Price Guides, February 2005: Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 12, 2005 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Athlon 64 AGP
For those of you still in AGP land, don't worry as nForce3 and K8T800 still have a lot of life in them. Tier 2 manufacturers that missed the nForce4 boat have redesigned many of their existing nForce3 solutions and re-released them on Socket 939 and 754. The most interesting case in point is the Abit NF8 [RTPE: Abit NF8] – a sub $100 motherboard that should give MSI and Chaintech a run for their money.
Also notice that the Tier 1 guys pretty much dominate the Socket 939 nForce3 sector right now, but their grip is slowly loosening to some of the more aggressive Tier 2 manufacturers like Abit and DFI. Unfortunately, you still pay through the nose for AGP on Socket 939, and PCIe video cards are generally cheaper in the mid-range. If you don't need to provide legacy support for your existing video card, you are almost certainly better off buying a Socket 939 nForce4 or Socket 754 K8T800 motherboard.
VIA just kind of fell into the value roll for Socket 939 over the last few weeks. If you don't overclock, but still need a stable feature packed board,
MSI's Neo2-F [RTPE: MS-6702E-020] is pretty unsurpassed in price/performance. Coupled with a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+, you'll have a nearly unbeatable $250 combo.
EPoX and Biostar are also attempting to break into this nForce3-Socket 939 market, if ever slowly. DFI will also have an offering that will ship within the next few weeks.
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arswihart - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
where is evidence of a v2.2 9nda3+?arswihart - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
nm zipzoomfly does not have them, although really newegg and mwave, who cares if not every single seller has them, they are easily purchasable and should've been included is my pointarswihart - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
I got my 9nda3+ from Mwave, plus Zipzoomfly has them, not to mention others. What are you talking about? I take back my comments about the nf4 boards, but you really should've included the nf3 boards.sonicDivx - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
umm the NForce3 (939) prices are missingLive - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
It did help :) Thanks for the swift replies Visual and Kristopher. These little nuggets of information could give extra value to the price guides if included.KristopherKubicki - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Live: I think Visual makes the best point. Online the prices remain very close to each other, but offline the two boards have a larger disparity in price.Visual: The Neo2 Platinum (the socket 939 nforce board) went on backorder everywhere overnight. It got real pricey. the original Neo (socket 754) is still a great buy and I would c onsider it just as good as the otpion we recommended for the guide (for a 754 board).
Hope that helps,
Kristopher
lsman - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Pretty much only newegg carry the Epox 9nda3+ or j. And Epox is yet again with newer verison. (9nda3+ up to ver. 2.2 now) Better BIOS option (but the Caps are different...)Visual - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
on their price engine, the a8n-sli vanilla is priced almost same as deluxe, so it makes sense to go with the deluxe... if the prices were such.but they aren't. i wont bother myself with checking the online shop prices, but at my local shop i got myself a vanilla asus sli for $140, while the deluxe was $40 more. in these circumstances the extra cash for the deluxe is not worth it. if you actually look around some forums you'll see a common advise is don't use the extra sata ports, and dont use the extra lan port on the deluxe, even disable them in the bios :p then why pay for them in the first place?
funny how you dont list the msi neo2 platinum nforce3 board... with it being the best nforce3 out there (at least according your reviews). has it stopped selling or what?
Live - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
Good guide as usual. One thing that I don’t understand is why the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe is recommended over the vanilla ASUS A8N-SLI.The only thing you get that is deluxe is a second LAN port and extra raid options. I fail to see what you would use a extra LAN port for? I only have one internet connection and most LAN:s are set up with hubs or routers. So what is it for?
The silicon raid controller is only useful if you want to add more the 4 hard drives in your raid setup right? How many users do this? Considering the use of raid is not that common I would guess a 4+ raid setup would be a very rare find indeed. It would seem to me that the extra $ spent on the “deluxe” would be much better invested in almost any other part of your setup.
So why the deluxe?
KristopherKubicki - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
The reason why we didnt mention Epox products is because - you can't buy them anywhere.Kristopher