O/T New Motherboard

[MetalMarvels]

I am looking at replacing my current system with a new motherboard/CPU/Memory. In general, an Intel Pentium 4 Extreme, 3.4 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, and 1 MB cache. Memory - 2 GB of dual channel DDR400, low latency. I would prefer the Intel 875P Northbridge chipset.

 

I have been looking at and contrasting the Gigabyte - 8KNXP board, the Soyo - P4I875P Dragon 2 V1.0 Black Label Edition board, and the Chaintech - 9CJS Zenith board.

 

Is there another comparable MB that I should be looking at? The reviews that I have found to date seem to place these at the head of the pack, although the overclockers seem to like the Chaintech offering a bit more and they seem to like the Soyo board the least (due mostly to the BIOS).

 

Any opinions, experience out there?

 

I have to get an edge on Rekd in UT2004 somehow.....

[Bullines]

I'm partial to boards from Asus and MSI, but that's just me

 

MSI boards are of great quality like Asus' but tend to be a little bit easier on the wallet. For MSIs 875P boards, take a look at the Neo-LSR. If you need firewire ports, look at the Neo-FIS2R/Neo-FISR.

 

I have one of their 865PE boards and it runs UT2K4 mint

[kwolf]

I've been always happy with ASUS.

Months ago I searched on the net and found this.

Mobo Tsunami

Winner MSI Neo and Neo2

HTH

 

[ 05-07-2004, 04:50 PM: Message edited by: kwolf ]

[kwolf]

Bullines was faster.

 

BTW I hate GigaBytes Mobo.

[Mike Mattera - TFM]

MSI has been good to me. I also Like ASUS. Make sure you gat an 8x AGP slot.

 

Mike

[Jayson Kramer]

MSI & ASUS is all I like to run.

 

JM2C

[Steve Biehl - Cimquest Inc]

We build all our systems with ASUS

[Eazy]

I run a small pc business as a hobby, and whether its intel or amd CPU's, I use MSI. I have found them to be very reliable, and the price is quite reasonable.

[MetalMarvels]

Looks like the MSI Neo 2 comes out ahead in the "Tom;s Hardware" reviews.....Don't like the loss of a PCI connector though. On the other hand, they do seem to publish a lot of helpful information on their boards - unlike some of the others.

[jimspac]

I like Asus and Abit although the P4 I built 2 years ago is on an Intel 850 board.

[herbert west]

First choice for me would be Tyan, then Asus.

[MetalMarvels]

Just an update. I decided to go with the MSI 865PE Neo2-PFISR with 2 GB of Dual-Channel 466 MHz DDR memory and a 3.2 GHz Prescott P4 processor with 1 GB of L2 cache (I considered the 3.4 GHz P4 Extreme with 2 GB of L2 cache, but they are rather pricey).

 

Considering how inexpensive they have gotten, I may also add a couple of SATA Hard drives and run them in RAID 0 mode.