Price Guides April 2005: Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 10, 2005 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Athlon 64 PCIe
nForce4 has really taken off over the last two months and since our last guide, we have seen another 10 motherboards added into the RTPE. While it's great to see nForce4 show more maturity, the real news over the last few weeks (to us) has been the introduction of Socket 754 PCIe motherboards. The nForce4 "4X" chipset provides enough of the rudimentary PCIe support so that low end Athlon 64 and Sempron systems are not much more affordable. For those who follow our video card guides, you may recall the relatively high price of AGP low end video cards. With ATI's HyperMemory and NVIDIA's TurboCache cards, low end GPUs are now much more affordable, as long as you have PCIe. Socket 754 Semprons combined with TurboCache/HyperMemory video cards on sub $80 motherboards seem like an awesome leap forward to us - but then again, any reason to bury AGP always seems to get us excited. Below, you can see the new Socket 754 nForce4 motherboards in our system.That isn't to say that NVIDIA is the only player in the Socket 754 PCIe game. VIA has a few 754 boards based on the K8T890, but the only retail board available right now seems to be the Soltek SL-K890-754G [RTPE: SL-K890-754G]. Hopefully by the time our next guide rolls around, there will be even more options on the 754 platform.
Of course, the stars of the PCIe world are still those nForce4 Socket 939 motherboards. There are still a few late comers to the party, but all of the Tier 1 and most of the Tier 2 guys have pretty solid offerings at this point. Since our mini roundup a month ago, board prices have dropped dramatically, putting the MSI nForce4 Neo4 Platinum SLI [RTPE: K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI] a little bit cheaper than the DFI nForce4 SLI-DR [RTPE: LanParty SLI-DR] board that also won the gold award.
However, nForce4 doesn't come exclusively in the SLI variety; and there are certainly a few nForce4 Ultra boards that we find very attractive. The ASUS A8N-E [RTPE: ASUS nForce4 Ultra (939) A8N-E] comes with one of the better feature sets available and also throws in some very good overclocking features for modest overclockers. However, going on price alone, the four-month-old Chaintech VNF4 Ultra [RTPE: Chaintech nForce4 Ultra (939) VNF4 Ultra VE] set the bar for any other nForce4 board to follow. The Chaintech board won't set any speed records and leaves a little bit to the imagination as far as features, but if you just need a rock solid Socket 939 board, this is the one to have.
Although we really expected K8T890 motherboards to flood the market since February, it looks like only a few motherboard manufacturers were anxious enough to adopt VIA's solution. We feel that the NVIDIA based boards are a little more stable and readily available at this point, but ASUS and Abit both have comparable boards.
Finally, don't neglect the newcomer to the AMD world, ATI. The Xpress 200 chipset didn't seem to grab a lot of manufacturer support, but MSI's RS480M2-IL [RTPE: RS480M2-IL] really is a nice board for the price, particularly for an HTPC setup. For under $100, MSI and ATI have one of the best solutions for Socket 939, particularly considering the integrated Radeon X300 video. Unfortunately, the board lacks Gigabit Ethernet and comes in a MicroATX form factor.
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Ivo - Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - link
The nForce4 chipset offers performance and features, which are very interesting for the gamer's community. At the same time, the nF4 is hot and noisy and, therefore, not appropriate for users who like the 'cool and quiet' option of AMD-based computers. For that folk the VIA and ATI solutions are better even now, when they are suffering from partly outdated southbridges. For me, right now, the 'Albatron K8X890 ProII' is the best home/office-intended A64 mainboard.ChineseDemocracyGNR - Thursday, April 14, 2005 - link
That's not an nForce limitation, it's the memory controller.Most boards however will work at DDR400 but with a 2T command rate.
Again:
One minor correction: "Abit nForce4 Ultra (939) AN8"; the AN8 is an nForce4 non-Ultra board. The only ABIT nForce4 Ultra is the Fatal1ty, so far (they may release an AN8 Ultra).
essjae - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
What about teh nforce memory limitation? If you have 4 double-sided DIMMs, the speed drops from 400 to 333.How many single-sided 512MB and 1024MB DIMMs are really out there?
