Motherboard Newbie!!

M

MJS

Guest
Hi,

I know very little about motherboards at this time. I want to upgrade my motherboard so that it has AGP8x so my new graphics card works to full potential and that it is a good quality from a good brand etc.

Ok. I have no idea about how much I should spend and I have no idea which brand to go for. I will need a motherboard which Supports the normal Pentium 4 (2.8ghz) and it should support DDR PC2700 RAM, so I can just transfer my old stuff over (if thats possible). The motherboard also needs to be ATX.

Can anybody give me any advice about which brands to go for, which price I should be looking at (I have about £80 uk money at this time) and problems which I could encounter.

I appreciate any feedback because my motherboard now (an old Gigabyte motherboard) seems like it won't be very upgradeable in terms of processors and as it only supports up to AGP4x, my new graphics card isn't performing at full speed. (although there isnt much difference between AGP4x and AGP8x).

Thanks

:)
 
I've always built machines with Abit boards. I've built computers for clients with Intel and Tyan boards as well with no problems. Asus is good as well. Basically based on personal preference.

One thing I'd make sure to get is a board with an Intel chipset -- it'll save you headaches down the road.

I'm looking to upgrade as well and most newer Abit boards are AGP 8x/4x. Just visit the manufacturer's web sites and browse the product sections. They'll all have specs are far as AGP speed, memory supported, CPU supported, etc.

You can get a very nice, speedy, stable board for the amount you're willing to spend.
 
i865 chipset would be the way to go. abit, asus, gigabyte, dfi, albatron, leadtek, chaintech... there are lots of good manufacturers. though i'm not up on who makes some of the best i856 boards, specifically.

how much you want to spend and what features you'd like. Abit AI7. Asus P4P800 Deluxe. Gigabyte 8PENXP.
 
There will be no noticeable speed increase going from 4x to 8x AGP. That is not a reason to upgrade MBs.

Check some of the posts from Sazar. you're looking at 1-3% on benchmarks and maybe 1 FPS in game.

Now if you get a MB that supports Dual DDR interface it will double your memory throughtput which is a reason to consider upgrading. Since you have 2 sticks of RAM you are set to use a dual ddr MB. The 865PE is the budget chipset board and the 875 is the top end chipset MB. If you want stability gigabyte is reliable. If you want features ABIT or ASUS are the way to go.

Or you can wait until all the new PCI-X stuff comes out this spring, but PCI-X may not be compatible with your AGP video card. I'm starting to hear rumblings about another dead end upgrade path.
 
Well, I know that upgrading to an 8x AGP motherboard won't give me much fps increase at all, which is why I wasn't worried about getting such an expensive card and using it on 4x AGP.

I was also considering a motherboard which supports RD ram. I have seen benchmarks showing that RD gives better processor performance than DDR because obviously, its faster and although this alone isn't a valiable reason to totally upgrade, I also will upgrade my processor in a year or so, depending on whether the AMD 64 processor will be good enough to get upgrading, then I would upgrade to a new AMD processor and get an AMD compatible board instead, so that would be a double upgrade.

It's not a definate thing at the moment because I have all these points to consider and usually it all comes to a point where future developments are a factor to consider when purchasing hardware because you could purchase one thing, but the next best thing will be just a few months away from being released and it could be an amazing step in technology or something.

I just needed some feedback on decent brands really and ideal prices I should spend etc.etc.

The way it seems at the moment, I probably won't ever buy a pre-built shop PC ever again. I have worked out that buying totally your own stuff will probably work out cheaper in the end as you are only purchasing what you want. So a motherboard upgrade for me in the future is a definate yes, rather than a totally new PC.

:)
 

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