Price Guides April 2005: Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 10, 2005 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
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Other AMD Stuff
Unfortunately, it's about that time to start burying Athlon XP motherboards in our guides. With Socket 754 prices still plummeting, and Socket 462 prices starting to rise (enough said), Socket A is looking really pathetic. Coupled with the fact that Windows x64 is already shipping (our full analysis is not far away), investing in Socket A is a poor idea. Even if you are not convinced of the "64-bit revolution", even the poorest Socket 754 Sempron 2600+ processors have an edge over Athlon XP chips.Then again, if you already have an Athlon XP and you just need a replacement board, at least ASUS [RTPE: A7V880] won't leave you out in the cold.
Back in Athlon 64 land, AGP is still rearing its ugly head. PCIe is still our bus of choice, but if you're upgrading to a new motherboard/CPU, there is no need to trash the video card too. nForce3 designs are still showing up each week, so at least some manufacturers believe that AGP won't disappear as fast as Anand and I would like it to. Unlike the nForce4 boards, nForce3 prices are very stable at this point, and we don't expect to see many new price fluctuations anytime soon.
While talking to several manufacturers over the last week, the general indication seemed to be that nForce3 boards would give way to PCIe alternatives very quickly - this contradicts what motherboard designs show. Companies like ASUS and DFI showed us nForce3 motherboard designs for socket 939 during CES 2005, but considering Q2 is well underway and we haven't seen any of these boards, even if they do show up within in the next few weeks, they will have to compete with more mature Gigabyte and MSI solutions. nForce4 continues to look more attractive to us. On the other hand, we are very pleased with VIA's take on AGP for Socket 939 with MSI's Neo2-F [RTPE: MS-6702E-020]. Priced under $100 with Gigabit Ethernet and a good SATA Raid package, this board makes the most sense for AGP. The fact that this board costs $20 less than it did during our last guide just adds icing to the cake.
With nForce4 on Socket 754, we have to wonder if VIA will be able to stay competitive with K8T800. AGP and PCIe are like apples and oranges, but with AGP cards continuing to cost 10% and more over identical PCIe cards, the Socket 754 boards are much more cost effective with PCIe instead of AGP.
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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) ?