which 939/agp board?

[QuantumPion]

What do you guys think is the best mobo to buy for socket 939 and agp? I would go with the dfi however there is a huge discussion on dfi-street.com about numberous big problems with the board. Also I want to get the zalman 120 mm cpu hsf as well as the zalman video cooler and northbridge heatsink and I'm not sure if they will fit on the dfi or msi boards because of the position of the northbridge and cpu sockets.

How is the performance of the asus via chipset compared to the nforce3 chipset? Which board will be the most stable and have the fewest problems and bugs? From what I've read, the only problems with the asus board can be fixed with a bios update and it appears to have the best layout for my hardware.

 

[imported_Starman]

Asus A8V Deluxe :thumbsup:

The layout is spectacular and I love the passive cooling. The chipset is fast and stable. The company is terrific, and so is this product. The VIA KT800Pro chipset is just as fast as nForce3 because in some areas it beats Nvidia and others it trails only slightly. It's really a toss up between the two. Once upon a time VIA had some a bad chipset or two, but that was years, and years, and years ago. The KT800 chipset has been like a tank for Athlon 64 and the KT800Pro only made it that much better. I can recommend the A8V Deluxe enough. It's fast, stable, overclocks well, and is backed by arguably the best motherboard maker in the business.

Oh, and don't even consider the S939/AGP DFI...holy **** what a nightmare! Just visit DFI Street and you'll get stressed out just reading the myriad of problems that exist with that motherboard. The S754 DFI Lanparty rocked, but don't confuse it with this S939 stinker. DFI seems to have released it as an afterthought and support seems to be very, very weak for that product. Many have been rumbling that DFI likely has a rookie team working on BIOS revisions for it. Just avoid it as an option - do yourself a favor. The problems they're having might even take a hardware revision to solve...who needs that hassle. The Asus is mature, solid, and ready to perform without issue. Go for it.

 

[imported_Kensai]

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

 

[imported_Starman]

Originally posted by: Kensai
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

Negative. That board has been plagued with issues its entire life. The quality control at MSI is hit or miss. You might have a board that works one week and is dead the next. Why bother when the Asus is an option? Besides, even if things were solid in the QC department, in terms of board layout, the placement of the chipset/fan is way too close to the AGP slot. This guy wants to possibly replace the stock NB cooling with a 3rd party solution...good luck trying that on the MSI :thumbsdown:

 

[QuantumPion]

bleh I think I'm gonna hold off on the upgrade for a while, until I need a vid card upgrade to get a pci-e board. BF2 runs just fine anyway. :-\

 

[imported_Starman]

Umm, ok

 

[Shenkoa]

Originally posted by: Starman

Originally posted by: Kensai
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

Negative. That board has been plagued with issues its entire life. The quality control at MSI is hit or miss. You might have a board that works one week and is dead the next. Why bother when the Asus is an option? Besides, even if things were solid in the QC department, in terms of board layout, the placement of the chipset/fan is way too close to the AGP slot. This guy wants to possibly replace the stock NB cooling with a 3rd party solution...good luck trying that on the MSI :thumbsdown:

I own it and never had single problom.

 

[SolMiester]

My board!, sweet as.....

 

[keeleysam]

Originally posted by: Kensai
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

 

[o1die]

There's an asrock uli 1695 board out at newegg for $68 (runs both agp or pci-e cards). I've been waiting for one. May have to try it.

 

[will889]

You would be good to go with the Asus VIA board or the Nforce MSI board. Both are very good. I would opt for the MSI though.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: o1die
There's an asrock uli 1695 board out at newegg for $68 (runs both agp or pci-e cards). I've been waiting for one. May have to try it.

Hell yeah. I would get the ASrock board. You have the option of upgrading to pci-e while using your agp card.

And I have to agree that the k8t800pro chipset is solid.

 

[GML3G0]

EPoX or Abit.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: o1die
There's an asrock uli 1695 board out at newegg for $68 (runs both agp or pci-e cards). I've been waiting for one. May have to try it.

There's a full review here on the front page. The board has minor overclocking settings and is able to hit 300MHz+ bus speeds, rivaling the best overclockers. Very impressive for a soon-to-be $70 board. It has a proprietary upgrade slot for socket M2. It also has native 16x PCIe as well as native 8x AGP - not a pseudo-AGP slot running off PCI like all the other combo boards. The Anandtech review stated pretty much that there was no performance hit using AGP - it runs like any other native AGP board (a percent or two below PCIe with same video chipset).

This board looks like a winner.

 

[oldfartjc]

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
What do you guys think is the best mobo to buy for socket 939 and agp? I would go with the dfi however there is a huge discussion on dfi-street.com about numberous big problems with the board. Also I want to get the zalman 120 mm cpu hsf as well as the zalman video cooler and northbridge heatsink and I'm not sure if they will fit on the dfi or msi boards because of the position of the northbridge and cpu sockets.

How is the performance of the asus via chipset compared to the nforce3 chipset? Which board will be the most stable and have the fewest problems and bugs? From what I've read, the only problems with the asus board can be fixed with a bios update and it appears to have the best layout for my hardware.

If you have an ATI card the following problem won't affect you. Also I haven't noticed any performance differences in the 2 boards.



If you want to be safe then don't buy an NF3 Ultra chipset board like my MSI
Neo2 Platinum (which is sitting in it's box right now) if you own a 6800 GT
video card. There are hundreds of pages of the pausing and stuttering
problems with this combo when playing D3D games on many different forums. I
only wish I knew about this before I purchased the NF3 Ultra board over 3
months ago. I now have an ASUS A8V Deluxe Rev. 2 which I installed over 2
weeks ago and works great with my BFG 6800 GT OC, unlike my NF3 board which
had constant problems in D3D games only. All OpenGL games ran great, it was
only D3D games that had the problem. If you have an ATI card you also
won't have the problem with an NF3 chipset board. Below are a couple of
forums to go to where many of us have posted problems with the NF3 and 68XX
problem. Also, my system spec's are shown below.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=938842&page=1&pp=20

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=32759

 

[MDE]

My Epox 9NDA3+\BFG 6800GT combo works flawlessly.

 

[oldfartjc]

Originally posted by: MDE
My Epox 9NDA3+\BFG 6800GT combo works flawlessly.

Well you are one of the few lucky ones. Go buy a lottery ticket.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: oldfartjc

Originally posted by: MDE
My Epox 9NDA3+\BFG 6800GT combo works flawlessly.

Well you are one of the few lucky ones. Go buy a lottery ticket.

Did you try turning off fastwrites in the BIOS? If not kick yourself

 

[nemesismk2]

My vote is for the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2, I might be abit biased because I own one but you really can't go wrong with it because it offers full performance agp and pcie all on one motherboard.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2
My vote is for the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2, I might be abit biased because I own one but you really can't go wrong with it because it offers full performance agp and pcie all on one motherboard.

:thumbsup:

I might be a little biased too since I've been eagerly awaiting this board since I first heard about it two months ago, but nevertheless I think it's a good recommendation anyway.