New Desktop Motherboard
 

I'm thinking about a new desktop motherboard. My primary concerns:

* If possible I prefer to avoid UEFI.

* If possible I prefer Intel graphics chip sets.

I realize Slackware supports UEFI. Further, if a user has no need to boot into Windows 8 then the topic largely is moot. I don't know whether UEFI is needed for Windows 7. That said, I prefer to avoid UEFI.

I'm not a laptop fan yet one aspect I like about my Thinkpad T400 is the Intel graphics just work. No mussing and fussing with proprietary drivers. I am growing weary of the never ending updates with proprietary nvidia drivers and I'm not yet fond of nouveau.

Comments and suggestions appreciated. :)

Edit: The above implies on-board graphics. :)

I think all motherboards support "legacy BIOS" booting (my new one does that by default), and it's easier to find an i[375] processor with onboard graphics and a motherboard with an HDMI port, than ones that don't have those.

In case you're wondering, I have this motherboard:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H87PLUS/

Shows how much I've kept pace with hardware the past few years. :) Looks like I satisfy my second concern by using an Intel CPU.

Now to learn the real-world electrical consumption with the latest breed of Intel multi-core CPUs.

Greetings
Yeah forget laptops. With phones hitting 4GB Ram and multiple cores, and the versatility, power, and upgrade-ability of desktops, and with everything going touch-screen, factor in tablets and I predict traditional laptop sales will level off then fall.

As for your desktop, I have one question - I have never heard anyone say (admit?) they actually prefer Intel graphics, why you? Admittedly they have recently made some leaps and we have to give credit where it's due that they are apparently investing pretty strongly in developing decent Linux drivers. However that day isn't here quite yet, that is if you want serious 3D acceleration.

IMHO and after some 20 years on non-windows boxes (my first GUI was IBM OS2 2.0) nVidia has always and still does provide the easiest and best serious support for the alternative world. If performance isn't a major issue for you, Ivy Bridge and onward Intel Graphics with the OSS kernel driver is moderately good. Give them maybe 2 years and they may have something sweet for Linux users. Yes, I know AtI has had more than 4 years and still can't seem to write a decent driver, but Intel does appear more committed. For now, I suggest you decide what level of performance will suit you before you commit. I have never felt forced to upgrade my proprietary nVidia drivers, but if you boot to CLI it's a trivial 5 minute job, including download.

At least for the time being you don't have to worry about UEFI for Linux or Win 7.

Even though I use and recommend nVidia, my present main system ran the onboard Intel Graphics for a few months and it was decent. BTW I tried Intel's own (presently pita install process) accelerated Linux driver and found it to not be sufficiently better than the kernel driver to bother, but that is apparently and hopefully changing.

FWIW I am very pleased with my Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 with i5-3550 CPU and Corsair ram and expect I will get a solid 5 year cycle out of it. BTW zero issues with 3 distros. Everything just works.

I'm not dissatisfied with nvidia on my current desktop as much as I'm weary of the never ending updating. The older I get the crankier I get. Or lazier, but I don't know whether there is a difference. :) A few things on the computer I'm tired of endlessly updating.

When I bought my T400 used this summer I immediately noticed I did nothing to get the video to work. I installed 14.0 and X just worked. After years of building an nvidia package I was impressed.

Overall I find the T400 graphics faster than my desktop nvidia 6150. No drivers to build either. I'm not a gamer. I don't use 3D much anyway.

I do a lot of software compiling, which is why I am thinking new hardware. I don't need screaming graphics. Just adding a faster CPU and SATA III likely will double the speeds I'm seeing now with my Asus M2NPV-VM and AMD 2.3 GHz BE-2400. Integrated graphics with the new CPUs will be faster than what I have grown accustomed. Been a nice system for 5 years but I'm slowly growing impatient with compile times. :)

Good to know although at the moment I am not planning to dual boot anything.

