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I'm currently in the middle of finding funding for building a new home computer (i.e., looking for a job...) and I wanted to know, before I started, what the "best" AMD motherboard is, based on every factor possible.

I want an opinionated answer, of course, or I wouldn't be asking for an opinion. I'd normally do my own research and decide what I feel is the best, but I'd rather start out with some outside opinions because I know I'm doomed if I don't.

Thanks in advance

Also, I said AMD motherboard, but if it's proven by any means that there's a chipset better than AMD, or you just feel that Pentium is better, by all means, I'd like to hear that opinion too. I'm just getting information to better make an informed decision (plus, I wouldn't mind getting a case to start with because I'm looking at a few sites right now and drooling..)

well for p4's i like Abit and for the AMD mobo's abit is still very good

either that or gigabyte

Hence you are going to research anyway; checkout Chaintech Mobos. They seem to have good performance and so many additional stuff are packaged for the price which is only little above the average.

HTH.

Anything with a NVidia NForce2 chipset is what you want. Current favorite is the Asus A7N8X deluxe (check newegg user reviews).

ohhhh you WI people, haha j/k im from WI too

for amd processor based mobos, anything using the nforce 2 ultra 400 chipset or the newer nforce 3 pro 150 chipset

can't go wrong with either

I was looking at upgrading my box about 3 months ago, when I saw this:
Dell 400SC on XPBargains.com

Every few weeks they'll have a $100 or $150 rebate on a fully-unloaded Dell PowerEdge 400SC. It comes with the same motherboard (Intel 875 chipset) as the 8300, it has serial ATA, 4 total slots dual channel memory, P4 (I upgraded to a P4 2.8 w/hyper-threading), 6x rear USB 2.0 (front slots are covered up by Dell's PowerEdge server case). And did I mention the case is quiet? No system I've ever built has been quiet.

I only took their 1x128 MB ECC PC3200, and ordered 2x256 and 1x128 from crucial.com to make 768 MB. All told, I think $600 got me this: P4 2.8c on an 875 chipset, 768 MB RAM, 40 GB ATA/133 hard drive, floppy, and 32x CD-ROM. It's a great start to add your own hard drives, firewire card, etc. The kicker here, of course, is the 2.8c. They're pretty pricy, but it's only a small premium over the Athlon32 platform to get the HT performance that really shows up in digital video editing.

hoxlund wrote:ohhhh you WI people, haha j/k im from WI too

for amd processor based mobos, anything using the nforce 2 ultra 400 chipset or the newer nforce 3 pro 150 chipset

can't go wrong with either

Ian and I are both from Wisconsin. In fact, we went to UW-Madison (which is how we met). The nforce 3 pro 150 chipset is for an Athlon64 (not a bad idea for its integrated memory controller!).

what parts of WI, i was born in Appleton, grew up in da U.P. around iron mountain

I'm originally from Stevens Point, but live in Eau Claire now. Ian's from Milwaukee but lives in Madison.

I would go with a P4 with 800 Mhz fsb. They have hyperthreading which allows for much better multitasking. (Physics calculations, battlefield 1942 and music at the same time is possible, according to a friend)
As for a motherboard, I like Asus and Aopen. I would recommend getting something with SATA and then be ready for when the SATA drives go mainstream.

the new optoron 64 kicks the p4's butt and so far my friend who has built several likes the Asus opteron board best. He usauly likes MSI but this time the Asus is fast and stable so that's what he builds them with, probably the one all ready mentioned above. He has a few P4's also and untill this new AMD the Intell was faster, not anymore, for 5 minutes anyways
He does these for a living so I tend to listen to what he says about the latest and greatest.

Well, I haven't followed up on any of the suggestions yet, but I've got them all written down for when money comes my way... And on the topic of my job search, there's STILL NOWHERE hiring in Jamestown, NY. Grr.

