to chase up missing performance etc etc.

I think all of us unwittingly become used to and actually expect problems with a motherboard thinking it is quite normal and accepted for manufacturers to release bug ridden glitchy motherboards that seldom work as advertised with everything enabled. But god its so good when you get something that actually works properly

The last 2 VIA based boards I owned.. Asus A7V-333, Abit VA10 were both sterling examples of past experience with VIA based boards...

Poor memory performance
Poor IDE performance
Poor CPU benchmarks in comparison to.. well everything else!!!
Perpetual driver issues
Conflicts between own onboard peripherals
Total and random lockups. Might be good for days and then bang (Usually once I've dialed up the net. More money wasted)
BSODS and more BSODS

In the case of the Asus A7V333 I lost count of how many times I flashed the bios to the latest and greatest to fix bugs and then the updates stopped and a lot of problems remained.

Firewire could never be enabled without causing problems.

Onboard raid controller was a joke with constant timeouts and low write index warnings.

Why did I buy the very, very expensive full featured board for again?? Oh yeah, for Raid and Firewire and they're both useless. :evil:

I eventually gave up on ever trying to get the onboard raid controller to perform even moderately adequately (Promise can go jump before I buy their products again or anything utilising them and shame Asus for never working on the problem yourselves)

I found a cheap S/H Sil608 based IDE card even performed better than the onboard IDE controller and I could use 4 devices on it. :roll:

List goes on. I've tried to forget half the grief that overpriced POS gave me over the 3 years I owned it and then I was stupid enough to buy another VIA based board for the kids.

ABIT VA10

Often won't shut down.
Frequently won't power up unless you reset bios and leave for half an hour or switch off and on until it gets the hint.
System temps reported wrong.
Total and random lockups (good for days and then bang)
Only one bios update ever provided by ABIT (didn't fix wrongly reported temps or lockups)
Crash happy with games. Buy an AGP based card and still crash happy with games. Give me some peace kids!!! I'm too busy to sort it out now!!!!!

Then I started buying Nforce 2 boards and built systems for family members and myself.

Soltek 75FRN2 (no problems)
Soltec NV400-L64 (no problems)
Gigabyte 7N400-L (CPU temps reported too high otherwise no problems)
Epox 8RDA6+Pro (no problems excellent fully featured board and EVERYTHING WORKS)

Think I'm on a roll here

On the other hand, Via-based boards, just like Intel's, can be dealt with using a single system image - I can load the disk image I use on a K8M800-based Athlon 64 on a 7 year old Apollo Pro-based PII and it'll work.
I admit that using Via leads to a slight penalty in performance. I'm prepared to accept that, since Via is normally an early adopter of new technology and since Via's hardware is normally quite economical and reliable.

I s'pose we've both been lucky or unfortunate in our choices but by and large you'll see more complaints about VIA products than nvidia. They've done a pretty good job in a small amount of time.

On the other hand, I've found the nforce chipsets to be nothing but a pain in my ass. The IDE drivers suck more than a starving whore in a chocolate dick factory, and I have regular problems related to volume control on Soundstorm-enabled boards that I can only attirbute to a problem between DirectX and the sound driver. nforce boards are picky about memory, and I even have problems with USB on both of the nforce-based machines that I personally own (both the Asus boards I have from time to time tell me that my USB2 devices are not high speed, even though they are).
Bleh.

I'm aware that nforce had some USB problems with a certain chipset in USB drive boxes but other than that I don't recall reading about inherent problems with USB on nforce. I run two printers, mouse, various card readers etc off USB and never had a problem. Perhaps your issue is with Asus and their damn disregard for customer support and fixing their buggy overpriced shite.

I've always just used any old generic mem on nforce boards I've built and never had issues.

Had problems with IDE drivers and reverted back to Windows drivers. Went through same BS with VIA. Best to use what windows installs by default me thinks and leave alone if it aint broke.

Re Soundstorm.. When I was scouring the net yesterday on that new soundcard I found references to the soundstorm problem in same threads. I can't recall whether someone had a fix but they may have. I never had soundstorm myself so can't comment other than quite a few people missed the implementaion in later chipsets so it can't of been all bad.

Even a 1x slot is considerably faster than PCI. I'd be happy if I could slide a 6 channel SATA controller in a 1x slot, since that would be just enough to saturate the bus. Another 1x lane for a gigabit NIC and I'm having a hard time thinking what else I would do with PCI-express slots. HD video capture, maybe, but even that is doable on regular PCI.