Thank you. Looks like a contender for my list. Has a PS2 port (I won't give up my old Northgate Omnikey Ultra keyboard without a long bitter fight. :))

That's all I want: Just works. :)

I think at this point anything is going to be faster than a GeForce 6150SE. Intel, AMD/ATI, or Nvidia again. You could easily get a low-end GeForce G/GT series desktop graphics card.

However, my question is why specifically Intel? Intel in my opinion is severely overpriced compared to offerings from AMD not to mention that most of AMD's latest offerings carry 8-12 cores per CPU. Clock for clock, you're spending anywhere from 50-90% less for the AMD CPU than you are for the Intel one.

For build time comparison, the most core logical processors for Intel is only 6 compared to AMD's 8, and AMD has about a full GHz in speed over Intel now. For anyone seriously concerned with compile times, the extra speed and cores that make can utilize seriously put Intel at a disadvantage. The price factor should therefore completely nullify what Intel can offer at comparison.

To me the AMD-FX 9590 8-core 5.0GHz CPU @ $400.00 is a hell of a bargain compared to the Intel i7-4960 6-core 4.0 GHz @ $1059.00... but that's my 2 cents.

With respect to the original post, the point was I'm tired of building video drivers. Not a skill or knowledge issue. I'm just getting old, cranky, and lazy. That said, if I continue building proprietary drivers, I'll pick nvidia any day over radeon/catalyst. I'm not going down the radeon/catalyst road. At all. That said, if I don't build any video drivers at all, which was the case with the T400 that impressed me, then I'll be even less cranky. :)

You read way too deep into my statement. Yes I compile a lot. Yes, anything new I buy will be twice as fast as my current system. Or faster. I'll be happy with that. I'm not interested in heating the office with the new hardware or in doubling the electric bill. :)

I'm not paying anything like that. Not even close.

Some clarications abou the number of logical and virtual cores on AMD and Intel CPUs:
While AMD claims that there FX8xxx/FX9xxx CPUs are 8-core CPUs they are not. These CPUs are 4-module CPUs, with each module containing two integer cores and one floating point unit. While this is a very advanced form of SMT it is still not the case that these CPUs actually have the performance of real 8-cores. You can see that in many benchmarks, where AMD's top of the line CPUs are beaten down by Intel's 4-core CPUs with Hyperthreading (and often even by those without Hyperthreading).

So saying that AMD has 8-core CPUs, but Intel only comes down to six is inherently wrong, you have to compare these CPUs with looking at their SMT features. This means that comparable to the AMD FX8xxx/9xxx series are the four core i5/i7 CPUs. AMD has no CPU (in the desktop market) that is comparable (in price and performance) to Intel's 6-core i7 CPUs (which feature 12 logical cores).

Also, if you compare benchmarks of CPUs from Intel and AMD in the same price range you will find that there is no advantage for AMD in the price/performance ratio. That was the case back in the days, but is not anymore.

It is only a bargain because you compare two CPUs from a totally different class. The FX9590 is nowhere near the performance of the Intel CPU, its direct competitor is the 4770K from Intel, which is listed around 340$ at Newegg.

Thanks for the information TobiSGD. At this point I have little to no faith in AMD graphics and the AMD graphics support history speaks for itself. The discussion in that area is moot. :)

Currently I'm liking the 4th generation Intel APUs/CPUs and I'm finding favorable reviews. A tad pricey, but I figure the system should provide contentment for 5 years. As I mentioned, I'm not a gamer and have no critical 3D demands. Thus integrated graphics will be fine. I don't know that I need 6 cores --- 4 cores will be a jump up from my dual core. Overall, any new system will be super fast compared to my present dual core system.

Absolutely agreed! For 2D emphasis (or relative lack of 3D) even a $100 card will not even bother to look back and grin as it crushes the 6150SE. This minimal concern for 3D caused me to recall many years ago when I first booted my system with a brand new Matrox Mystique which literally dropped my jaw at the improved contrast and clarity. I looked them up for grins but they seem to be in a streaming niche market now. I don't know if anyone makes a superb 2D card anymore, but as for speed, that's easy these days.

