Socket 939 recommendations
 

i am building a new comp, centered around the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ processor and some rather low latency Corsair ram. problem is, i am getting many conflicting opinions on a good motherboard for this particular rig. so, i decided to do the smart thing, and get more conflicting opinions :rolleyes:

anyway, down to it: anyone have any recommendations? i have spent hours at newegg, tomshardware, tigerdirect, computerpoweruser and other sites, and i am still coming up with few mobo's for socket 939 worth the boards they are made from. any help would be appreciated, as this is a very specific question.

www.newegg.com and www.zipzoomfly.com

Do you REALLY need that awesome of a CPU? Jeez, how much ya wanna spend?

eh, Mike, did you read all of the OP?
He's already spent hours @ newegg.

other than that , I can offer no adivse ... but damn ... nice CPU, yo!

/me wipes the drool off of her chin ;)

Have to agree. Pennywise, poundfoolish? :) Three months and it'll be stale. Three more and it'll seem old. What are you doing that needs that much processor? Drop to a midrange 939 and use the extra money for video. It'll help your framerate more than the last 25% of processor performance. Save the extra funds and upgrade the processor again in 6mo.

Is your work multithreaded? You would get better bang with multiple processors, say midrange Xeons on a good server board. Just over $600 for the processors and board and you get four cores. You could set up two of these (8 cores) for the price of one X2 4800 w/board. Not as good for games but we don't know your purpose.

I still like the DFI 939 boards but it really depends on the job. At the bleeding edge different boards have different strengths. For a tightly tuned gaming rig I still like DFI's LANParty.

Just thought I'd drop in and say that there's no motherboards on the market right now that offer outstanding performance above and beyond the rest for socket 939. There are a couple of socket A boards that go far above the rest, but I'm not aware of any for 939 yet. If I were upgrading my motherboard for socket 939, I'd buy an Abit board that had the features I wanted.

I also have to ask why you're buying a processor that good. It'd be a complete waste for gaming...gaming PCs rely way more on RAM and videocard power than CPU power. If you're gonna do multimedia stuff then I understand, but otherwise, I can't recommend spending that much on a processor. It's not that it's "overkill" or "a bit too much;" no, you'd honestly not tell a difference from a low end Athlon 64 to a high end Athlon 64 in any game at any setting. Remember, the human eye can only detect 60 FPS and lower. :) Once you breach 60 FPS it's useless.

Thanx for the input thus far. i am debating the lanparty, as it has gotten much praise as a 939 board for the newer athlons.
with regards to the processor, i am really putting the money in because of the future, rather than current expectations. not only is the X2 a 64 bit chip (and 64 bit is just opening up as an up-and-comer in the pc world), it is also dual core, which is coming up faster, in my experience. in terms of raw crunching power, the X2 4800+ dominates the market, leaving even the newest pentium extreme editions in the dust.

check this link for a rather indepth review/benchmarks.
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...261_3514901__1

also, the newest issue of computer power user has their own reviews and benchmarks.

basically, i have been saving for this computer for a while, and, in all honesty money isnt too much of an issue :) lemme dig up my whole scheme, and let me know what you think.

motherboard ?
Athlon 64 X2 4800+
BFG Gforce 7800GTX 256 meg PCI-E graphics card
Audigy 2 ZS audio
Sony DW-D26A Dvd/Cd Burner
Aspire X-Navigator case (with black faceplate)
ram sort of depends on the board's capabilities to a certain extent, probably corsair, definitely low latency.
Still working on HD's as well. probably a couple of 250 gigs, maybe a 400. not sure, but definitely SATA 3Gbps.

now, with that out of the way, this is meant to be a computer that is excellent right now, and will more than hold its own with few changes for the next several years. obviously, gaming is of much importance to me :D, but i also am going to be using this for SPSS work with my Master's work in Sociology, and with the rumors of a 64 bit version in the works, it seemed prudent to be well prepared ahead of time.

sorry for the long post, let me know what you think.

I say get any nForce board made by Abit Asus or DFI that has all the features you want/need. Motherboards don't have that big of an impact on performance unless you are planning to overclock. If you are going to overclock I would go with something made by Abit since they seem to have the best OCing boards.

If gaming's important to you, and money's not an object, why not get two 7800GTXs in SLI mode?

And I would recommend this board.

I haven't used that one specifically, but in my experience Asus always has the best boards, and that one has some excellent features. (4 SATA II, 4 SATA 150, 2 Gigabit ethernet...) It will most likely be the board I buy for my next build, unless they make a better version of it.

to be completely honest, that asus was my first choice, both in terms of name brand and functionality, but i figured i'd get some other opinions on the matter.

with regards to the available funds, ive got about 3k to spend, so money isnt too much of an issue, but still must be taken into consideration to a certain extent. my overall goal is that even if i cant afford both cards right now, it seems that my mobo will have dual PCI-E x16, so i will be able to upgrade later on down the road, when i have another 500 in disposable income :D

OOOOH, SHINEY!!!

lol, i think my path is becoming far more clear.

ram OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) Platinum PC 3200 with reviewed speed (by newegg users) at 2-3-2-7 :crazy:

and as for the mobo, anandtech has one hell of a detailed review of the top 4 nforce4 SLI boards (MSI, ASUS, DFI, and Gigabyte)
not to spoil the fun, but MSI and DFI took the gold, with some pretty impressive benchmarks.

ok, ill spoil it a little bit....

The only problem I see with those two reviews is that they both emphasize the audio... something you don't need with your Audigy 2 ZS. And unless you're planning on overclocking (which they both score well in), that's not a factor either. I haven't had bad experience with MSI or DFI, I just prefer Asus.

Anyway, as far as stuff that really makes a difference for performance (as in... processor, video card, and RAM), you've already made good decisions. It probably doesn't matter too much which motherboard you choose - it's just a matter of which features are more important to you. Good luck. Your new machine is making me drool before it's even put together.