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Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
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Help me choose a mobo-processor combo.
I am looking for a motherboard-processor combination that will cost up to around 200 dollars US (for just the mother and proc) and will maximize performance. As I respect the opinions of my fellow LQ addics, I thought I would ask for suggestions. Here is what I will be using it for.
Obvious day to day activities
Dual booting RH9 and Win2K
Gaming (Prep for Doom3)
Some video editing (w/radeon all-in-wonder)
Lots of music editing.
programming
etc etc.
This would be my suggestion. Rock solid board, with the Nforce chipset and an athlon 2700 to boot.
Now, I know that some people have had problems on certain distro's with drivers for the Nforce, but I think that most of those problems have been taken care of.
Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
Original Poster
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Thanks for the suggestion. I found a delux edition of that board with two NICs and onboard 6 channel sound. Very tempting.
Any other candidates?
And what about graphics cards. Things have come a long way since I bought my non-radeon ATI all-in-wonder card. Should I go with an all-in-wonder or get a seperate tv-card?
Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
Original Poster
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Thanks for the input Slight. I ordered the deluxe model of that board with the 2700 and 512 in DDR400 ram. The reason I did this is I needed to get my wife a desktop (her laptop is failing) and she doesn't need any more power than my current desktop has (Athlon 1.3, 512, K7S5A) and I figured we could both score If I upgraded. :-)
You might want to try www.pricewatch.com or www.tigerdirect.com . They both usually have pretty good deals on hardware. I've picked up a bunch of stuff at pricewatch when building machines from scratch and was pretty happy with it.
Just from my own experience, ECS motherboards can be hit-or-miss. My guess is that it's a Q/C issue.
do you live near a fry's electronics store? if so, they sometimes have fantastic
deals on cpu-mobo combos.
like this past wed - thur:
ECS k7VTA3 (Via KT333 mobo) + Athlon XP 2600 for $106! (and i think the
cpu is a barton -- because last week they had the exact same combo for $160
and i inquired and found that the XP 2600 in that ad was a barton).
Unfortunately sales are short lived and prices fluctuate a bit. (not to mention
service that really sucks) usually though, about 1 week per month you'll
get a really good deal there.
Also of note, from time to time there, you'll see an ECs mobo + athlon xp 1800
for $59. (since i'm in l.a. i can check www.latimes.com ad section every Mon.
Wed. and Fri)
I also do a bit of music work and am looking to buy Suse 9.0 because I hear
good things about it when it comes to audio.
One thing I notice that *REALLY* makes a big difference is disk (and controller
to some degree) when dealing with a/v editing (though not pure
softsynths--unless it's some multitrack combination with synth/sampler)
I think using 3 of those 15k rpm fujitsus in a raid 0 array with XFS or JFS
would scream! of course this is with software raid.. centrix-intl.com has some
linux supported HW raid (mylex - now lsi logic) controllers .. axiontech.com
sometimes have very limited quantities of nice raid controllers (but bare) as
well.
.... now going over your $200 budget, athlon mp mobo (using two L5 modified
athlon xp cpus) with 64-bit / 66 mhz pci, with U320 controller and 6 scsi 15k
rpm hds in hw raid 5 (just in case) ..
Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
Original Poster
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I don't live near a Fry's unfortunatly. I ordered the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe with a Athlon 2800+ from newegg.
I am sooo mad at Worst Buy right now. I went there yesterday to pick up a NVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (on sale) and their sales guy talked me into the Radeon 9200 instead. He said he personally benchmarked them and the ATI card won. I then go to HardOCP and find the benchmarks were a landslide in NVidias favor between the two. Back to bestbuy I go. :-(
He said he presonally benchmarked them? AND YOU BELIEVED HIM?!?!?!?!?
BestBuy hates me anyway. I usually go there only for a very specific item, and almost always I end up fending off sales people and fighting to get to the checkout. It is fun to make their 'techies' look stupid, though.
Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
Original Poster
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Quote:
Originally posted by slightcrazed He said he presonally benchmarked them? AND YOU BELIEVED HIM?!?!?!?!?
slight
I know. I feel like a fool . I guess I was nervous about buying a NVidia graphics board, as I have used ATI exclusivly for over 10 years. What was I thinking? I didn't open it and I am going to go switch it out for the FX 5200 Ultra.
My parts arrived from Newegg!!! Four days early.
I can't wait to put everything together tonight....
Thanks for all the advice slight. I will be posting from a bad*ss system tomorrow.
One thing to mention (and I kick myself for not bringing it up earlier) is that I think most AthlonXPs (OEM) ship with a very generic heatsink, and I should have mentioned that a high quality heat sink is a *must*. If you did get an OEM chip, I would strongly suggest some better cooling. If you got a retail Athlon chip, then it probably has an OK heatsink, although an upgrade is never a bad idea.
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