Dartman wrote:the new optoron 64 kicks the p4's butt and so far my friend who has built several likes the Asus opteron board best. He usauly likes MSI but this time the Asus is fast and stable so that's what he builds them with, probably the one all ready mentioned above. He has a few P4's also and untill this new AMD the Intell was faster, not anymore, for 5 minutes anyways
He does these for a living so I tend to listen to what he says about the latest and greatest.

Maybe your friend is not really off the mark but can you tell us how he benchmarks between Opteron and P4HT? Numbers would be much appreciated.

I for one would love to see AMD ruling the /silicon world...

Thanks.

Dartman wrote:the new optoron 64 kicks the p4's butt and so far my friend who has built several likes the Asus opteron board best. He usauly likes MSI but this time the Asus is fast and stable so that's what he builds them with, probably the one all ready mentioned above. He has a few P4's also and untill this new AMD the Intell was faster, not anymore, for 5 minutes anyways
He does these for a living so I tend to listen to what he says about the latest and greatest.

oh yeah, that's a better processor, but hardly anything supports it IMO

He uses it to do graphics work and all kinds of stuff like that. It basicly performs whatever he's up to significantly faster then his P4 boxes did and at about half the clock speed. It's just plain more efficiant at this point untill Intell comes up with their next big thing.
He was pretty much going to all Intell boxes for himself becuase AMD couldn't match the latest CPU's but then the Opteron came out so he built one and it just plain moves so he switched over again.
I can't afford to be on the cutting edge but he makes enough money doing this he can and he always trys the latest toys to see how they do then builds whatever works the best for the high end customers.
He runs the fastest memory he can get and at least a gig of RAM if not more and big hard drives etc.
I can ask him to give some numbers if he's willing but he pretty much just uses the gear and it either works the way he wants and is faster and stable or isn't.
He's running XP PRO, so whatever, it's working great with that OS anyways wether it officially supports it or not.

also you have to configure in that a 1.6Ghz opteron is like $300 vs 3Ghz P4C is $263

thats a 1.4Ghz difference in speed, you gonna tell me that a 1.6ghz opteron outperforms the p4 in that case?

id rather have hyper-threading than useless 64-bit, with HT you can at least use it right now, and have it make a difference in performance

He has a ccouple of 3.2 gig P4's and yes the 2 gig opteron is faster by a long ways doing his stuff. It was faster stock clock and is even faster OC to about 2.2 gig. That's what he says and he has no reason to lie. He was trying to get me to go to a P4 till he tested out the new AMD chip. They are both too expensive so I won't be getting either soon but I think at this point the best AMD is a bit cheaper then the best P4. I'm still running a 1800+ myself as it was a good value and works with the board I have.
Let's not make this into a pissing contest, he asked about AMD and thats what I know about them for now, next week maybe Intell will build a even faster CPU then we'll be arguing this again.

im not trying to make it into pissing contest

AMD Opteron 2.0Ghz:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... archdepa=1

Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz non extreme edition:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... archdepa=1

so its either:

AMD - $802
Intel - $396

so the intel is just a tad cheaper for being 1.2Ghz faster

Well it turns out he's using a AMD 64 not the opteron which is the server version I guess that supports multiprocessors. It's cheaper by half but he stands by his results. I asked him to run some benchmarks to see what he comes up with and we'll see if he gets any done.
The one he's using is a bit over 400 so it's pretty close as far as price goes, it's not the top dog opteron that is 800.
Any ways most of us aren't going to buy one soon. I'll wait till he gets tired of it and trade him out of it after a while.

you need to be a little bit clearer next time

im done with this thread

My recommendation:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... =22&depa=1

Go with an Abit NF7-S. I have one myself and its overclocking friendly!

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 166&depa=1

I currently use the Asus A7V333 Mobo. I've had it for over 18 months with no problems ever.

I'd recommend anything from Asus, MSI, or Soyo.

I think Gigabyte makes the best AMD boards.