What gaming motherboard?

[chickennn]

I just got a free AMD Athlon 64 3500+ from my brother-in-law. He also gave me 4 sticks of 256mb Corsair XMS memory. Yesterday I went out and bought an ATi Radeon x850xt PE. I usually play Counter-Strike:Source. I have about $150 to spend on newegg and wanted your opinion on what motherboard I should get. Thank you everyone

 

[chickennn]

anyone? please.

 

[paranoid guy]

The msi k8n diamond, it's apparently good. But I'm not exactly the authority on motherboards here...

 

[mattw]

is the graphics card AGP or PCIE?

if AGP go with this mobo DFI Lanparty nF3 ULTRA-D... its the same motherboard I have and its awesome!

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductsList.asp?Name=DFI (its the first one on the socket 939 section) check out the spec of the motherboard, its pretty awesome, its got dual channel, sata, firewire etc.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

For an AGP mobo, try this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131572
For a PCIe mobo, try this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138273
I would recommend however that u use this link below and then decide which mobo to buy and search on NewEgg for the ones u have specified. Good luck :grinthumb
http://www2.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/1,,30_182_869_9460^9461,00.html?1145166366

 

[chickennn]

sorry. It is a 939 Socket and PCI-E

 

[sllewe]

A nice Mobo can be found here

Another rock solid board, (but without the yellow color) can be found here

 

[jettwo]

939 Mobo

If you want the best performance here is the way to go:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130484

Our shop built 19 gaming PC's with this board. This board is by far the best available for under 150 bucks. Bench-marked significantly higher than DFI, Abit, Asus, Biostar and ECS using exact same hardware.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Would an ASUS A8N be better than the choices posted above? Just a question, coz I'm planning to get a new mobo myself.

 

[chickennn]

i've been stuck between the dfi lanparty nf4 ultra-d and the msi k9n neo4 platinum for awhile.

 

[connerwayne]

Asus A8R-MVP

If youve got an x850xt and a Socket 939, go with the Asus A8R-MVP. They're innexpensive, it runs off the ATI chipset, and it has two PCI-E slots, so if you want to have crossfire x850xt's, it's possible. I run it with an x850xt, an X2 3800+, and two sticks of 1gb Corsair DDR in Dual Channel. It's nice, I cant tear myself away from Asus boards (Although I did try an ECS last month, its lucky it didnt get thrown out a window), and it comes with lots of USB and Firewire headers, 4 SATA II slots (3GB ps), crash free bios and overclock recovery... and on and on... plus its like 109 bucks... cant beat it. Unless you go with the same board that has two PCI-E x16 slots. This one runs at PCIE x16 with one card installed, but cuts it down to 2 x 8 if running in crossfire mode. Still kick *** though.

Wayne

 

[chickennn]

people have been telling me the a8r-mvp is unstable.

 

[connerwayne]

Instability

Well, heres the deal. I did have an issue with a Phillips Fun Cam. I kept getting random Bugcode_USB_Driver errors.... that was resolved by not using the FunCam... at least until I feel like using it again, then I'll just get updated drivers. But thats the only problem i've had. Wth new technology there are bound to be incompatibility issues, but this was one that I could deal with. Other than the stupid web cam, Ive had zero problems with USB devices. I have several. USB HDD, DVDRW, printers, scanners, kb, mouse, pen drives, soda can cooler.... Also, that could have been an incompatibility with my graphics card driver, or proc, or mem, i dont know....

What kind of instability are you referring to?

Wayne

 

[connerwayne]

Instability

Another thing, they could have been referring to the possible instability between ATI chipsets and nVidia graphix cards. The same goes for nVidia chipsets and ATI grafics cards... and Via chipsets in general... I say, if you have an ATI based graphics card, and thats what you want to stick with, go with an ATI chipset for future upgradability.

Wayne

 

[hadoud76]

Clearly incompatible,but cool

This MOBO is intel, so it is clearly incompatible, but thought that it is something:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1424028&Sku=I69-2108