"Mark G." said:
For the money, if I am thinking between the P4C800, P4P800, or the A7N8X-E,
what would you suggest. Had an earlier post between going from Intel to AMD
because of cost, but I am so confused. I know it HAS to be an ASUS board.
Currently on my PIII 800 I have an ASUS CUV4X-E. It has been ever so stable
and NEVER a problem at all. So I stick with ASUS, just confused between AMD
or INTEL and then what board. Thanks for all input and help.
I like to start by asking, how much memory do you want in the system?
Do your cad tools or other programs need a lot of memory for good
performance ?
There are boards with dual channel memory controllers and four DIMM
slots. Some single channel boards with three slots (and sometimes
speed versus number of DIMM limits as well). There are microATX boards
with two DIMMs. I consider 512MB memory modules to be the "sweet
spot", in terms of bang for buck, so take the amount of memory you
want and divide by 512MB. That should set the number of DIMMs
required.
Only you know how important the last ounce of performance is, and
going from say a 2.8C to a 3.2EE can mean hundreds of dollars of
extra cost.
A P4P800/P4C800 board handles high end P4 processors and give
you four DIMMs. There are other budget boards that are single
channel and have only three DIMM slots.
On the AMD side, the A7N8X-E Deluxe has three DIMM slots, and
is dual channel. Two DIMMs are on one channel, one on the other.
Three separate address busses are used for the DIMMs, which is
supposed to make driving the DIMMs easier. This board will take
an AthlonXP or a Mobile chip (suitable for overclocking etc).
If you want a newer solution, the K8V boards that the Athlon64
and have three slots for unbuffered (ordinary) DDR DIMMs. This
board and processor has some speed limits versus number of DIMMs
installed, so you cannot run the memory bus at top speed with
1.5GB of memory installed.
The Athlon FX (cousin of Opteron) is a dual channel processor
that uses registered memory. The Asus SK8V takes four registered
DIMMs, and can be populated with up to 8GB of memory at DDR400.
The processor is expensive, so check the prices of FX-51/FX-53
etc before buying a motherboard.
In both the Athlon64 and AthlonFX cases, the design is different
than normal, in that the processor drives the DIMMs directly,
versus the traditional approach of the Northbridge driving the
DIMMs and passing the data over the FSB. The limits you see
on type and number of DIMM in these cases, is caused by the
processor design and not the motherboard.
P4 3.2EE $912
P4 3.2C $279
AthlonXP 2500+ $ 80
Athlon64 3200+ $279
AthlonFX-53 2.4GHz $755
HTH,
Paul
