What do you guys think of this MoBo???

Status
Not open for further replies.
J

JohnBrowning

Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
9,448
Location
USA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138108

I like tha fact that it has three plane jane PCI slotsince I have a variety of PCI cards lying around. I also like that it has onboard video. Do not worry I plane on upgradeing to two SLI cards probably 8600 or 8800 GT's but for the time being this will keep my cost down. Right now I am on a tight budget.So the money I save on the video card will go towards hard drive or Ram. I thought about going with a cheaper board but few of them have a good track record for durability and built in video below this price point. I looked at the 780 chipset models especialy from Gigabyte and their have been an awful lot of DOA's and failure's. They all look great on paper but I do not want to go with anything that is known to have a high failure rate since that just increases your chances of getting a lemon. Really all I am looking for is future upgrade potential like to a quad core and SLI ready and ATX form factor. The on board video is a plus but not an absolute requirment. I am not going to be over clocking so that is not a must. I have not over clocked in a long long time! I figure if I want a faster processor I will just buy a faster processor over clocking seldom pays off in the long run. ASUS,MSI and ASrock are still in the running since I have not yet picked one for sure. ASROCK makes a WiFi board that is loaded with features that one has my interest peaked and it is $10 less then the Biostar but I do not think it has onboard graphics.
 
8600GT SLi is not worth it, you would be far better off buying one 8800GT 512 megabyte board for the price/performance.

What are you running that you want the SLI type firepower?

AMD is a dead horse right now, a day late and a dollar short.

I would buy something like an Asus P5Q. ASRocks are budget boards for a reason. Generally I buy Asus, Gigabyte or Intel made boards and never have trouble.

I would get an Asus P5Q, Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 which offers future quad core upgrade potential with good performance now, two gigs of just about any RAM, Crucial Rendition is usually what I use if it's not going to be overclocked, and a good equality e-VGA, XFX or PNY 8800 GT 512 mb board. Unless you are running crazy high resolution, do not waste your time and effort with SLi.

Two gigs of quality RAM is $38, the motherboard I mentioned is $130, processor is $130, and video card is $160 plus there is a rebate available bringing it down to $140.

You will get really good performance and really good value out of a package like that.
 
No Intel for me!!! First I already have the processor for $57 no tax or shipping! I could not say no to a duel core AtholonX2 4800+ 2.5Ghz for $57 bucks out the door with fan and three year warranty! I do a lot of high end video editing with Adobe software and I also am looking to get back into gameing. I left it for a while. I started to get too obsorbed with that lifestyle and had to back away.First I have had great luck with AMD since the late 1980's. Intel on the other hand was hit and miss. I do own an Intel system right now in fact I am typing this to you right now on it. It is a good solid system but it is not any better then my AMD laptop!

I am on a budget right now. So I do not mind a budget board as long as it gives me plenty of options for future upgrades. Durtability means more to me that just a bout anything else. Comeing from a Military background I will gladly give up some speed and a few features for more durability. I know Asus makes a great product but I just have not run across a board that has everything I want in it. It seems like anything less then $249 boards and they just will not give you everything you want in one board. They tease you and give 1/2-3/4 of the stuff you want but not all of it and toss in a bunch of stuff no one cares about to try and make it up to you!Plus it seems like they have been haveing a lot of quality control issues lately from the reviews I have read.

Gigabyte was on the top of my list but after reading thousands of reviews at Newegg it seems like they are haveing a lot of DOA and or defective products that get RMA 2-3 times before they get a solid board! I hate doing things twice especialy if it is because the company is useing low quality Chineese caps or mosfet transistors!!! One guy had the same transistor pop three times and each time Gigabyte sent him a new board but that is a lot of work to do for nothing! Statisicly the chances of one person getting three boards of the same design with the exact same failure is obsurd. In order for it to cluster like that their is either a design flaw or a componet issue. Either way I want to avoid that.So I am a bit leary of Gigabyte.