If all you need is decent 2D performance your idea of an Intel Onboard is workable since the kernel driver is pretty darned good and as you said, Woodsman, ultra easy. (I still don't understand why you upgraded nVidia driver so much)(

Don't worry, we aren't going to devolve into Ford vs/ Chevy here, at least with me since I don't have a strong bias to either. I do have a strong bias to bargain tho. My previous CPU purchase was an AMD-FX57 which despite my polishing and overclocking the bejeezus out of still runs fast today and make no mistake, just because it is single core does not make it a slouch since so little software still really takes advantage of multi-cores. That was a $1000+ US CPU when it was released and I waited like a vulture as prices fell and managed to get in on a batch that lasted only 2 weeks selling for $257 US :D

My latest machine is only 5 months old yet I chose Intel and an i5-3550 at that. I researched for months to find it hit a price and bang-for-buck I could not exceed with any other product from anybody. We all know there is more to speed than just cores and clocks and it is heavily dependent on what you crunch.

In all except the lower echelon, under $300, benchmark testing shows Intel tends to edge out AMD at real-world jobs like decoding mpegs, and eats them alive at 3D CAD/Gaming. If I were to compare an Intel to the AMD 220 Watt 8-core w/ 8MB Cache, above, I would look at the 6-core 130 Watt i7 3900 series w/ 12MB cache and huge PciEx lanes that sells for between $500-600, but then my preference isn't high core count. Wattage = heat = throttling. For what I do I'd probably go for something like the i7-4770 series w/ 8MB cache, huge lanes, but only 4 cores that sells for between $300-$400.

The bottom line is any $500 CPU is going to be fast. If you don't wish to spend a lot of time researching you're still going to see a handsome speed increase... but if you're a bargain hunter start researching socket upgrade path, application to the specific work you do, heat removal (I think the AMD comes with a liquid cooler) etc to see what suits you best.

Bugs. Updating kernels. Updating Slackware releases. Free/libre software is much fun and liberating, but the fast moving targets are a PITA. Every time something changes, something else breaks. :)

After many hours of reading, I'm leaning toward an i7. A little future proofing. The newer 4th generation Intel CPUs were designed with energy conservation in mind. They have the muscle needed to heavy work but at idle the chips fall way down with energy consumption.

If you don't want to rebuild drivers you should just use VESA or FBDev. Even Intel drivers have to be rebuilt against various kernels, libdrm, libmesa, etc. packages so saying you don't want to rebuild Nouveau or Xorg-Radeon is very fickle an argument.

Plus, those claims about AMD. Need proof and non-biased references please. I've seen too much bias towards Intel in my days with overhyped and overexaggerated claims about Intel being oh-so better than AMD. Sorry but no.

Greetings
This I found in less than a minute but I assure you as I belong to an Overclockers club and forums as well as subscribe to a few magazines, this is common.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

When one looks carefully, and without presumption, one begins to see the simple effectiveness of market forces. Both AMD and Intel have been at this game a long time and they haven't survived this long by alienating their customer base or reducing sales by overpricing. In general, and if at all careful, we get what we pay for, as long as we know what we're paying for..

The only caveat is that some at the high end deliver status, peace of mind (to some)et cetera so a few special bargains exist where all one wants is performance and status be damned. You may notice that the AMD 9590 is indeed a true bargain. It isn't fair to compare server chips with desktop chips but it is a simple matter to omit those and see that the AMD at roughly $300 requires from Intel a desktop chip at almost $600 to beat it, and it trounces many desktop chips at nearly $1000. It is surely one of those special bargains especially in a full size case where cooling is more effective.

However the model you compared to would eat it for a snack and not even belch.

Woodsman another point is that mobos are not build to last nowadays and buying an older generation mobo usually means something that was collecting dust for a few years.
That said, depends on your CPU and other hardware. a full PC might be a simpler/easier solution and not THAT expensive.
My current setup has http://ark.intel.com/products/75043
and a http://www.gigabyte.us/products/prod...px?pid=4516#ov (can turn off uefi)
Unless you are a heavy gamer, the GPU on that is all that you need, and later kernels have a good support for those.

