General newbie Mobo questions

Well to cut it short im after a new motherboard, but i have very little knowledge on them. So without going into exact models which brands represent good value for money and are stable, etc.
What kinda chip do i want? KT400? Nforce2? enlighten me
Also, what other standards should I be looking for? What Things/brands should i avoid?

Thanks,
Aldred_85

I know I'm not as heavy as most of the grizzly veterans on these forums but here's my advice:

1. Buy an Abit or MSI, they are the only boards I have used with no problems...
2. If you plan on playing heavily and don't mind fishing through a few problems, get an nForce2 board.
3. If you aren't going to O/C or get fishy, go with the KT400 because every almost every VIA based board I've worked on has been good to me and the user.
4. Make sure it supports the Front-Side Bus your proc is using and maybe higher for upgrading in the future. (Example: an AMD 2200+ uses a 266 Mhz FSB, get a board with up to 400 Mhz FSB so you can buy that Barton 3200+ down the road...)
5. Avoid ASUS, Gigagarbage, ePOS..I mean Epox, and ECS (which stands for Extremely Cheap S@#!).
6. If you want good onboard sound, go with the nForce2 boards, the Dolby Digital/Soundstorm rock.

Like I said, I haven't been posting on this forum since Hector was a pup like some of these fellas, but in concensus here's what it boils down to:

- If you want an excellent O/Cing board with good on-board sound, buy an Abit NF7-S Version 2.0 (Contact ExcaliberPC if you wan't to buy one cause they guarantee you it will be a v2.0 board)

- If you want stability and don't want to risk having to buy Rogaine to regrow your hair after you ripped it out because of a simple BIOS setting that is causing you problems, try out an MSI KT4VL. They are only like $75 nowadays and they work great.


Good luck...

Oh yeah, and replace that ram before it starts to grow roots...Just a suggestion...

I would have to say go for the new NForce2 Ultra. It supports the new 200FSB which means you can upgrade to the 3200 Barton. As for brand my vote goes for the Chaintech Zenith Ultra.

Strangely enough i've been reading up on the MSI K7N2-L... But read one review which put me right off. Will I really notice much of a perforamnce gain from the upgrade to K7N2-L ftom a A7V8X?

Oh, one more thing... Are there any new standards/interfaces coming up soon? I heard something about a speedy pci? or is the 462 about to be phased out with a super duper thing that isnt much better but renders the majority of my stuff useless?

Oh and what was ment by "Change that ram before it grow roots"?

manhart welcome to the forums

By saying growing roots I mean it's old as dirt. Well, it's not that old, but if you want the full capabilities of a fast proc and mobo, then you should try to get ram that will run at the same speed as your FSB. By doing that you will have faster data transfer between the proc and ram, making your system faster.

There is a new interface that is coming out, but I have no idea when...It's called PCI Express and will replace AGP and PCI. The "AGP" version will be able to handle data transfers of 8GB/s and be able to handle a lot more power, getting rid of those darned power cables coming off the video card. But like I said I have no idea when that standard will come to be, and if you ask me, they will probably phase it in like they did AGP. Card manufacturers will probably make a PCI/AGP and PCI Express version of cards, and then eventually stop making the former of the two.

Hope I didn't offend ya with that old as roots saying, just trying to have a little fun so I don't die too early (smoking's helping with that already...).

If it was me, I'd keep that A7V8X, because even switching to an nForce2 board you won't see much of an improvement. But some people are picky and 2 more 3DMarks makes a difference to them, it's just I can't notice 1 more fps in a game with my dull human senses. It's your call man, but stick with that ASUS if it's not giving you any problems. That way you'll have money to buy that mobo in the future that uses a built in wireless cold-fusion power supply, built in GeForce SUX 19000, and wireless holographic monitor so you can just meet the minimum requirements for Doom 4.

Take it easy, and if it's easy, take it twice...