I have a 950Mhz Athlon Slot A that I just gave up to my 9 year old when I got this Intel desktop. I built that back in 2001 with an Asus board. It has just under 1GB of Ram. The grphics car is 128Mb 64 bit card wich back in 2001 was a killer card! I have never goten the blue screen of death in all that time until this year when the 80Gb hard drive started to act up. I have never had an Intell system that worked that long with no problems. Usualy about 3-4 years was the top and more then likely only 2 years before they would start getting flaky. Historicly AMD has always kicked Intells butt. It is just a matter of time maybe another 2-4 years and they will again be on top with Intell playing catch up!

In fact other then in bench marks I seldom see a Intel server or workstation or gameing machine come out on top in real world usage. When they do they are usualy 2-4 times more expensive then their AMD counter part. I do completly understand that Intells current crop of Dual and quad cores blows the doors off of the current crop of AMD processors! It is just a matter of price point. To me the meager increase in actual real world performance is not worth the extra $300-$1500 just for the processor alone. Then you have the boards the intel boards are also more expensive even though the same vendors make them for both companies. In fact unless I am mistaken you can buy 3-4 of AMD's best Quad COres for the price of 1 of Intels best Quad core. When I playing Cyris or Battlefield or any other game I do not think I will see that much better performance out of $1500 processor versus a $300 processor. In my case I am sure my $57 dual core will hold it's owns against $300+ core 2 duo systems.

Oh and I do appreciate your advice I just wanted you to understand where I am comeing from. I would rather buy a 2 year old Cadilac CTS-V at 1/2 price then buy a Corvette new at full price! Close to the same bang for a lot less bucks!

Is their something wrong with Biostar??? I ask because one of the main things I liked about them was their score on newegg's review system! I also know that quite a few gamers like their TForce stuff for easy over clocking and stability.
 
I've only worked on two machines with Biostar boards and both seemed flaky but it was from the era of bad capacitors. Any board worth attention now is solid cap or [censored] cap.

If you have the processor already that changes everything.

Lately a combination I found that has worked good on the Intel side is a E2180 and two gigs of RAM, for the price it's quite ample.
 
I will definately keep the 8800 info in mind since I hate to buy things twice! Thanks a lot! It will probably a year before I get a dedicated video card if I buy a MoBo with intergrated graphics!

My desk top is an Intel 2180 with 3 GB of Ram. i only bought it though because the price was right!
 
Last edited:
The Asus and Gigabyte are both good boards. The Gigabyte gives an eSATA port, a digital SPDIF audio port and a max of 16GB of RAM whereas the Asus board doesn't have these ports and has a max of 8GB of RAM.
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
and a max of 16GB of RAM whereas the Asus board doesn't have these ports and has a max of 8GB of RAM.


RAM capacity beyond 4GB makes absolutely no difference unless you're running a 64-bit OS.
 
John:

Some of your information is a little incorrect. I understand you are an AMD fan, but come on, historically faster than Intel? When, back when they were ripping off Intel's CPU designs?

The ONLY CPU series that Intel was outperformed by AMD was the Pentium-4 and that was on a clock-for-clock basis because of the 28-stage pipe on the P4 CPU.

The P3 and the Athlon were almost identical performers. They were also very similar.

1. You can get a Q6600 Intel CPU for around 200 bucks. I have one.

Quick comparison to AMD's Phenom 9750

Things in BOLD show the best.

Price:
Q6600 (2.4Ghz Quad): $209.00
E6550 (2.33Ghz Dual): $159.00
P9750 (2.4Ghz Quad): $215.00
A4800 (2.5Ghz Dual): $60.00


1. 3D Studio Max. (lower is better)
Q6600: 47
P9750: 52
A4800: 107
E6550: 87

2. 3D Mark 06 CPU (higher is better)
Q6600: 3507
P9750: 3347
A4800: 1802
E6550: 2098

3. 3D Mark 06 Graphics (higher is better)
Q6600: 11155
P9750: 10777
A4800: 8923
E6550: 9883

