Hi, I am interested in purchasing the K8V-SE-Deluxe. I have a few questions:
1. should i purchase this board this time in the market? Should i wait? I
know they are moving across to socket 939/940 and the 754 seems to be a
limited form factor. I dont want to spend money on the 954 and later realise
i made a mistake and should have waited. But i guess everything moves fast
in the pc market. You can wait all your life. Anytime is a good time to get
in based on that premise?
2. I was interested in purchasing 1 x 512MB DDRRAM A-Data PC4000 500MHz.
Wouldnt this cause problems on the K8V since that mainboard is only rated to
PC3200, not PC4000 ? What RAM is recommended? Yes I might possibly like to
overclock.
3. Is this board good for overclocking?
4. Also where can i check up on the latest revision of this mainboard? I
don't want to be caught out in purchasing an old revision when a new one is
out.
5. In general, is this a good board to buy into? Or should I just get a
socket A? I want a Mobo/CPU/RAM that is cost effective. What Mobo/CPU/RAM
would be suggested? I like the K8V because it seems to be able to attach 6 x
IDE/ATA devices + 4 x SATA.
Thanks for any help!
sarah
All the info you need to make a decision is available on the web.
Anandtech and Tomshardware have reviews on S462, S754, S939. So,
you can compare performance on the various platforms.
Newegg has pricing info on all the motherboards, memory etc. You
can assemble a grocery list for each platform and make sample
pricing for yourself.
Then, plot performance, whether it is frame rate in your favorite
game or encoding program versus the price for the platform.
You didn't state what your budget was, nor your intended applications,
so we cannot be more specific without some idea of what you want to
do.
1) S754 is probably cheaper than S939 or S940. There will be some
"value" processors for that socket. S939 is for "drool worthy"
systems.
2) PC4000 is DDR500, and is overclocker memory. Only buy it if you
have a platform that runs at DDR500 or can be overclocked to that
level. If you know your platform cannot get to that level, buy a
slightly slower memory, with tighter memory timings (CAS2, CAS2.5).
3) It helps to have a motherboard with an AGP/PCI lock, and
that is something you can check for in the reviews that you read.
Without that, a K8V for example, would be limited to
200*75/66 = 227MHz, and a memory in sync with that would only be
running at DDR454. That is with a high end video card limited to
75MHz AGP bus. Some older video cards can run much faster, and
there are people who have overclocked higher. You need to check
the private forums, to find any record setting overclocks.
K8V (S754 Via K8T800) - no lock
K8N-E (S754 NF3 250GB) - lock
A8V (S939 Via K8T800 Pro) - lock on revision 2 only (wait a month)
SK8V (S940 Via K8T800) - no lock
SK8N (S940 NF3 150) - lock
The info in this table is extracted from the manuals, with the
exception of the A8V, where a recent announcement on Anandtech
about a new revision of the board changed the status of the lock.
If the motherboard manual has a BIOS entry to allow changing the
AGP frequency, that means there is a lock. Since the status of
locking on any motherboard requires experimental confirmation by
end users, you really need to read posts at abxzone, pcper, or
nforcershq, to see whether a given board is locked or not. Don't
believe my table above, because it could be wrong. An inability
to gain a high overclock is a sign that the lock might not be
working, for example.
If you are happy with a 10% overclock, then the K8V is good enough.
4) Board revision is not printed on the outside of the box. This
prevents "cherry picking". This is a good reason to buy locally -
my local computer store opened the box, so I could be sure I was
getting the revision I wanted. Online retailers generally cannot
do that, because the sales staff are seldom next to the shipping
and receiving area, so they simply cannot check. Some online
retailers understand the importance of revision, and have some
knowledge of what they are selling (not many).
5) There is nothing wrong with a Socket A board. Especially with
an Athlon XP-M mobile processor and some overclocking. It all
depends on your budget. You can always buy a PCI card with
PATA or SATA ports on it, if you need to connect more disk
drives. Too many drives isn't such a good idea anyway, as it
increases the odds of losing a disk. Put a minimum of disks on
your system, and buy ones small enough that they only have one
platter. For example, I like the Seagate 7200.7 80GB, because it
is a single platter drive. Such drives should run cooler and
quieter than a collection of monster drives. (I know, because
at one time, I had seven scsi drives in one case. They got
unbearable, when the IBM drive bearings became worn.)
HTH,
Paul