Do they even make a raid card that fits in a 1x slot yet?

Well I suppose the aggrate of whats left is better being made available in one vessel then tied up amongst many less useful ones. With so many onboard devices these days it's hard to find uses for all the slots provided.

Since I sell far more machines than I build for myself, another moving part is just an annoyance. When I buy boards with active NB cooling, I pull the northbridge fan off entirely and stick in an 80mm case fan instead. At least I can count on the big guy lasting longer than six months. I *do not* want someone calling me to service a PC just because the cheap-ass fan on their northbridge died.
I also don't want to stock replacement coolers. What a waste.

I know what you mean. Half the time the damn NB fans are added for no other reason than to appeal to those that are intent on ricing up the looks of the inside of their case.

Still from my perspective where I'm responsible and capable of the upkeep of my own machines they don't bother me. The ones I have had that have gone noisy I've taken apart and cleaned and oiled etc and they've been resurrected and I've never had one actually fail yet!. I've had more problems with CPU fans than those little things on NB chipsets and graphics cards etc. If I was building a HTPC or after something I needed really quiet I would replace it.

 

[time]

On the other hand, Via-based boards, just like Intel's, can be dealt with using a single system image - I can load the disk image I use on a K8M800-based Athlon 64 on a 7 year old Apollo Pro-based PII and it'll work.

Any reason you can't do the same with the nForce drivers (possibly excluding nForce4)?

The IDE drivers suck more than a starving whore in a chocolate dick factory.

The accelerated nForce2 IDE driver had some compatibility problems in early 2003. AFAIK, subsequent drivers have been fine. In fact, once Ahead issued an update for their software in mid 2003, I happily used the old driver that nVidia withdrew.

... I have regular problems related to volume control on Soundstorm-enabled boards that I can only attirbute to a problem between DirectX and the sound driver.

I'm typing this on a SoundStorm-equipped PC, but have no idea what you're talking about.

nforce boards are picky about memory

I remember having troubles back in 2003 with one particular vendor. Haven't had any issues since, and obviously you're not likely to with nForce 3/4. Admittedly, I'm always choosy with RAM.

 

[Mercutio]

Any reason you can't do the same with the nForce drivers (possibly excluding nForce4)?

I don't know, but my test image between an nforce 220 and nforce2 didn't work on the hardware I have. I'm dismissive of nvidia in the first place. It did not merit additional investigation. Via works. Intel works. For that matter, SiS works.

The accelerated nForce2 IDE driver had some compatibility problems in early 2003. AFAIK, subsequent drivers have been fine.

OK, here's where I'm telling you that they don't work. I can load the nforce IDE drivers on my HTserver and have a bluescreen ten minutes later. Any version you'd care for me to try? They all do it.

Via's IDE implementation is slow, but it doesn't crash my machines.

I'm typing this on a SoundStorm-equipped PC, but have no idea what you're talking about.

Do you actually have that PC connected to a Dolby digital-equipped receiver through a digital transport? Are you sure you actually have soundstorm? I think Asus is the only vendor that fully implemented it.

Anyway, I mentioned this particular bit of weirdness in the Tech Support forum about six months ago. Basically for reasons that I cannot fully identify, my nforce-based machines (both of them) periodically lose about 80% of their amplification, meaning I need to turn up my receivers to levels that would cause permanent hearing loss on any of the other channels (e.g. I usually listen to music at a setting about about 30, DVDs at about 40... and I'd have to turn it up to 88 or so to get sound that's audible). No amount of fiddling with volume controls, nor cabling nor changing settings on the receiver, fixes this. It's a wipe/reload type deal. The only thing I can determine is that these problems seem to correspond to minor warnings when I run directX.

I remember having troubles back in 2003 with one particular vendor. Haven't had any issues since, and obviously you're not likely to with nForce 3/4. Admittedly, I'm always choosy with RAM.

My 220D didn't like Crucial or Viking-branded RAM. It works with Mushkin and Corair. My Nforce2 didn't like Crucial or Mushkin, but it's fine with crappy Elixr and PNY, and can handle up to one (but not two!) Corsair module as long as there's no other memory installed. WTF is that?

 

[sechs]

The accelerated nForce2 IDE driver had some compatibility problems in early 2003. AFAIK, subsequent drivers have been fine.