Hi
I have to disagree with the first statement since there seems to be a flock of ruggedized motherboards marketed these days and these guys tend to have their "finger on the pulse" of what feature will sell and what gets passed over. This is but one example, but Gigabyte has not one but several Series labeled "Ultra Durable" and lately many ITX boxes are available that are designed to withstand higher temperatures. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this as a popular trend, despite the fact that most people do a complete base upgrade within 5 years.

For the second part, did I miss something? Generally replacing a 5 year old motherboard and cpu (and cooling, I hope) also entails replacing ram. To me this is a "full PC".

If by "full pc" you meant some OEM box, most "hobby" system builders exceed their quality by a huge margin and don't get locked in to stupid proprietary connectors and the like. To the vast majority of OEMs (your HPs, Dells, etc) they generally build with sales floor bullet points in mind "Give us the sexy numbers!" They care little for the real nuts n bolts, like power supplies, cabling, and cooling. Hobbyists know, for example, that Power Supplies rated at essentially room temperature will be lucky to deliver even 60% of that rating at operating temperatures. Why pay some OEM to cut corners where the rubber meets the road?

Edit: Now I see you linked an Ultra Durable so I'm even more curious than before.

Thus spake Woodsman:
I often wonder the same about myself. Good luck on your new system.

Yes I am using an ultra durable model. Its OK, but not as durable as mobos of yore (I still have a running 16 year old k6 one).
Modern ones will live for a few years with the ultra durable ones an extra few. But then again why do we need mobos to live for so long, my current pc is what, N x 10000 times more powrful?

With full PC I meant cpu+gpu+ram+mobo+power+disc(s) and since I have no idea what does Woodsman has at the moment, then its possible that those two would be enough for a complete upgrade.

VESA? Now you are just being contentious.

Yes but with the Intel drivers that is done upstream. I appreciate you don't prefer Intel integrated graphics. Let the subject drop now, okay? :)

Yes, I have noticed complaints in reviews about thin boards.

A caveat to that approach is I want future-proofing. I want to buy state of the art this time around. The latest 4th generation Intels looks nice albeit a tad pricey.

I am prepared to build my own system, but yesterday I looked at pre-built options. The oft-mentioned Linux vendors are expensive. Further, I'm not Rocky Balboa. I don't advertise on my clothing and I don't want vendor labels on my computer hardware. I know, sounds anal. :) Regardless, by the time I fine-tuned the orders the prices had climbed considerably from the stock prices. I haven't shunned the idea of buying turnkey, but convenience can be costly. :)

I'm not a gamer and don't need a dedicated GPU. On-board or integrated is fine.

This too I have noticed. Unlike the thinner boards mentioned above, there are high-end boards that are purposely built as described.

Yes, this will be a new system, at least all that is inside the case. New PSU, motherboard, RAM, CPU, SATA III hard drives, of which I'd like the "system disk" to be SSD.

A quirk about all of this is late last night I realized I don't know where I'd put the new system. The office is well filled. The desk is well filled too. The existing system is not obsolete and will be useful for various projects and testing. I might have to use a KVM to keep using the new and existing office systems, or buy another keyboard and monitor, of which I don't know where to place. Oh well, as my best friend used to say, these are the kinds of problems we like to have. :)

Like the almost weekly updates of seamonkey. :) I don't use seamonkey and blacklisted the package in slackpkg to avoid the almost weekly updates. Yet by golly, almost every week my rsync script downloads the pig. Oh wait, Firefox is updated every six weeks --- because that is "kewl." And with every Firefox release something breaks. Often I see statements about total cost of ownership being lower with free/libre software. Not quite. The weekly updates are a chore mostly because, as I wrote previously, update one package and something else is sure to break. With free/libre software there never is a dull moment. :)

Having recently bought a HP Workstation and a custom machine with an (*ugh*) ASUS motherboard, I would only add: I can't really endorse ASUS as their forum seems to be full of ROM revisions and patches. I too am getting too old for that manure...and they don't really support Linux. So I kind of have buyer's regret on that one.