That was the deciding factor for me to go with VIA and not nForce, I have 4 512MB TwinX DIMMs that I wanted to use.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
LoneWolf15: From what was conveyed to me from the other writers at AT, the nForce4 Intel solution was definitely not ready. There is an analysis scheduled in the near future.Kristopher
LoneWolf15 - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
Taken from the article:"Let's also not forget ATI's upcoming Intel SLI motherboard nor NVIDIA's (in)famous nForce4 Intel Edition. We will have some words on Intel nForce4 boards in the very near future, but from some of our preliminary trials, it seems that NVIDIA has a "nowhere near shipping" chipset. If we follow the evolutionary chain of paper launches over the last few years, maybe by this time next year, we will be introducing products shipping in 2007."
Unless I'm very much mistaken, HardOCP just did a preview on an NForce 4 Intel board. To be sure it's an nVidia reference board, but they had no stability issues and this would indicate to me that an NForce4 Intel solution is far closer to production than you suggest.
I agree, paper launching is a lousy thing, and we should hold manufacturers and vendors responsible for it; however I would guess we'll see these boards in the next six months, unless mainboard manufacturers are telling you something I don't know (which is of course possible).
EODetroit - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
At work I custom order and build all of my company's computers, probably building about 30 of them per year. I'm lucky that my company lets be do it all myself instead of just ordering Dell's, since I rather enjoy it. And I think you're wrong that PCIe video cards are less expensive than AGP.Just go to Newegg and check AGP video card prices, discounting the obscure bargain brands since we want good 2D for business use, and no one knows what the $15 video card will be like:
The cheapest Radeon in AGP is $29.99 (Sapphire Radeon 7000), the cheapest GeForce is $33.99 (AOpen GeForce MX4000).
Now lets do the same thing for PCI Express:
The cheapest Radeon in PCIe is $64.00 (Sapphire Radeon X300 SE), and the cheapest GeForce is $61.50 (XFX GeForce 6200 w/TC).
All prices include shipping to the US.
As you can see, if 3D isn't a concern (like it isn't for me since I build computers for people to work on, not play games on, so I actually like to buy video cards with shitty 3D capabilities), and all you want is good 2D performance, you save $30 just from sticking with AGP over PCIe. And a Radeon 7000 is just as good at 2D as anything else sold in the past five years (or better).
If you want to talk about what's cheapest, PCIe not only isn't cheaper, its actually twice as expensive. I don't know how you can claim otherwise, since its impossible to find a PCIe video card of any variety at all at less than $55.
NordicNINE - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
The MSI RS480 is a nice board. Esp for the price.No overclocking features that I could find, but still a fast, cheap, stable board with good onboard video. Also, it's not a Radeon 9600 onboard. It's actually a X300. I'm surrpised the MSI board has no overclocking since all the ATI "Bullhead" sample boards had lots of overclocking. Also the onboard is pretty usable. World of Warcraft ran at 1280x104 with some of the features turned down fine.
paulsiu - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
While PCIe is technically better than AGP, most people don't see the technical differences. In addition, other than video card and may be some drive cards, there are virtually no PCIe card. PCIe video cards are no faster than AGP cards, so there is little or no compelling reason to upgrade except may be for SLI.In general, I find it strange that a lot of the manufacturers have push hard for PCIe. My only guess is that it is cheaper to make a PCIe card than AGP. Both ATI and Nvidia have release PCIe only version, gotten lukewarm responses and had to create AGP versions.
I am also somewhat disappointed that VIA will not do a dual AGP and PCIe for the AMD. Even though PT880 Pro has been release, I haven't seen a single board that uses it.
yde - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
#13, I think the core & memory speeds are slightly lower according to nvidia specs. I don't think there is a huge difference - other than price - when the cards are set to identical speeds.What's more, card builders offer different timings for their models, so you cannot easily compare performance.
Could this be seen as a hidden push for buyers to choose PCIe?
arfan - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
Is it true that AGP much slower benchmark than PCI in the same chipset (example 6600GT AGP vs 6600GT PCI) ?