OK, here's where I'm telling you that they don't work. I can load the nforce IDE drivers on my HTserver and have a bluescreen ten minutes later. Any version you'd care for me to try? They all do it.

Well, there's your problem. What are you doing loading nForce ATA drivers on your machine? Window's built-in ones work just fine, thank you.

 

[Mercutio]

Supposedly, when they aren't crashing my computer, they are supposed to be considerably faster. Plus sometimes I install an update and forget to uncheck the box for the IDE driver.

 

[time]

OK, here's where I'm telling you that they don't work. I can load the nforce IDE drivers on my HTserver and have a bluescreen ten minutes later. Any version you'd care for me to try? They all do it.

Apart from the early version 2.03 I mentioned, I've never had occasion to check the version - they just worked. A quick look on an nForce2 machine shows a date of 2003.09.22. On the nForce3 machine in front of me it says 2004.06.03. The former is PATA and the latter SATA.

Perhaps your extensive use of the feature set or combination of components causes more problems? I'm just trying to point out that not everyone has that experience.

Do you actually have that PC connected to a Dolby digital-equipped receiver through a digital transport? Are you sure you actually have soundstorm? I think Asus is the only vendor that fully implemented it.

Yes, it is an Asus, and yes, the software utility says "SoundStorm". I realize you are using far more of the capabilities than I am, and that may well have something to do with it.

My 220D didn't like Crucial or Viking-branded RAM. It works with Mushkin and Corair. My Nforce2 didn't like Crucial or Mushkin, but it's fine with crappy Elixr and PNY, and can handle up to one (but not two!) Corsair module as long as there's no other memory installed. WTF is that?

AFAIK, it's actually a BIOS-RAM compatibility issue rather than a chipset problem. For example, I couldn't get one brand of RAM to work at rated speed in an Epox nForce2, but it was just fine in MSI products. I believe that in general, RAM that reported faster timings through SPD caused more problems - or something like that.

 

[sechs]

Supposedly, when they aren't crashing my computer, they are supposed to be considerably faster.

Yes. Considerably faster at messing up your computer.

 

[Santilli]

Why me?

K8NSC-939

Turns out it has a faulty ATA channel. Why me?

ATA and I seem to be allergic.

Plus, since it's going to have 64 bit windows, all my scsi cards don't work, so I either buy a new one, or RMA the motherboard.

Maybe I can get them to ship a new one, and credit for the old...

Go with the ultra board...

s

 

[Santilli]

Or does anyone know of a decent ATA PCI card?

s

 

[Buck]

Outside of my usual business-class machines that I build, I'm putting together a home machine that needs a few of the extra bells and whistles for media stuff and some games. They're also interested in a little . . . what's the new phrase now, Bling-Bling? So, I went with an Antec Sonata case, the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 board, 512MB of memory, Athlon 64 3200+, Gigabyte GV-NX66256DP (nVidia 6600) video card, Samsung SP2004C, and then the other items (peripherals and such). Nice system. My favorite part about this whole setup is that it's quiet and fast!

This would've been a good system for you GS.

 

[Santilli]

Outside of my usual business-class machines that I build, I'm putting together a home machine that needs a few of the extra bells and whistles for media stuff and some games. They're also interested in a little . . . what's the new phrase now, Bling-Bling? So, I went with an Antec Sonata case, the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 board, 512MB of memory, Athlon 64 3200+, Gigabyte GV-NX66256DP (nVidia 6600) video card, Samsung SP2004C, and then the other items (peripherals and such). Nice system. My favorite part about this whole setup is that it's quiet and fast!

This would've been a good system for you GS.

Hi Buck:
I looked at your recommendation, but it's a PCI-E board, and I have an ATI 700 XL with AGP8X I wanted to use in this box.

Other then that, I think the features are nearly identical, so I have the GA-K8NSCC-939 sitting here, and, it may not have a bad motherboard ATA channel, after all. We'll see.
Could just be a Windows 64 bit problem with the chipset, or fubar by installer.

The Athlon 939 pin 3000+ is 130 around here. The 3200+ is 180 or more.
How do you justify, or does AMD, a near 40% price jump for a jump from 1.8 ghz to 2.0 ghz? That's a 10% processor increase.

SO, I went with the 3000+, and a gig of ram. I have the video card laying around, but that card (Gigabyte GV-NX66256DP (nVidia 6600)) looks like a great value, in PCI-E, and I've heard it's pretty much the value king in video cards right now. Maybe when I get the motherboard back, I'll use that recommendation.