If I were building my own machine again, I'd opt for ASRock or Gigabyte or go with a server mobo. I think the Workstation version of HP's products are probably more reliable than the consumer stuff, though (a) I have no data to support this theory (b) it costs more. But I have no regrets with my HP machine, it is reliable.

I wish I still had my Northgate keyboard.

I just installed Slackware 14.1 today on this motherboard.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H77M/

No hiccups so far. It has UEFI but its configured OFF by default.

In the past couple years I have set up Slackware on 4 these Intel boards (no longer available)

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...rd-dh67bl.html

I am using Intel i5 3.0 Ghz and 3.2 Ghz and I'm using the built in HD graphics. Works good on all of them at 1920x1080.

No problems with ASUS here at all. Having a high number of ROM revisions and patches is something that I would consider as good, not as a bad thing, at least they fix their stuff.

Something I wouldn't recommend at all, at least stay away from their low-price segment.
Which is quite funny, they make good mainboards, but have no interest in Linux support, so you should be as opposed to them as to ASUS.

Any particular reason for that? I was looking at ASUS but their current quality seems pretty poor. I know they had a good reputation in the past but that seems to be a thing of the past. So I ditched looking at ASUS and I just bought what you call a low-price segment ASRock and Slackware 14.1 installed flawlessly on it.

Yes, my experiences with working in RMA for PC manufacturers.
I would like to know how you did come to that conclusion. I had no problems with ASUS boards (and Gigabyte also) and their quality (and functionality in Linux) in the past few years, but I never by mainboards in the low-price segment.I don't think that installing Linux is the problem. How long do you expect that hardware to function flawlessly, that is what counts.

No, I mean, what were the exact systemic issues with the ASRock boards you observed?

When I looked at the reviews of ASUS boards I found numerous unsettling comments like "worked for x days/weeks then died." After seeing these types of comments I took a look a ASRock. In 2011 ASRock got good reviews from phoronix.com for both compatibility and quality.

Actually, I don't know. In large scales it is not the usual workflow to spend time with figuring out what on a mainboard has failed, if it is not working correctly it gets replaced. However, the actual numbers of problems with the "cheaper" boards (like ASrock and Biostar) where higher than those for brands like ASUS or Gigabyte (which one was used by a specific PC manufacturer was mostly dependent on which one made the better price).

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that all boards from a specific manufacturer are good or bad, but that for boards that are aimed at the low-price segment (usually ASrock, Biostar and ECS/Elitegroup) the number of problems were higher in general. Of course there were also some mainboards from ASUS that were giving us serious problems (P5N-E SLI, M2N-SLI), while others from for example Biostar were known by us for their stability (G31-M7 TE, GF7025), but in general one could see the trend.

I have had good success with Asus, although not 100%. After reading many online motherboard reviews I've concluded all motherboards are great and all motherboards suck. Just depends upon who does the final QA testing, who does the packaging, the day of the week, whether the inspectors and packagers are in good moods, etc. Don't forget the influence of the phase of the moon. IOW, buying any motherboard is a crap shoot.

Considering motherboards are a cutthroat business, I'm not surprised all of the manufacturers release products prematurely and not robustly tested. In that respect I'm more comfortable with a company that has many firmware updates rather than none or few.

The product quality that existed 20 years does not exist today. Anywhere.

http://www.northgate-keyboard-repair.com/

I've had some good boards from ASUS and ECS last about 5+ years without really having issues in the long term.

I'd definitely recommend ASUS, but get a model that is at least 6 months to a year old for best support in the kernel or else.

ECS for me has been a controversial topic. I've had a great experience with an ECS PC-Chips rebranded motherboard that was ironclad stable with a SiS730S chipset years ago that had a SiS900 Ethernet, SiS630 IGP, and SiS7018 MCP that all worked well for at least 7 years in an old unit I had until the power supply tanked and killed the whole system. I've been told ECS is crap.

I often wonder if sometimes there are just those random boards out there from just about any manufacturer that are rock-solid stable and finding them is just hit or miss.

