Well it seems the majority of you prefer Asus over the other selections I have offered in the poll.
I've been doing more reasearch over the past few weeks than I've done since high school (though that really isn't saying much ) and have come across the good and the bad of pretty much every major brand and a few not so major ones. Pretty much every mfgr has duds, and most mfgr's have atleast one great product.

I plan to order my parts somewhere about the 19th of this month, and have decided on an Asus mainboard. While searching and deciding, I've accumulated a bookmarks list of (so far) no less than SEVENTY-NINE Canadian mail-order retailers, having gotten fed up with all the American ones who won't ship to us. So if anyone wants to know where to shop online in Canada, lol just ask!

Having spent a fair bit of time on the Asus servers and forums, I cannot say much for their support system, however contrary to many reports of horrid customer service from that company, I was quite pleased with the replies I got to inquiries, when they finally got back to me.

Now, to veer onto a slight tangent here, I have a related question. I can't really figure out, even after cruising through motherboards.org, tomshardware, intel, [HARD]OC (sp?), overclockers.net and a number of other tech-testing review places, whether I would be better off (performance-wise) with a larger CPU cache, or more RAM; All those video-game and video-encoding benchmarks don't really tell me much, because that stuff isn't 'real-world performance' in my world.

Because of budget limitations, the debate is like so (because I am trying to throw a cheap PCI-E video card into the mix too; if I skip the video card, I can get a E4300 AND 1GB of RAM; but I want 2 or more displays, like I had before the meltdown); SO:

1) An E2160 Pentium dual core (1MB L2 cache) and 1GB of DDR2-PC5300 RAM (2x512) in dual-channel mode,
-OR-
2) An E4300 C2D (2MB L2 cache) and 512MB of DDR2-PC5300 RAM on single-channel.

The processors are otherwise identical, besides the L2 cache. I don't play video games at all either, so I'm talking about compiling, running applications, system responsiveness, having 50 tabs open in firefox and 30 text documents open, playing the odd DVD onto the TV, and that sort of stuff. So, anyone with an opinion is welcome to comment here. And for the record, I previously only ever had 512MB of RAM in my machine anyways, and never had any out-of-memory issues, so.. Whaddya think?

Thanks everyone!
SV

PS - thanks to whomever(s) it were who steered me away from the Pentium D 9xx series. Besides the bad heat levels and power usage, the newer E chips simply kick their butts!

From your last choice I'd vote for 1), but instead of 2x512mb buy 1x1024mb. That makes upgrading cheaper on the long run ...

I would go for option 2.. then add another 512MB in a couple weeks or a month when you get more cash, cause that large cache should pay off in the long run.

i would go with option 1, faster ram

I have been using ASUS and Asrock for the last year. That Asrock was a bit of a cheapo but it's perfectly fine so sharp pricing doesn't necessarily imply poor quality. I must have been one the first to adopt Core 2 Duos - received them right on the day that they were released - and less than a year later, the prices of all of the parts have dropped by 40 to 50%, even more. I can now get 6GB of DDR2 RAM for the money I paid my 2GB
Besides, getting something that has been around for a little while has other advantages. You can at least check for compatibility. By the time people began reporting issues with my sort of hardware (the infamous jmicron story etc), I had already plucked my scalp...

Btw, I would seriously doubt that Dual Pentiums and Core 2 Duos are identical unless the Pentium does at least twice as many Ghz.

Every piece of hardware, including motherboards, are great - it's just that you have a sucky operating system if it doesn't work nicely so..quite useless poll (why do you create polls if there is no sane idea behind it?)

Thanks for the input, B0uncer but besides giving me some useful food for thought, the 'useless' thread/poll *has* served another purpose: it gave you a place to put your useless commentary!
May I suggest you refer to your own signature on occasion.

@ Jay73 - the 2160 and the 4300 are both based on the 'Allendale' model, which according to Intel docs (which I have printed out here for reference) the significant difference is cache size. The 'Pentium' name resurrected for the 2xxx chips, but nothing more. Atleast, that's what I gather from reading.

Sounds like you've been busy researching all the options GrapefruiTgirl, good to see you go for an Intel chip right now imo. And yes, you are spot on with the new Pentium chips being basically Core processors with cut down cache.

I currently have 2 gigabyte's running at the moment, a GA-K8VM800M (8VM800, 754, AGP), and a GA-M61SME-S2 (nForce4 405, AM2, PCI-E). Both run like charms, with XP, and with 32-bit openSuSE 10.2. I have also had a couple of ASUS' (a P2-99, and another one, I forget which). Both of them are still running perfectly.

Try for AMD, as I've found that they're actually a better chip manufacturer. The "higher" performance of intel, along with their marketing, is pushing up the CPU prices, while AMD is getting less sales, therefore having to bring prices down. So you pretty much get a better CPU, for alot less.

Glad to be of assisstance (if any).

