Upgrading to a AMD Athlon 64 but which asus mobo is best? Please advise.

[Sammy Smith]

Hello, Well after being disappointed in Itel's P4 775 socket, I'm
going for AMD64. I have seen good reviews of the AMD Athlon 64 X2
3800+ 1GHz FSB 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
* Model #: ADA3800BVBOX

My last AMD (which I still use) Asus mobo, is an A7N8X-Deluxe
with 2600+ Barton core.

My question is which ASUS mobo is best suited for the AMD64 CPU and
preferred by this group?

I need an Asus that supports dual core. Of course I'm all ears if you
think ASUS is not the brand to choose (ive had so-so with biostar and
gigabyte) but since my A7N8X-Deluxe I have been sold on ASUS.

TIA

 

[Mercury]

If you want 939 that leaves one family of boards - A8N. The A8N comes in 4
variants - A8N-E which is non-SLI and the others 3 are SLI. Take a look at
the web site www.asus.com.tw for details.

There is a new 939 pin board out - you may see it on the web site. It is
also SLI, but the second PCI-e slot can also be used as a peripheral x8
channel. These were announced a few weeks ago so should stat appearing
around now - forgot the model number

All the above support X2 & FX chips along with the original 64bit XP family.

When buying the board I suggest you state the requirement that you have an
X2 chip and the board is to come with a BIOS that supports it - some of the
older boards still in stock may have old bios versions that may not support
the X2 chip. I suggest that whatever board you decide to get, if getting
from a shop them know what the minimum bios version is from the support
pages at asus... and check the label on the bios chip youself.

The Asus boards are as good as any - in some reviews others have come in a
whisker ahead in performance or had better OC options, but if you want
reliability then get Asus...

HTH

 

[Sammy Smith]

You wouldnt happen to know the name of that new "939 pin board" would
you?

 

[Bowgus]

I'm upgrading myself. I'm interested primarily in gaming performance at
reasonable cost. So my plan is the asus A8N32-SLI (when the "32" is
available) so that I have the option of upgrading later on to 2 7800 boards
.... and get that extra SLI-AA performance with x16 both boards. And I'm
thinking AMD 4000+ (not dual core, but dual core would not be of benefit to
me) will more than meet my requirements ... that's my plan. From what I've
read, the A8N-SLI series support the dual core (64X2s), and are all solid
boards

 

[Mercury]

Take a look at this page:

http://www.asus.com.tw/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=15

The new board is the A8N32-SLI family. A8N5X is also a new board...

A8N = nvidia chipset family (preferred for reliability)
A8V = Via chipset family - economy models, well reviewed though.

People will often avoid new model boards as
1. the bios is also new and may take some time to settle,
2. a new h/w revision board may come out 3-6 months later fixing some
usually very minor things...

Given that the A8N family has been out for yonks, the new A8N32 can be seen
as a revision... so should be quite good from day 1. All versions of this
board - because they are new - will come with X2 support in the BIOS, so
thats 1 minor issue sorted.

HTH