I have scsi hard drives coming out my ears, but not scsi cards. I have one dual channel raid card I could use, either in this box or the next one,
4 X 15.3 's at 18 gigs, one 18 gig Cheetah 10k and two 36 gig Cheetah 15.4's, which could really go in this Xeon rig, since they are SCA drives, but I have converters for both, and they make very nice boot drives on older systems with the converter.

I really like the gigabyte installation disk, smooth, easy, and with everything I need.

I looked at the Sonata Case, and it's very nice, but small. The P 160 is on sale around here, for about 120 dollars, and it's nice as well, also very quiet.
The 120mm big fans seem to move air, but not be noisy, if you get the right fan.

Likewise, using a Vantec 92mm fan on a Swiftech Mc4300 IIRC heatsink.


If I ever use an ATA drive that I don't buy from Costco, it will be the Samsungs.

s

 

[Santilli]

Buck,
I should have said, your recommendations were the first ones that I looked at doing this box.

Tony also seems to love gigabyte.

s

 

[Buck]

Greg,

That jump in CPU price could also be caused by two different core sizes, one being the older 130nm core and the other the newer 90nm core. If I was looking for a newer chipset based AGP motherboard, I would probably have skipped the nForce3 and used the VIA K8T800 Pro chipset, like the Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939. That would be more equivelant to the nForce4 board in my opinion.

Thanks for taking my suggestions into consideration, and sorry to read about the problems your system is giving you.

PS: I use the Vantec Stealth fans for the chassis. The 120mm are great with the Sonata.

 

[Santilli]

I'm currently planning on building a new box for my girlfriend.

The P2 400 mhz has a quantum LM to boot from, 384 mb of ram, P 550 matrox graphic card, and it's silent.

I was planning on using the Sonata case, since it's small and sort of bling-bling, and cheap, the P550 should be fine for what she does,
the power supply that comes with the Sonata, The GA-K8NSC-939 since I already have it. I have a NEC 3520 DVD/writer, I could put in my scsi 2906, and run the plextor DVD player, so in a pinch, she could copy DVD's.

I'd also use Windows 2000, since this is her OS of choice, and I have a bunch of copies around here.

I'm still gun shy about VIA, from the last Soyo motherboard I used. Still, things change, and if I didn't have the board already, I'd have a look at it.

Actually, any new machines after this one would be based on PCI-X and Nvidia 4 motherboards.

Seems Gigabyte doesn't make Nforce4 motherboards with AGP, or I couldn't find them.

My favorite shop seems to have lost it's heart, and competency. I'm afraid when I send this board in, it's going to work fine with Windows XP 64...

I guess I could take it to another shop, like Fry's, buy the Sonata there, and have them test it with Windows XP pro to make sure.

We'll see.

S

 

[ddrueding]

Just going with the general theme of 939 boards; I'm really in love with the [urlhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128279]Gigabyte GA-K8NU-SLI[/url] nForce4 board. It has a better feature list for enthusiasts than any I've seen. I've now built 5 servers and 4 workstations around this board or it's non-SLI brother. Now that the price difference between the SLI and non is $6, it'll be the SLI from here on out.

My only complaint is that you still need to use a driver CD when installing an OS to a RAID array built on the chipset-native SATA RAID controller; why? Considering that it is chipset-integrated, and installing on standalone drives requires no driver, why does a RAID array require one?

 

[Tannin]

How do you justify, or does AMD, a near 40% price jump for a jump from 1.8 ghz to 2.0 ghz? That's a 10% processor increase.

You justify it by assuming that some fool with more money than brains will demonstrate his lack of brains by giving you quite a lot of his money. Try pricing out the A-64 4000 part. It will give you palpitations of the wallet.

But what would AMD know? They are only youngsters at the price-it-too-high and watch-the-fools-part-with-their-hard-earned-income game. Intel are past masters at the art of extracting money faster and more painlessly from your wallet than your dentist can extract a tooth.

(Mind you, teeth ain't the only thing dentists tend to be good at extracting. They ain't as good at Intel or Microst (obligatory typo) yet, but they manage quite nicely just the same.)

 

[ddrueding]

Yep, it is incredibly hard to justify the 3500+ part over the 3200+. Unless overclocking is the goal (needing the higher multiplier).

 

[Santilli]

How do you justify, or does AMD, a near 40% price jump for a jump from 1.8 ghz to 2.0 ghz? That's a 10% processor increase.