What does "quality" mean, in this context?

Not picking on you, just asking.

Yeah well, I 've never had an ASRock or Gigabyte, but they seem to have good reviews and their forums are not full of posts about how they don't work. Maybe there aren't enough people who have them. Looking around at ASUS sites and searching for problems esp with Linux yields a much larger number of hits, at least that's my impression.
Perhaps you have a point; on the other hand I am old enough to remember when there were no flashable ROM downloads and the ROM you had was the one you bought. Their fixes are like software patches; does everything have to be like a beta test?

I think the quality and reliability of these things has gotten worse over the last 20 years, just as the quality of undergraduate writing has suffered now that everyone can "just fix it later" with their word processor. Try writing your draft with pen and paper and typing the final draft on a typewriter: that's real motivation to get it right the first time and avoid typos.

OK, enough old guy rant, you may return to your regular channel (or twitter feed or whatever). Good luck Woodsman, and I'll look at that Northgate link.

LOL! The absence of fixes does not indicate the absence of problems, dude!

Well, I had no issues with a $40 ECS mainboard for almost ten years, got burned by Gigabyte and their shoddy BIOS (overwrite data in the last sectors of the hard disk, resize it to 8 MB using HPA commands, old/wrong AHCI ROMs from a different chipset/controller, unable to boot from USB 2.0, crash on boot of Linux with C1E enabled and fun like that) and now ended up with AsRock. Which has its issues too (fan control isn't the most sophisticated, power consumption is a bit on the high side), but at least worked out of the box (and it only needed one firmware update so far).

So my experience basically is: The lower the price, the less issues I had. Which of course is biased. ;)

I agree with that.

However, there are some chipsets I will avoid at all costs due to bad experiences...

VIA
Intel

I've had repeated pains with chipsets made by these two. Also one other reason I refuse to go with Intel. Hardware burnouts in less than a year, multiple hardware failures, various driver and software issues, and numerous other issues.

I only now stick to:

AMD
SiS
Nvidia

Good experiences with almost nearly no problems.

Greetz
I have no serious problem with brand loyalty and only a little with brand hatred. Plus I can easily see with Intel being a large part of Wintel (bullied) Domination for decades, and now with the revelation that Intel, even after their scorched fingers from the serial number debacle, is found to have worked with NSA to make encryption easy for them to spy on citizens who own PCs w/ Intel hardware, that they can be easy to hate.

However that really has no bearing on whether they make good or fail hardware or not. There are few classic chipsets with the track record of ye olde 440BX. In the past I was not altogether fond of Intel CPUs and Chipsets because they lacked features and were locked against overclocking. That said, they did have a reputation of being "Volkswagons" - stark, but reliable... which generally were greeted with yawns, since everyone lusts for a Ferrari.

The point and my question is, since I doubt anyone would venture to say that Intel CPUs are fail junk, I assume you, Reaper, are referring to chipsets when you claim Intel is unreliable. Is that so? and if so, is it possible that this is more "brand loyalty/hatred" rather than MTBFs? It certainly seems with the CPUs you chose to compare and your conclusion from that, that you are brand biased, and that's OK if you keep that essentially to yourself. It is not OK to pass off your bias as fact. It can be hurtful to others and makes the perpetrator look foolish.

Hello!

This is my first post so please forgive me if I'm wrong about something!

When I bought my last mobo my biggest hassle searching for one was finding one with conventional PCI slots. I got this snazzy Delta 44 sound card that I would rather not live without! In fact I'm so fond of that card that I might buy a backup and the same with the mobo since I reckon it might be the last call(s) for mobo's with conventional PCI slots. So my choice was this fella:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4519#ov

The page might make it look like something for blue LED segment but I'm very satisfied with how it works out of the box. The onboard graphics works quite well but I did throw in a nvidia card since I find it easier to set up. The thing I feared the most was that UEFI hulabaloo but since I don't need a billion partitions for the triple boot setup that's on it I use legacy boot which works just fine.

