New guy needs help choosing a board

[N30nGuY]

Hey guys, thanks to all who decided to give me some advice and those who have helped me on other threads. My plans to go intel just got put to sleep by my corporate office so I am going to be stuck with the system I have right now. I would like suggestions on a good board that I can use my current Athlon 64 x2 3800+ cpu but still has room for a good cpu upgrage in the future. My only real concern is I want one with a high speed LAN. I just found out I have been paying for elite high speed internet and can't even use because my board only supports 100Mbps. Anyways thanks for looking. I don't want to say price is not an issue because it obviously is, I want honest opinions not the most expensive board you can think of. Thanks in advance.

 

[trents]

I wouldn't put much weight on the high speed lan when choosing a board. In real life use of the internet you won't even come close to realizing the potential of high speed lan. If you are transferring large files or data bases between office computers linked locally then you would see some benefit, but not at home.

 

[N30nGuY]

oops

 

[N30nGuY]

If the 10/100/1000 LAN will not help me download faster my only concern is future upgrading. It says the board will run a Phenom II x3, I think I would be happy with that cpu. I have read its decent for gaming. My crappy little cpu I have now plays GTA IV flawlessly so I know it would have to be better.

 

[trents]

The PII 720 X3 is the sweet spot in AMD when you are on a budget, I think. Excellent choice. Prices should start dropping as we move into the holiday season and as new technology chips start coming out.

Have you looked at this motherboard?: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131595

No, the high speed lan will not help you download stuff from the internet any faster. The bandwidth of home cable modem service in real life is considerably less than even 10 mbps. My comcast service is rated at 7 mbps I think but in actual downloading I don't come close to that because of all the traffic on the internet, slow servers, etc.

 

[N30nGuY]

I had not looked at that board. I have an Nvidia card, I didn't know if the onboard ati would give me problems or not so I mainly focused on Nvidia chipsets. The other board I looked at was more than that but after the rebate they are the same price.

I never really paid much attention to actual speed of service I just told them I wanted the fastest internet they had when I was buying it. Now that I look into it, it says 6.0Mbps. Maybe I should look into Comcast if they have faster service. I just looked at my connection on my pc and it shows 100Mbps so I assumed my board had me limited. I guess its all lies then lol. Like I said before I don't much about what I am getting myself into. I just like playing games and don't want to spend $300 on a console that is limited at what it can do when I can build a pc that can do much more. I like good graphics but I am not a fanatic about it. I have GTA IV with the graphics set on the highest setting except texture is on medium and I turned something else to medium but cant recall, water texture or something. And I am very satisfied with the way the game looks. Grid also looks really great. But back to the point. Thanks for the board advice, it is definetly in my price range and added to my list of boards to consider.

 

[trents]

You're Nvidia card will work fine with an ATI chipset. Check my sig. I am running an Nvidia card with an ATI chipset. Unless you are wanting to run SLI (two nvidia video cards on one mother board working in synergy) it won't matter.

The 100 mbps on your connection reading is probably the port speed. The limiting factor is the bandwidth of the internet pipeline feeding it, i.e, 6 mbps. Even if you go to the Comcast service with 7 mbps you won't see much difference because in either case it is not actually functioning at even close to the rated theoretical transfer speed. There are too many factors upstream limiting the data flow. It's like buying a Corvette that will do 200 mph top speed but being forced to drive it on the interstate where the speed limit is 70 mph. You can get from 0-70 as you go up the on ramp much faster than the guy in the pickup truck but for a 100 mile trip how much faster will the Corvette reach its destination? Not much. Will the Corvette do 200 mph. Yes. No lie. But the limiting factor of the speed limit (and all the construction zones along the way) nullifies the horsepower advantage and makes the extra money for the Corvette a wasted outlay.

It's not "all lies" exactly. It's just, well, marketing hype.

 

[N30nGuY]

I don't know anything about SLI so I can live without it.