Hak Foo

Well, I'm almost finally at the point where I'll admit defeat on AGP.

The problem is that I don't have a PCI-E card handy, or even a good PCI one (I've got an 8Mb one which might work, and a 4Mb one which does), so it will be a pain for a while until I save up for a decent PCI-E card (the 7600GS I drool over for its fanless goodness)

I could go PCI-E in a few different ways, though:

1- A PCI-E board with a "almost but not quite AGP" slot, like the Elitegroup K8T890-A oe Viostar K8T890-A9. If my present card (a Radeon 7000 cos my 6800LE blew up) can work, it might be passable, but then I've got a stupid slot I won't ever need again after I transition.

2- A no-compromises dual-board. IOW, the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2. Now, this is really appealing cos I can keep the R7000 (presumably) until I'm ready, but it's hardly a premium-featured mainboard. Not even Firewire included. Not that I have firewire peripherals, though. It also has the soon-to-be-dead AGP slot.

3- An integrated-video board. It seems like all the Geforce 6100/6150 boards I see are uATX though, and I'd really prefer full-ATX. I have two PCI cards on top of whatever I cram in the x16 slot eventually, and that means cramped space. I haven't investigated the ATi integrated video boards, but I've heard badness about the I/O performance of ATi's pre-3200 chipsets.

4- An ordinary PCI-E board and suffer scrap-box PCI video for a while. The advantadge is you can get the semi-premium features I got spoiled on in my Abit AV8. I'd prefer a K8T890 board to an nF4 one, because I don't want a chipset fan to buzz and whine, but the K8T890 boards tend to lack gigabit ethernet and firewire.

Am I missing a good option, say a top-featured K8T890 board or a full-ATX 6100 or 6150? (The Abit AX8 apparently has all sorts of badness attached)

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67_GTO

Im not sure i know exactly what your question is, but to help i need to know a few things.

I figure you must play some games because why else would you need a 6800LE?
I f you are willing to stick with AGP, there are still plenty of good cards of that type.

Basically i just need to know what you are going to do with this machine to help me help you.

Also, what kind of price range are you looking for?

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The Dragon Reborn

I'm a bit "puzzled"....

I'm not quite sure as to what you really want, which hardware you own, what performance you need from this "transition" board & what you "want to take along" after this "transition board"...


TDR

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j-dogg

Dude just save up for PCI-E. This transitional crap will be obsolete when Socket F comes out. Save a little more for something NICE instead of settling for something that gets the job done.

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Sn0wMan

Quote: Originally Posted by j-dogg Dude just save up for PCI-E. This transitional crap will be obsolete when Socket F comes out. Save a little more for something NICE instead of settling for something that gets the job done.

j-dogg is exactly right. I would suffer with PCI until you have the money for PCI-E. AGP is going to be dead before you know it, and also you will have more room to upgrade if you decide to go SLI later on.

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Peng Lord

I have the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2, it is an excellant transitional board, has TRUE AGP support, a PCI-E 16x, PCI-E 1x, and 3 (2 usable if you use the AGP slot) PCI slots. On top of that it supports 4 GB RAM in Dual-channel at DDR400 speeds. To top that all off, it also supports the new AM2 socket with the optional add-on card. Did I mention the 2 SATA sockets and 1 SATA2 socket? Over-all, for 80 bones, it is the only transitional board with anything. I booted with my x64 X2 3800+ right out of the box with no issues other than it defaulted to DDR333 on my 2x1024MB Dual-Channel Corsair XMS DDR400. I'd recommend it to anyone with a high end AGP card that doesn't want to spend a fortune on a new GPU and that doesn't care about SLI.

Also of note, I use a desktop case, not a tower so the IDE placement is great for me, but it would likely be a problem for anyone that uses a tower of any significant height.

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Hak Foo

Quote: Originally Posted by The Dragon Reborn I'm a bit "puzzled".... I'm not quite sure as to what you really want, which hardware you own, what performance you need from this "transition" board & what you "want to take along" after this "transition board"... TDR

Sorry, I'm not a good communicator.

Presently I have an Abit AV8 with a 3200+ on it, 1Gb of ordinary DDR400, two PCI cards (SCSI and TV, and possibly an 802.11g to come, if I rearrange my network). The video is an AGP Radeon 7000 I dug out of another box as a placefiller, cos my 6800LE blew up. I don't like it; the drivers are crippled and it's obviously exceedingly slow.

I do light gaming (I could tell the difference in NFS:U when I went from a 5600XT to the 6800LE in the first place), but primarily what I'm looking for is a way to get out of the AGP trap.

The AGP cards left on the new market seem to either be:

-As much as I paid 6 months ago for the 6800LE, and no better (6600GT), which seems wrong.
-Significantly More expensive (full 6800 or 7800 cards)
-Weaker and marginally cheaper (X1600Pro)

Plus, they tend to be older designs-- only the 7800GS (which I won't be buying) or the X1300/X1600 (which suck) are even current-generation design cards. This sort of makes a 6800, even at the right price, a mild turnoff, cos it's gonna be an older, heat-belching card instead of a more-efficient 7-series card. It also likely means if I have trouble, repair or replacement will be a pain cos the cards are at or near end of life (possibly exception X1300/X1600)

The card I really want, the fanless 7600GS, is not available on AGP. So if I buy another AGP card, I have to settle for something less than what I want, plus it means NEXT time I replace the mobo I'll have to replace the video card AS WELL as the processor, mobo, and memory (this is my last S939 kit :crosses fingers.