Oh, and 14.1 runs very fine on it compared to the other distros I've tried on it :)

That's my 25-øre

PS: I had some issue about ÆØÅ setting up my keyboard with resent versions of Slackware when I was installing, would that be a big enough issue for a new thread?

Hu? They are all over the place. Reason is, that Intel is rather restrictive with PCIe lanes in their desktop chipsets and mainboard manufacturers supplement the few PCIe slots with PCI slots behind PCIe-to-PCI-bridges (native parallel PCI got removed from chipsets a long time ago).

Just look, this thing has four (!) PCI slots in 2014: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4569#ov

With regard to video drivers intel and nvidia are the same unless you are very familiar with both the intel driver and your intel graphics chip so you can fix every problem by yourself.

Both intel and nvidia drivers get updates quite often. The general rule is to NOT follow the updates whenever possible because the next update will most likely crash your currently working system.

Remove http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html from your bookmarks and your will no longer be bothered by nvidia updates.

Driver updates are a good thing, not a bad one, IMHO, but still something that is totally optional, so I don't see why anyone could be bothered by its frequency. I follow the development of the free radeon drivers somewhat closely. Which means nothing more than installing occasionally a new kernel and a few packages, like Mesa. Nothing that needs more than half an hour of actual work (this is where a somewhat fast multicore CPU becomes quite handy). Intel releases changes to its stack quarterly, I don't see that as to much.

Not always :-(

The last nvidia driver that doesn't introduce strange signal masks to KDE on my computer is ver. 319.49.

Have you reported those problems to the driver developers?

No, because it's already reported everywhere on the web. If they (nvidia) had a bug tracker then I would have added a post there then.

Well, that is the problem when using proprietary drivers, you are dependent on the manufacturer. This is why I use the free drivers with my AMD hardware (the proprietary driver sucks), the developers react fast to bugs and are very helpful.

I don't know why despite all modern advances of the motherboard and processors, they don't build one motherboard with integrated processors and RAM memory, as they did with sound, network and video cards, maybe I'm wrong, but the price could be less than doing these things apart as its done nowadays. Does anybody know any motherboard with the processor built in it?

IMO price would be higher if they hard soldered RAM onto the board. Makes RAM upgrades impossible as well.

If you really want, intel atoms are build with the CPU soldered onto the board. They are no cheaper than an AMD equivalent..in fact probably more expensive than AMD.

Dont use passmark to compare CPUs if there is any other option.

Passmark is not much of a benchmark, and you have no idea how the different CPUs have been setup (e.g., what chipset, how much RAM, what speed RAM).

FX-9XXX is pretty much just a 'factory overclock' with the TDP to match. 220 watt TDP? Insane. If you think a 220 watt TDP isnt insane, you can get a similar effect with overclocking a FX-8350 with a good CPU cooler and save $100+.....

VIA were always a bit dodgy from KT266 onward.

Intel has been all over the place, the newer chipsets are pretty good.

AMD disappeared for ages. IIRC they sold teh chipset business they had to nVidia, who modded the AMD 760 chipset into nForce 1.

nVidia nForce 1 was good, nForce 2 was amazing, and its been downhill since then. You cant even get a current nVidia chipset anymore, its just 6150/7025/7050 'budget' chipsets which are years old.

SiS..wow, long time no hear that name. SiS hasntmade a chipset for ages now, even longer than nVidia, and you cant get any SiS chipset for current CPUs.....

440BX was popular well after its time because its sucessors sucked and had a stupid RAM limit (i810, i815, typically 512MB max) or were stupidly expensive and used crazy RD-RAM (i840).

Lots of intel chipsets did support overclocking, but were quite often locked out by the manufacturer.

The AMD chipsets (and chipsets for AMD by others) tended to not be locked because of buying patterns.

Sure, lots of people did want the 'sexy' chipsets..but they are long gone now for intel, because intel realised that it was movi+gn back to market domination (or to be more accurate, reclaim the 'performance crown') with the Core2Duos, and deceided that they would not give out any licences to 3rd parties to make iX chipsets).

