AMD Motherboards - NVIDIA nForce 3
nForce 3 has been and still is the best option for overclocking an Athlon 64. While chipsets from Via are built more for stability and stock speeds, nForce 3 tends to be packed with more features and settings to allow for tweaking to get absolutely the most out of your new processor.
Socket 754
Socket 754 has started to move into a value or budget area as AMD pushes to get 939 out the door and onto store shelves. Since 754 can take an Athlon 64 or a Sempron, however, it does have the unique advantage of being quite flexible on the choice of processors that are available at least for now. The
DFI nForce3 250 (754) LanParty UT board continues this week as a favorite option for the 754 platform.
Socket 939
nForce 4 boards should also be coming out very shortly. A good preview of nForce 4 can be found in our recent review of the
Gigabyte K8NXP-9. In the meantime, socket 939 still has a home with the MSI nForce3 Ultra (939) K8N Neo2 Platinum. Fully loaded with every audio option imaginable, SATA, RAID, and Marvell's gigabit Ethernet controller (along with a second gigE controller from Realtek), it's safe to say that this board is among the best of the best.
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Chadder007 - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
"N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478. "I agree about Socket 478....Intel didn't care to give those users too much of an upgrade path and just jumped all over to the new socket way too soon with little justification to do so.
qballshalls2002 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Still waiting for the nForce4 boards to show before I go slurging again. Hehehe!aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Haha...sorry...I meant if you were trying to get to 1:1 DDR600 like a lot of Anandtechers are inclined to do. My DDR is bigger than your DDR;-)
jmke - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
" The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM... "most A64 boards features excellent memory:htt(fsb) dividers, and the impact on performance versus running memory at 1:1 is minimal
aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I agree with #8. My new 3000+ easily hits 2.4ghz which makes it $160 3800+. The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM...arswihart - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
why get Athlon64 3200+ 90nm instead of 3000+? Can't they both overclock the same, as shown in Anand's own tests?bofkentucky - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
In the 9xx board section, its is the intel 915 chipset, not 912.Pumpkinierre - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478.PseudoKnight - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
The Athlon XP 2800+ is flipping me off. I'm scared.slurmsmackenzie - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
how come the 915 chipset isn't listed? it offers pci-e without the conversion to ddr2? anandtech always puts the emphasis on the fact that an upgrade to 775 is an entire system overhaul, when 915 offers the meager upgrade of processor/mobo, or cpu/mobo/video card without a performance drop from 925x. so why a 925x board is suggested for price/performance efficiency is beyond me.