4. AVG Antivirus Scan (lower is better)
Q6600: 80
P9750: 92
A4800: 99
E6550: 81

5. Cinema 4D (lower is better)
Q6600: 154
P9750: 160
A4800: 306
E6550: 280

6. Clone DVD (lower is better)
Q6600: 504
P9750: 513
A4800: 568
E6550: 513

7. Deep Fritz (higher is better)
Q6600: 6771
P9750: 5725
A4800: 2850
E6550: 3389

8. DivX (lower is better)
Q6600: 90
P9750: 95
A4800: 155
E6550: N/A

9. HDTV Playback (lower is better)
Q6600: 21.50
P9750: 16.60
A4800: 48.60
E6550: 32.50

10. ITunes Audio Encoding (lower is better)
Q6600: 82
P9750: 96
A4800: 97
E6550: 84

11. LAME MP3 Encoding (lower is better)
Q6600: 180
P9750: 209
A4800: 229
E6550: 185

12. Mainconcept H.264 Encoder (lower is better)
Q6600: 69
P9750: 63
A4800: 142
E6550: 120

13. Powerpoint 2007 to PDF 7 (lower is better)
Q6600: 134
P9750: 173
A4800: 188
E6550: 139

14. PCMark 2005 CPU (higher is better)
Q6600: 7753
P9750: 7092
A4800: 4938
E6550: 5988

15. PCMark 2005 Mem (higher is better)
Q6600: 3851
P9750: 4307
A4800: 3625
E6550: 3896

16. Photoshop CS3 Filtering (lower is better)
Q6600: 122
P9750: 149
A4800: 157
E6550: 127

17. Pinnacle Studio 11 DVD Encoding (lower is better)
Q6600: 88
P9750: 89
A4800: 109
E6550: 96

18. Adobe Premier Pro 2 (lower is better)
Q6600: 154
P9750: 148
A4800: 322
E6550: 288

19. Prey (higher is better)
Q6600: 113.40
P9750: 104.60
A4800: 94
E6550: 110.30

20. Quake IV (higher is better)
Q6600: 110
P9750: 103.30
A4800: 91.70
E6550: 102.80

21. Serious Sam 2 (higher is better)
Q6600: 137.30
P9750: 119.30
A4800: 118.30
E6550: 138.10

22. Sisoft Sandra Arithmetic (higher is better)
Q6600: 43863
P9750: 35685
A4800: 17546
E6550: 21722

23. Sisoft Sandra MFLOP Arithmetic (higher is better)
Q6600: 29823
P9750: 31105
A4800: 14847
E6550: 15028

24. Sisoft Sandra Multimedia Integer (higher is better)
Q6600: 265322
P9750: 91486
A4800: 44457
E6550: 129324

25. Sisoft Sandra Multimedia Floating Point (higher is better)
Q6600: 144367
P9750: 120600
A4800: 50005
E6550: 70226

26. Sisoft Sandra Memory Integer (higher is better)
Q6600: 5545
P9750: 5914
A4800: 8790
E6550: 6169

27. Sisoft Sandra Memory FP (higher is better)
Q6600: 5546
P9750: 5925
A4800: 8809
E6550: 6201

28. Supreme Commander (higher is better)
Q6600: 49.45
P9750: 47.47
A4800: 30.80
E6550: 40.35

29. UT 2004 (higher is better)
Q6600: 92.90
P9750: 69.56
A4800: 68.37
E6550: 75.00

30. Warhammer Mark of Chaos (higher is better)
Q6600: 40.67
P9750: 31.58
A4800: 26.42
E6550: 37.63

31. WinRAR (lower is better)
Q6600: 177
P9750: 164
A4800: 211
E6550: 180

32. XVid Encoding (lower is better)
Q6600: 129
P9750: 150
A4800: 181
E6550: N/A


So, out of 32 total tests we have:
Q6600: 24/32
P9750: 5/32
A4800: 2/32
E6550: 1/32

BUT, between the A4800 and the E6550:
E6550: 28/30 (two are N/A)
A4800: 2/30 (two are N/A)

And there were a number of tests were the E6550 bested the Phenom.