These days, intel chipsets for intel CPUs are your only choice. AMD, you can stil find nVidia chipsets, but avoid them, they are rather awful. If you go AMD get an AMD chipset.

@cascade9: Thanks for the answer. I read that the 1150 contacts of the motherboard's processors and memories are gold plated, and if they were welded the expensive gold would not be necessary, and IMHO I think that the price still high is due the little amount (scale) built, but in the future it could come down. You compared AMD with Intel, two distinct manufacturers, and the first one fights to survive against the second one which has a good slice of the world's market, although AMD has very good products as well cheaper and reliable. I had several computers and never did memory upgrades, I just upgrade the whole things due obsolescence.

Intel LGA (land grid array) used to connect processors to motherboards is being replaced by BGA (ball grid array) which welds the processors to the motherboards, with no ways back to future upgrades of processors, and the future buyers will have no options for processors upgrades unless change the whole kit (mobo and processors). I had a problem whith LGA motherboard connectors, I bent one or more mobo contacs while fixing the processor to the motherboard and had to buy a new one, and new glasses as well, as I blamed it to my lack of vision accuracy for small things at short distances, which I wasn't aware of.

I understand. I also keep an eye on legacy PCI slots. My searching is more restrictive: DVI, PS2 (I refuse to stop using my Northgate keyboard), 4th generation Intel, more than 4 SATA ports.

Interestingly, the boards designed by Intel do not have PS2 ports. Many bottom-of-the-barrel boards too.

Looks like a candidate for my list. :)

Yes and no. I've been hitting the web hard browsing the specs of motherboards. Many boards have PCIe but not always have legacy PCI slots.

All benchmarks have their limitations and I didn't mean to promote Passmark as anything special. Since someone was making a hard general claim that "Intel CPUs are terribly overpriced" "Intel chipsets are unreliable", and that the "AMD 9590 is a bargain compared to the Intel i7-4960", as if this was just accepted fact, all I had to do was to find ONE benchmark to show otherwise to discredit that approach. If Reaper is actually interested in finding out how deeply biased he is, he can look up several. I'm betting not one single benchmark ANYWHERE, by ANYBODY, shows the AMD-9590 keeping up, let alone trouncing the Intel i7-4960.

Exactly my point. It stood head and shoulders above all competition, including it's own, for many years.. not exactly an example of a company incapable of making a reliable chipset. The bottom line is that no matter how big a company is, a smart buyer researches the exact product and leans away from either endorsing or damning all products by said company. Influenced by track record? Sure! Convinced? Never!

It never ceases to amaze me how many posts are up on the net that go something like "I bought a Western Digital (or, insert manufacturers name here) hard drive and only had it 6 months and it broke! Never buy Western Digital (or /insert) ever again. They suck!" These people have no idea how amazing it is that hard drives work at all and more to the point the absolutely incredible low return rate... less than 1/10th of 1 Percent iirc. Sure if it happens to you it feels like 100% but it isn't justification for writing off the other 99.999%.

to be clear, I don't hate AMD, quite the opposite. When I discovered they had headhunted a lot of the boys over at the DEC Alpha project and read about the Athlon, I bought stock as well as several CPUs. The Athlons are paperweights now, but I'm still using the FX-57 and when AMD hits another breakthrough, I will buy again. Right now, it seems Intel owns the ballgame, although they need to go to school on Graphics. There, AMD possibly has a leg up.

This is only true for their mobile department, the desktop and server chips will keep the LGA interface.

PS/2 to USB adapters are quite common and cheap (around 5$ as it seems), so you shouldn't limit your choice by that.

Perhaps, yet a perusal of the reviews of such adapters indicate most don't work because they are cheap pass-throughs. Even if I found an adapter rated five stars, the Northgate keyboard is actually a 5-pin DIN. I use a DIN-to-PS2 pigtail to convert to PS2. Whereas USB is designed to be hot pluggable, not so much for 5-pin DIN and even if true, I'll never take the chance. :)

Many modern motherboards still provide PS2 connectors. Apparently I'm not the only person on the planet refusing to go completely USB. :)