What Athlon64 motherboard would you buy?

[ravalox]

Hello, I am building an athlon64 system for a christmas gift. I am new to the socket 939 game so I need to ask, what motherboard would you buy if you were getting an athlon64 ~3500 (the newest model, San Diego)? It seems the nForce4 is hot stuff, but I am only just now doing my homework.

I should say, I am looking to make it as futureproof as I can. So I would like it to have as many slots as is practical and PCI-express as well. Possibly two PCI slots for an SLI solution later in its lifespan.

 

[Zap]

Don't know about SLI boards, but I just ordered an Abit K8N board for myself. I got it because of some reports of high system bus speeds, plus the placement of the chipset... chipset HSF can be replaced with a taller passive unit without conflicting with video card unlike most other boards on the market. BTW it is Nforce4 with PCIe. There is an Nforce4 Ultra version for a few bucks more.

 

[keeleysam]

MSI K8N Neo4 SLI

 

[lopri]

If you're looking for SLI as a viable upgrade path, you should definitely pick a board with 2 slot space between the PCI-E 16X.

 

[Diasper]

Asus A8R-MVP as on the frontpage. All-round excellence:

Silent
High performance
Excellent overclocking
Really good on-board audio (for on-board audio)
Good layout
Seems more stable/less quirky than nforce4 based mobos
And most importantly inexpensive


I wouldn't worry about SLI/Crossfire as you'll always get better performance/price by using a single card eg selling old card buy newer one. Besides it'll also save you on some extra heat/power consumption. As for this motherboard you still have 3 x PCI and 1 x PCI-E and presumably the other PCI-E lane that you can run at whatever speed under 8X you want... should offer enough upgradeability really.

 

[2kfire]

Hmm... For a gift TO someone, I'd get the ECS RS-482. It's cheap, has decent integrated video and PCI-Express. For a gift FROM someone (to me ), I'd get the DFI NF4 SLI-DR Expert, or any board with the Nforce 4 SLI x16 chip. They are expensive though. In any case, I wish I knew someone as generous as you!!!

 

[Davegod]

For non-SLI, EPoX "EP-9NPA+Ultra" NVIDIA nForce4 ULTRA is an easy reccomendation for me, bar the 7800GTX length being an issue with the position of the IDE sockets (see thread).

 

[Zenbeatnik]

I think if you are intersted in future proofing then I'd recommend the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe. Anyway that's what I chose and this new board is rock solid and was easy to set up.

 

[potato28]

The DFI-SLI-DR Expert is good if u like to mess around in the BIOS, plus the chipset fan isnt very loud.

 

[Shaorinor]

I'm still trying to decide between the DFI expert board and the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe board. They both seem to be monster boards and feature packed.

 

[Rottie]

do you really need features?