1394b?

[loomis2]

After looking at various nforce4 boards, I noticed the Gigabyte SLI board at under $100. Seeing as it's the only one I found that has 1394b on it I was wondering why this was. It seems like a feature rich board. Is there any reason not to go with this one over say the DFI or Asus boards, other than price?

 

[Wentelteefje]

IEEE-1394b is known as FireWire... This is the 800-version (whereas 1394a "only" had 400Mbps) and thus sports a theoretical throughput of 800Mbps... FireWire has always been the great competitor of USB... It is mainly used to connect video device to your computer...

If the GigaByte boards features FireWire and SLI for under $ 100, then I would not look any further... The only thing GigaBytes aren't that good at, is overclocking...

 

[loomis2]

Yeah, I get the whole firewire thing, and I thought firewire 800 would be pretty beneficial but it only seems to be offered on Gigabyte boards, and they don't seem to be thought of in the same circles asa the other high-end sli boards. I was wondering why that was, unless the overclocking is the reason. I don't plan on overclocking, so that's no big deal.

 

[Wentelteefje]

Then I'd get the GigaByte... They are generally very stable...

 

[potato28]

Gigabyte boards are ROCK SOLID. If you wanna oc it, make sure to throw a RAM divider on as soon as you get passed 220 Frequency. No RAM divider makes it unstable.

 

[imported_ceefka]

Maybe a bit late, but if you are running into trouble:

If you want to use 1394b (800) or even 1394a (400) under SP2 you have to visit Microsoft for a hotfix called KB-885222. They also describe there how to fix your registry. More ins and outs are explained there.

I had to do that to get an mLAN driver to work. Be sure to have the hotfix in the right language or it won't execute.

I got the K8NF9 Ultra. Very nice board for a very nice price. It seems Gigabyte are the only AMD board makers that inlcude FW800. Still beats an add on PCI card.

 

[akugami]

I've always wondered why the "premium" boards from the likes of Asus, Abit, etc don't feature 1394b. I mean you're paying over $150 for a motherboard you figure they'd include 1394b which probably only cost them another buck at most to implement. A lot of external drives feature 1394b support as well as USB, but if your motherboard doesn't support 1394b (faster speed), you'll have to get an add-on card. Not only backing up to external drives would be faster, a lot of people are starting to move into home movies and a faster transfer speed to the computer would be greatly beneficial.

Gigabyte is a good company. I've used their motherboards in the past (though I currently have an Asus). If this Gigabyte (saw it on Newegg couple months back) had been available when I bought my Asus board, I would have went with this Gigabyte instead. Generally Gigabytes have good stability (barring the quirks every mobo is bound to have). They are solid overclockers though not great. For most people looking to get a good overclock to squeeze a little more bang for the buck and not extreme overclocking, it's perfect.