So, the bottom-end Q6600 bests the high-end Phenom P9750 75% of the time and costs less money!

The E6550, though more expensive than the A4800, absolutely annihilates the A4800 in 93% of the tests and runs at a lower clock speed!!!!

The top-end Phenom is the 9850, running at 2.5Ghz, the top-end Core2Quad is the Q9550, and has a faster FSB than the Q6600, as well as running at 2.83Ghz. The Q6600 is the BOTTOM-END Quad!!!


By the way, I've got an Intel 8088 here that's still running, it's 20 years old, do you have a comparable AMD?
wink.gif
Just buggin' ya, I have probably 30 Intel systems kicking around my house in various stages of disassembly, but the CPU's all still work, going right back to the 8088, then a Pentium 90, 133, 166, 200, PII 233, 266, 350, 450, PIII 450, PIII 550, PIII 800......etc.

We already discussed the old 760 Slot-A chipset, and I agreed with you that it was a reliable performer. I am not anti-AMD, but on the same note, saying that AMD historically outperformed Intel is a farce. There was one "generation" of CPU's that AMD had the faster choice, this was the dark years of the P4. When the Core-series came on the scene, that era ended. Prior to that, with the PIII, Tualatin was faster, clock-for-clock than the Athlon was, giving Intel the upper-hand. And then we delve into the past where AMD's CPU's were very much heavily based on Intel's CPU's.......

And in regards to price-point, when comparing the Phenom to the Core2Quad..... The figures speak for themselves. AMD is no longer "bargain performance", especially in the quad market.
 
Overkill why would I let the facts get in the way of my brand loyalty LOL!!!! At least you keep me honest!!!LOL Seriously guys thanks. I have been looking at Gigabytes 780 chipset ATX board since it has a lot of bang for the buck! Their are no reviews on newegg though. I know Gigabyte has a three year warranty on their Ultra Durable II boards I am just worried because of all the people havine either failure to post or their boards are burning up componets in short order like 12 hours to 2 weeks at a pop. I think I have just been spoiled over the years since I was normaly working OEM boards that while not cutting edge in terms of chip sets they where usualy durable and reliable and well tested. I almost feel like I shopping for an exotic sports car with some of these reviews!!!LOL I am familar with Asus and Abit but I am leaning towards Biostar and Gigabyte at this point.

Why are their so many Micro ATX boards their must be 7 for ever ATX board. Who wants a tinny little board with either a lot of stuff missing or a lot of stuff cramed into such a small space that it is almost impossable to use it all???? Are gamers getting so anemic and weak that the weight of a computer is too much for them to carry to their "Lan Party"??? Micro ATX case's are smal have poor air flow are usualy ugly and space limited etc...... I do not understand why so many places carry so many micro atx boards! Seriously if it because gamers are wimps maybe they should look into buying a set of adjustable dumbells and get 15 minutes of dumbell training in each day before they sit down for their 14 hours of gameing!!!
 
I had an intel 8088 that is too funy. I can rember when we would swap crystals to over clock!!! I can also rember programing fortran,cobol,basic etc..... on my Tandy TRS Color Computer. I did not have n Atari or Comadore 64. In 1993 when I went off to college one of the computer's at the airport that I took flight leasson at was an Atari. I kid you not!!! It had the monster external floppy drives and a dotmatrix printer and a TV set with the converter box hooked in place of where the rabitt ears would go. The airport director had all kinds of software for it so he kept in service. I still have my Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer with tape drive and it still works!

I am sure that Intell 8088 has been serviced many times over. Since the board is not full of surface mount devices or a boat load of intergrated circuits you could easily keep it running for a long time to come. It is all state of the art wich is simple to work on with nothing more then a weller soldering station. What does that thing have a 50watt or 80 watt power supply??? I know my first pentium wich I just recycled even though it was still working had a 125wat SPI power supply and that thing must of weighted 25lbs. at least the case was made from steel and buit so ruggedly that even with all the pannels off you could pick it up from any place and it had no flex or shimm at all. Same thing with the power supply monster capacitors and ferrite core chokes huge diodes etc......
 
