Price Guides, February 2005: Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 12, 2005 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Other Deals
We wouldn't be able to write a guide without mentioning some of the other oddities in the motherboard land. Given the amount of Pentium M attention lately, some people may want to persue Prescott's little brother with a little more enthusiasm. Our analysis does not put the Pentium M ahead of the Athlon 64 (or even the Pentium 4) in most instances, and you still pay through the nose for hardware. DFI and AOpen both have first generation motherboards available, and the premiums on these boards are outrageous.
Prices have remained stagnant on both boards for several weeks and we probably won't see any change until the next generation motherboards start shipping.
Although SIS clearly lost the "oomph" they once had, we have seen some generally favorable products from them in recent history. The Price Engine bot picked up a lonely Foxconn SKU when searching for the SIS 755FX in retail space – the Foxconn 755FXK8AA-8EKRS [RTPE: 755FXK8AA-8EKRS].
At under $100 for a Socket 939 motherboard, Foxconn probably has a winner on their hands. However, it's going to take some more testing and benchmarks on our behalf to assure that the retail SIS 755FX boards have what it takes to stack up against nForce3 and K8T800.
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ChineseDemocracyGNR - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
#9,no he's not kidding. There are several reports of dead boards, or boards that killed PSU's, memory modules and processors.
Both moderators of dfi-street had their boards die on them.
And not just related to this, but if you really want to know the truth you can't settle for AnandTech's review of any product.
bersl2 - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
On Thursday night, the MSI nForce4 Ultra board hit $145 + $5 shipping on NewEgg. It's out of stock right now, though.overclockingoodness - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
#8: You are kidding, right? The latest DFI motherboards are the best of the best. Check out the latest AnandTech review if you want to know the truth.arswihart - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
no one know what the DFI's performance is yet, so I don't know what you're talking about. And looking at various hardware forums on the net, there seem to be more problems with DFI than with Epoxoverclockingoodness - Saturday, February 12, 2005 - link
Yep, I agree with you justly. Just because SiS chipsets are not for extreme users doesn't mean they are not a worthy contender. As you already know, enthusiasts make minority of the PC buying population. Only if you guys reviewed SiS based motherboards, value users may want to look into them. NVIDA, VIA and Intel aren't everything.justly - Saturday, February 12, 2005 - link
I don't understand why Anandtech seems to have such a hard time recognizing SiS as a chipset option.Why is SiS listed at the end of the last page under "other deals" and not under "Athlon 64 AGP", the SiS 755FX is a "Athlon 64 AGP" chipset is it not?
When doing a search for SiS chipsets why "only" search for the 755FX chipset?
Maybe you could explain how "SIS clearly lost the "oomph" they once had", as far as I can recall every Anandtech review of (or comparison to) a SiS based motherboard (since the days of the 735 chipset) has shown SiS as a good if not a excellent chipset for all but the most extreme of enthusiasts/overclockers.
I just can't fathom why SiS (and ULi/ALi) seem to be looked at by the Anandtech staff as if they are lepers and can't be associated with the likes of nVidia and VIA when they often perform as good as if not better than equaly priced (or even more expensive) boards using these other chipsets.
PrinceGaz - Saturday, February 12, 2005 - link
I'm sure it'll be included in an upcoming nForce4 roundup. Epox's mobo will have to be something special to outperform DFI's though.arswihart - Saturday, February 12, 2005 - link
specifically, forgot to mention, they left out the 9npa (nf4), and did not mention 9npa-sli which will be released shortly. Also, did not mention the 9nda3+ that they reviewed. Thats not very respectful to Epoxarswihart - Saturday, February 12, 2005 - link
amazing, they totally ignored Epox, the best motherboard maker out thereand they have yet to issue an update to there negative review of the 9nda3+, to my knowledge, this is the most trouble-free 939 motherboard out there today. They have new BIOS code that fixes the early memory limitation Anandtech flamed about. Basically, now that I own a 9NDA3+, I can't really take Anandtech's reviews for a grain of salt.
Manzelle - Saturday, February 12, 2005 - link
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