You justify it by assuming that some fool with more money than brains will demonstrate his lack of brains by giving you quite a lot of his money. Try pricing out the A-64 4000 part. It will give you palpitations of the wallet.

But what would AMD know? They are only youngsters at the price-it-too-high and watch-the-fools-part-with-their-hard-earned-income game. Intel are past masters at the art of extracting money faster and more painlessly from your wallet than your dentist can extract a tooth.

(Mind you, teeth ain't the only thing dentists tend to be good at extracting. They ain't as good at Intel or Microst (obligatory typo) yet, but they manage quite nicely just the same.)

Sad part is they seem to be following Intel's pricing structure, before AMD came into existence.

s

 

[Buck]

How do you justify, or does AMD, a near 40% price jump for a jump from 1.8 ghz to 2.0 ghz? That's a 10% processor increase.

You justify it by assuming that some fool with more money than brains will demonstrate his lack of brains by giving you quite a lot of his money. Try pricing out the A-64 4000 part. It will give you palpitations of the wallet.

But what would AMD know? They are only youngsters at the price-it-too-high and watch-the-fools-part-with-their-hard-earned-income game. Intel are past masters at the art of extracting money faster and more painlessly from your wallet than your dentist can extract a tooth.

(Mind you, teeth ain't the only thing dentists tend to be good at extracting. They ain't as good at Intel or Microst (obligatory typo) yet, but they manage quite nicely just the same.)

It's like buying any s939 CPU when a Sempron provides plenty of headroom for the user.

 

[Santilli]

You may have a point. I have a CF-51 laptop, and the processor stayed at about 600MHz doing all my regular computer functions, for surfing etc.

I had to open every program I use to get the processor to finally kick up to 1.6 ghz. WMP and my DVD player, etc.

Now it runs at proper speed, or I should say, shows proper speed in system information.

S

 

[Mercutio]

Has anyone used a Radeon Xpress 200-based board yet?
I've spoken to two people in the last week who have said highly positive things about the MSI RS480M2-IL.
It's hard to find people in screwdriver shops willing to say positive things about ATI products, so I'm more than a little curious what the fuss is about.

 

[blakerwry]

ATi makes AMD chipset boards?? :eekers:

 

[Tannin]

It's like buying any s939 CPU when a Sempron provides plenty of headroom for the user.

Just so. The S754 Semprons go like a rat up a drainpipe.

On a given budget, you have a choice: A-64 3000 and a 17 inch monitor, or Sempron 3000 and 19 inch monitor

Not one of the world's more difficult decisions.

 

[Mercutio]

ATi makes AMD chipset boards?? :eekers:

They had a serviceable Socket A chipset that no one really used. They've been making chipsets for AMD stuff for at least three years.

The mystery here is, is the new one actually any good?

 

[Santilli]

Mercutio:
ATI's software is pretty sucky. Not totally awful, but pretty bad, don't you think?

Minimal install solves that, but I'm not sure customers would be jazzed.
That said, the drivers can also suck. Guy telling me my 700XL didn't work, becuase it froze with the windows 64 bit drivers, and I needed a new card, when it ran fine with 32 bit windows, for example...
s

 

[Mercutio]

I think ATI's software is fine.

 

[LiamC]

I have heard that USB is broken on the ATi South Bridge, so you see a lot of ATi/ULi hybrids. ATi are rumoured to be working on updated silicon, but it has been a while which indicates that the problem may be a bit bigger than made out in this article:

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-xpress200/index.x?pg=1

 

[Mercutio]

Looks like my personal winner is the Soltek SL-K890Pro-939. 4 SATA Ports, Gigabit, 3xIDE, 2 PCI slots, digital in- and output via TOSLink, proper Via chipset.

Of course, I understand the current Via 939 chipset is sub-optimal, but I'd still take it over nvidia.

 

[Buck]

Hooley dooley, my disti has mobile chips from AMD:

TMDML37BKX5LD
TMDML40BKX5LD
AMN2800BIX5AR
AMN3200BIX5AR

Those Turion buggers sure are expensive.

 

[Buck]

They also have a special supply of OSA850CEP5AV Opteron chips. Who the heck am I going to sell a $1,300.00 chip to (not to mention 8 of them)? Their Sempron supply is drying up, they only have the 2600 and 2800 left. I hope a new shipment comes in soon, otherwise everyone is going to get a s939 3000+.