Well, i'm getting rather bored and frustrated searching through pages of computer hardware for this, so I decided to just ask here!

It seems, now, every motherboard I look at proclaims how it has "integrated" AC 97 sound... Intel.. blah 8?? video, and all sorts of other, sometimes, rather useless crap!

So basically I'm assuming if you buy a motherboard now you have to accept it being filled full of things that you immediately have to disable in order to put in any "real" hardware?

Or is there someplace out there with motherboards with a few less "integrated" features...

I mean, onboard sound, video, lan, irda, usb, firewire, 6 harddrive protocals, 3 power supply features and advanced blah blah blah...
Just isnt what I want?

I'd rather have some of these features be non-integrated.

For part 2 of my question,
I know the Athlon 64's just came on the market, but does anyone know of a non-NVIDIA NFORCE motherboard? Heh, just picky I guess. Wondering why I should be using an NVIDIA chipset and a Ati Radeon Video card. lol

Oh, and it has to be socket 940, as I'm peeking at getting an FX-51, not the normal 64. The 1600Mhz frontside bus seems to be a great improvement in performance...

Just pick a brand you like and then search their site. Most do have models that don't come with integrated hardware.

I personally don't like this either, tend to only buy where most of the components I have to be installed separately.

Right now Athlon 64 motherboards are very limited. Those types of boards are towards people that want all the bells and whistles. Also its cheap to intergrate devices in the motherboard. Nvidia chipsets for Opterons and Athlon 64 FX-51 are clocked at 700 MHz. VIA chips are clocked at 800 MHz. Both have the same performance. Opterons and Athlon 64 memory bus speeds are set a ratio of 1:1. An 2.4 gigahertz Athlon 64 FX-51 has a 2.4 gigahertz memory bus.

A new type of case is coming out soon that will make ATX obsolete. The new case is BTX. It designed to move more heat out of the case than just circluating the heat that ATX cases do.

Another PCI technology called PCI Express is coming soon, so waiting is good advise right now.

Hrm, that's odd. The boards I came up with were clocked at 1600Mhz and needed... PC4000 paired ram chips?

And yes, I've heard of BTX, but, unless it comes out at the same price as ATX, I doubt I'll go with it.

As far as PCI Express. Arent those the Dinky half sized PCI card slots that they put computer modems and video cards in sometimes, the ones that never work with linux?

Opteron and Althon 64 FX are clocked at 800 MHz. You are getting confused of FSB and HyperTransport. Both are different. Read the datasheets for AMD processors. HyperTransport can be clocked at 1600 MHz but technology right now can not come close to 1 gigahertz with out having stablity problems.

AMD, VIA, and Nvidia chipsets needs a group of two DDR modules because the bus width is 128 bits. Also they are only designed to clock memory at 333 although buying 400 MHz memory or 500 MHz won't hurt.

PCI Express or PCI-X is different than the slot that you seen with modems. The slots that you seen for modems are CNR and ANR slots. These slots are software based. PCI-X is not softeware based, but they extend the features that PCI has to an extreme level. PCI-X can be clocked as high as 100 MHz with a bandwidth of 64 bits. Its a PCI slot with an additional pins. PCI -X might replace AGP.

If motherboard manufactures switch to BTX, they will not be compatible with ATX cases. BTX motherboards will be compatible with ATX power supplies though.

I still suggest you wait until next year.

BTW, it looks like Tyan has the best features of all Opteron motherboards that I have seen. I don't know if they can handle Athlon 64 FX chips.

Try www.newegg.com go to AMD motherboards and search the socket that you desire.

Thanks flysideways. First usefull post.

That site is great. It pointed out a lot. Including, problems.
Such as.. searched both amd and intel, for "No integrated audio"..

Results.. None.. The site did pull up a few boards, but they all said onboard/integrated audio someplace. So all were mistakes.

Although I guess a couple of the intel were ok. They had audio systems that only functioned if you bought an Optional, pin plugin, card/cable combo that added the audio and joystick ports.

At least though, I found plenty without onboard video. And plenty of non-nvidia chipsets.

So, thanks Again. I'll recommend this site to any and all motherboard searchers

Seems that buying a motherboard these days is like buying a car and being told the the leather seats and surround sound with amp are a pre-requisite.

I tested Asus A7n266-VM in Mandrake9 .It is good for linux
Asus A7n266-VM
( Built upon the advanced nForce chipset architecture, the A7N266-E features powerful GeForce2 level 3D graphics, Dolby digital 5.1 audio and integrated LAN for an all-in-one solution with unmatched performance and value.)
All thing work good.
I think nvida onboard (Graphic card, sound card ...)
working with linux.


maybe
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe work with linux I dont test it.