Clyaton I am bit of a snob when it comes to board size! I will only run ATX board by choice. Now if Micro ATX boards where drasticly cheaper for the inconvince of haveing all your componets right on top of each other maybe I would consider one. The ATX that has the smae chipset from Gigabyte looks like it might be doable. Although Gigabyte males their ATX boards a little on the small side!!! When it comes to boards I think that unless you are forced to go with a Micro ATX board because you are reuseing an OEM case or something it is always better to get a board that is as big as you can get with everything you want. With the size of Video cards getting extremly long and wide I really do not want to have slots that I can not use because the board is too small and everything had to be cramed on it! Same thing for coolers blocking ram slots. It is getting kind of crazy with video card and cpu coolers and heat pipes all over the place. So I just as soon start with a full size board. Now lucky for me I tossed two case's and away just two weeks ago and their wimpy power supplies. If I had kept them since they where nice looking OEM case's I would be considering a Micro ATX board since that is what they where. They only had 250 watt power supplies and I would have had to drill the rivets out since all the metal parts where riveted in place.

I am not going crazy with the case. I would love to get a Coolmaster but I just am too cheap to spend more on my case then on my mother board! Especialy since I am not in college and I do not luge my computer from place to place anymore. For the most part other then a once a year blow out of the case with compressed air once they sit down some place that is where they stay until they are replaced! I am going a mid tower ATX case with plenty of fans and I am going with a 500Watt power supply. SInce I will probably not run two or more graphic cards until I upgrade to a quad core 500 watts should be more then enough to run 2-3 HD's in Raid, either intergrated gpu or a single card, sound card, DVD drive etc.... My last custom configered pc only had 250 watt and that rocked for 2001!
 
Originally Posted By: JohnBrowning
I had an intel 8088 that is too funy. I can rember when we would swap crystals to over clock!!! I can also rember programing fortran,cobol,basic etc..... on my Tandy TRS Color Computer. I did not have n Atari or Comadore 64. In 1993 when I went off to college one of the computer's at the airport that I took flight leasson at was an Atari. I kid you not!!! It had the monster external floppy drives and a dotmatrix printer and a TV set with the converter box hooked in place of where the rabitt ears would go. The airport director had all kinds of software for it so he kept in service. I still have my Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer with tape drive and it still works!

I am sure that Intell 8088 has been serviced many times over. Since the board is not full of surface mount devices or a boat load of intergrated circuits you could easily keep it running for a long time to come. It is all state of the art wich is simple to work on with nothing more then a weller soldering station. What does that thing have a 50watt or 80 watt power supply??? I know my first pentium wich I just recycled even though it was still working had a 125wat SPI power supply and that thing must of weighted 25lbs. at least the case was made from steel and buit so ruggedly that even with all the pannels off you could pick it up from any place and it had no flex or shimm at all. Same thing with the power supply monster capacitors and ferrite core chokes huge diodes etc......


[censored] yeah! Remember the software overclocking? LOL!!!

My 8088 is a Hewitt-Rand. Has an "upgraded" 1.2MB 5.25" floppy, and I splurged to buy a 3.25" HD drive for it too. It has a 20MB hard drive that sounds like somebody is popping popcorn when it's accessing.

It has a switch on the back to go to/from CGA to "high res" Hercules B&W
wink.gif


This was the machine I discovered BBS's on! I had a top-of-the-line 2400-baud modem in it that my dad purchased to connected to the local Uni's VAX system.

From the VAX, using Procomm Plus, you could get on the "Internet", which at that point was pretty "basic", especially being browsed via text in a terminal window! Gopher was a big leap......

Do you remember Mosaic? LOL!!!!

I also have an old-school Mac PLUS! with the tiny integrated B&W screen....

I did SOME basic, C++ a Java over the years, never got into programming much. I took two years of CS at University and I just could not handle the monotony of programming, which is why I ended up switching to Network Engineering instead.