Matt.

Well, I am very happy to say "It's done!"
Motherboard on order as of last night, hopefully will arrive middle of next week, followed soon thereafter by an E2160 and some cheap RAM and a cheap video card.
I ultimately went with an MSI nVidia P6N SLI-FI, as it was the absolute best bang for my available buck @ $130.00 CAD, and I have faith in and experience with MSI stuff. And there's loads of room for expansion and better memory and video when money permits.
My dead MSI board treated me extremely well while it lasted, and MSI support has always been great to me.

Board: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p...LI-FI&class=mb

And now, I am glad to be taking a welcome break from online shopping. Holy crow, I've seen enough retail websites to last me 10 years

That's good news. Are you going to get back to your customising Slackware project?

I have that mobo. Good choice. I like the 2 ide ports. It overclocks fairly well. I may get another. Although abit is my fave, I also like msi.

@ BrianL - most definitely once I do several things:

1 - assemble the new computer
2 - reconfigure my running OS, get the video up & running, etc, and get accustomed to the new system, play with the BIOS, that sort of thing.
2.5 - Learn if there's anything to optimize differently for my new system as far as my recompilation project goes;
3 - Investigate the most significant changes in Slackware 12 since it has been released and see if there's anything I should re-upgrade above and beyond what GCC, glibc, etc etc that I have currently been working with.
4 - and finally, reaquaint myself with the daily operation of my own Slackware OS, as it must have been like a month or so now since I've used Linux at all, since my poor MSI 845PE bought the farm (R.I.P. you were a great board) so it's probably fair to say I'll be a touch rusty for the first little bit, having only switched to Linux back in December.

Short answer - YEP, I'll be back at it! Though I am flying to Manitoba in mid August and Driving back home to Nova Scotia from there so I'll be MIA for a week or two.

@ Crenclan - I'm happy to know you (among many others) are enjoying this board. The two IDE ports was important to me too, and it was KILLING me trying to get a good, current-technology motherboard that I felt would be dependable & fast.
My budget has out of necessity gotten higher than I had planned on (by almost 100%), but more out of necessity than for want of 'higher level' stuff. It wasn't as simple an upgrade as I had planned on, but there was no way in heck I was gonna afford to replace half or all of my IDE drives, AND the board, AND the memory, AND the video card, AND the processor, when initially I was simply looking for a new processor one thing led to another...
I won't be overclocking much, if at all, at first till I get a feel for how the whole thing runs at stock levels, but at some point I'll experiment some if need be. I have read tonnes of reviews and reports about the board, and about the Exxx processors, and am pretty impressed that these little things (E2160's) will clock well past 3.0GHz without a hitch, on air cooling. Not bad at all. Of course, right now I'm expecting only 512MB of cheap OCZ memory and a $50 PCI-E card, so the infrastructure really isn't there yet for a major overclock anyway.
I'll just be VERY HAPPY to have my computer back

How is the MSI board running for you? I've heard mixed reviews of them, but it sounds like everyone here really likes them.

Personally, I absolutely hate ASUS boards from my experience with them personally and through experience repairing client's HP computers with ASUS boards. I personally think they are pure trash, and would never reccomend them in a place where stability and compatability were very important. However, that's just my opinion - don't think I'm starting an argument here!

I do have to put a good word in for the Biostar boards as well. I'm kind-of leary on their regular series boards, but their T series boards are fantastic. I have used 10 of them already and only one had a slight issue with not posting sometimes until the reset button was pressed. 9/10 working flawlessly is IMO great for motherboards - as we all know motherboards have this tendency to be DOA much more than other parts such as the CPU, RAM or Hard Drive. The board I've been using is the T-series nVidia 6100/403 based boards. I have used 1 of the socket 754 a while back, 2 of the 939's, and 7 of the AM2 model. That model was recently discontinued in favor of the nVidia 7025 based board, but the client needed the serial port and it was not offered on the newer model. I instead had it exchanged for an Abit socket AM2 nVidia 6100/405 chipset-based system, and was just as impressed.

My favorites are Biostar T-Series, Abit, and I've had limited experience but good luck with Gigabyte. I've used a lot of Gigabyte's passively cooled video cards and have been very impressed with them as well. For processor, obviously AMD running on an nVidia chipset. I do prefer ATI video cards, however, and when building gaming PCs for customers who want more than one video card, I like the ATI Radeon Xpress 1600 CrossFire chipset. Otherwise, ATI cards run perfectly fine on the nVidia 6100/403 chipset. AMD has a great price/performance ratio and their low energy usage and heat make them great, espeically if combined with cool-n-quiet. On top of that, there's no stopping an AMD chip on an nVidia chipset, it's rock solid stable.

I've had two ASUS mobos, both worked great out of the box. One was a P4C800-E deluxe which was killed by a power supply failure and replaced with a P4S800D-E, which has been working great for about 18 months.