The problem is that I don't have a "fall-back" PCI card; if I had a decent PCI video card, I could run with that while I saved for a PCI-E video card. But my best PCI card is an 8Mb RagePro which may or may not work. So the integrated-video boards, and the boards with AGP or AGP-style slots are appealing, but at the same time, I'm not sure if I should be buying for a feature which I'll probably discard in 3 months time.

SLi, I oppose just on principle. Two video cards which only are useful when playing games? :pbffft: I also sort of don't like the NF4 boards cos of their chipset fans.

All in all, I'd prefer the cheapest option out there, and expect to spend between $70 and 90. The more money I save on mobo, the more I can plow towards that 7600GS.

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WrathOfSocrus

Quote: Originally Posted by j-dogg Dude just save up for PCI-E. This transitional crap will be obsolete when Socket F comes out. Save a little more for something NICE instead of settling for something that gets the job done.

Excelent point! With a new socket making its way towards desktops (and supporting different RAM) , It might be worthwhile to stick it out and save some money. You could end up going from the transitional board to a better full ATX PCI-E board, to a whole new rig in a years time. Then again if you can afford it and use all that hardware for folding, then FOLD ON!!! If not, then you will have to figure out if the rig you want to build is going to be enough for your needs, both now and in the near future.

For me, my current main rig is a socket A AGP system. A bump to PCI-E with a socket supporting the DDR I currently own would give me enough of a performance boost to last quite a while for my purposes. Then again all I require of a new rig is to be able to play UT 2k7 when it comes out.

I'm certain your requirements of a PC are different. If you can figure out about how much need from your PC, and how important upgradability is to the system you want, then you can decide which socket is right for you.

BTW - I did a build with a DFI RS482 board. Socket 939, PCI-E, built in video, mATX. Works great for my buddy who wanted a new rig to play WoW. Has that PCI-E slot for future upgrading of the video, and other than one small problem with the Logitech wireless keyboard (there are mdeia keys that are shared with the F keys and defaults to the media keys at boot. Thing kept trying to boot from LAN and I couldn't make it stop!) Other than that its gravy. With a pair of 250GB SATA 2 drives and 2 GB of RAM, it's a pretty sweet setup. I would never discredit a mobo for not having features I NEVER USE. I know every reviewer brings those points to light and it's their job, but if I don't need it then it just less clutter on my mobo!

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Hak Foo

I've heard reports that the ATi SB400 southbridge has very poor performance, which is a drawback on ATi boards.

It also seems like I basically can't have both full ATX and integrated video. :/

And isn't Socket F designed for the new Opteron? I could see "wait for AM2 to be decent", but I figure I'll be up to my neck in upgrades at that point... it will need new proc, mobo, and memory. This transition is just to move from 939-AGP to 939-PCIE I know AM2 is here, but it's not compelling, and I'd probably go for a S939 X2 first.
It seems like there aren't many affordable 'enthusiasty' boards, even when you look at affordable chipsets. The fancier name RadeonXpress200 boards aren't noticably more feature-rich than the ($15) cheaper ECS ones.

I'm leaning towards the 939Dual-SATA2, which has the lovely AGP slot-- anyone know if a Zalman 7000 fits?

Thanks for the input; I had sort of forgotten the humble 939Dual under the shinier newer/"purer" options. It reminds me of the old ECS K7S5A; I recall being (probably) the first guy in town to try and buy one when they came out; went to like 10 shops and ended up buying one by mail. It was such a good transition board in its time, and what a user community; my old K7S5A machine still runs an unofficial modded BIOS.

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Peng Lord

I seems to have plenty of room for just about any cooler thanks to the AGP and PCI-E slots being lower on the board than usual.

Also, this system so far seems much better than the K7S5A, I had a K7S5A, it was junk in my opinion, ECS wouldn't stand behind their board when the caps started failing a few months after I bought it.

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FuRI0

i have a asrock DS2 and it is rock solid

yes your zalman will fit

yes if u get your hands dirty you can get a mad ass clock

yes it does have the limitations of a bugget board

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Hak Foo

Quote: Originally Posted by Peng Lord I seems to have plenty of room for just about any cooler thanks to the AGP and PCI-E slots being lower on the board than usual. Also, this system so far seems much better than the K7S5A, I had a K7S5A, it was junk in my opinion, ECS wouldn't stand behind their board when the caps started failing a few months after I bought it.

I was worried about that beefy northbridge heatsink.

I had two K7S5As and actually was exceedingly satisfied with them, perhaps because my prior board was a PCChips M807 with even bigger stability issues (although it would clock to 112MHz, high for a KT133 board). It was nice to see that it was both the fastest board and the cheapest you could find, for those few golden days til KT266A showed.

I was really comparing it in a metaphoric sense: both are transitional boards, made by firms without great reputations (Asrock isn't ECS, but it's hardly a first-tier like DFI or Abit). Both boards used chipsets that didn't get much if any play elsewhere (legend speaks of a few other SiS 735 boards, but did YOU ever see one?) and sold huge amounts because of their appealing transitional capabilities, and bought both the chipset firm and the mobo firm some respect they'd probably not have.

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The Dragon Reborn

LOL... mine held up for about 4 years... finally when it was in my wife's PC ... it died....
Replaced it by a Gigabyte Nforce mainboard.,...


TDR

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