And yes, it's amazing that these 15-20 year old PSU's just keep going and going.... But you are right; things were built quite differently back then.
 
Yes, I rember Mosaic how I could not!!!LOL Can you imagine how things would have been different if we where still just looking at text box's and such!!!LOL The internet is commercialy driven now too much money to mad!It is a monster that just keeps growing and growing. I wounder how big it can get before the current system caves in on itself? I know from when I was doing fiber optic work this country is criss crossed with fiber cable that is not even operational because the companies that started all this do not exsist or have been restructured somany times to avoid going out of business they just can not afford to turn them on without the demand being their! I wounder when that demand will hit?

I love that 20GB hard drive that sounds like someone poping pop corn!!! That is so true and so funny too. In fact if you watch war games that movie brings back a lot of memories. I love the lame CGI on Empire Strikes Back wich was cutting edge for the time it is just a crude line drawing of the Death Star!!! LOL I can do better then that with Java on my cell phone!
 
Anyone her know anyone that saved their Amiga????? I know a guy that saved his becuase they where so good on graphic he was sure that they would become a collectors item worth a lot of coin!LOL

He my First PC that I bought myself was while I was in college in the Mid 1990's. It was cutting edge for it's time. It was a Pentium 133Mz with 612MB of Simm Stick Ram a 1.6GB HD,CD-ROM,Floppy,Infra-Red Data port,4MB Video card that is right 4MB video card and a 33.6K modem!! Combined with a 15 inch monitor and a ink jet printer it was $1500 and I talked them down from $1800 at Circuit City. This was back when Circuit City actualy had a sales staff that was comimission based and new their products and the market etc....... Now they are a bunch of $9 an hour idiots that do not know anything about their products let alone the industry! So people just do not understand how cheap things are now....My entire system that I am typeing on now was $549 and that is a bigger screen that is a flat pannel, a processor that infinitely faster not to mention duel core and the hard drive holys about over 300 times the information etc..... COmputer's right now that are preconfigured OEM units that are not top of the line are so dirt cheap if you shop around that it is not even funny.

My laptop was only $585 and that was with shipping and tax's etc..... I can rember when a cheap laptop was $1500 not $500
 
I can remember when cheap laptops were 2K! My dad bought a Texas Instruments 486SL25 Laptop in the early 90's. It had 4MB of RAM which we upgraded to 6MB with little push-in 15-pin memory sticks that cost like 130 dollars. It had a 60MB hard drive, and came with Windows 3.1. We upgraded it to Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and hooked up an external 9600 baud modem. It was rockin'! When Wordperfect for Windows 6 came out, WOW!!!!!!!!

A good friend of mine had an Amiga back in the day, he's been trying to find one actually! He periodically reminisces over it! LOL!

EDIT: I also remember the "notebook" computer which were literally a briefcase that unfolded! We never owned one, but I thought they were such a novelty. The one I played with had the orange monochrome screen.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128339
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128335
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130182
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131289
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138102
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138105
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138114
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138108

The above are the final contenders unless something amazeing hapens to change my mind. A few of them are Micro-ATX boards but they will probably not make it into the final. The Biostar ATX board and the Gigabyte ATX boards are the top contenders at this point. I have kind of limited myself buy going with Newegg.com but I like their customer service and their fast and usualy free or cheap shipping and how quickly they get me the things I order. Once in a while I will find something cheaper someplace else but normaly their shipping is sky high or they are slow to ship or they are more expensive on everything else!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

autoapprentice
Possible GPU upgrades
2 3 4
Replies
72
Views
3K
KrisZ
supton
Found a computer
2
Replies
24
Views
1K
supton
M
CNC milling machine - failed hard drive
Replies
15
Views
1K
Merek
O
3rd PC build, very strange issue. I'm out of tricks. Long read.
2 3
Replies
41
Views
2K
OilMagnate
B
Bought a "Trash Can"
Replies
8
Views
1K
bunnspecial
Back
Top