i need good socket 939

[tennex]

I am looking for a socket 939 board for me and my friends to use, we are getting ready to build a lan party room. We want to use the same board, but some want a FX, X2, and just a regular athlon for different budgets. I mostly shop on newegg, and me being the most knowledeable I just thought I would ask here for any recommendations. I particular would want to go with asus, and quite frankly the price budget isn't that much of a concern. Has anyone had a board that have went from a regular athlon to an FX or an X2 and had a smooth transition? I have heard on some forums bad things about the X2 with even newer games. I am aware that COD2 has a patch for dual core and i'll assume others will follow. Any suggestions?

[Fozzik]

The issues with dual-core processors and some games do exist, but they don't have anything to do with the motherboards. It's just that Windows, and the games themselves, were not necessarily written with dual-core in mind. There are patches or workarounds for pretty much all the issues (the MS patch and/or AMD dual-core driver seem to correct most problems without resorting to setting core affinity). At any rate, on to the question. ;)

The Asus A8N-SLI Premium is a great performer and a very solid board. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it at all... I own one and have installed several more. The motherboard that I'd recommend would depend somewhat on the particular situation though... for instance it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to get an SLI board if you are getting an ATI video card. Also, someone who never intends on running dual video cards might want to save a little money and go with a non-SLI Nforce 4 Ultra.

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe is the newest board in the Nforce 939 lineup, and is a fantastic performer, with all the possible bells and whistles. It is however very expensive.

If you are thinking about an ATI video card, I'd definitely recommend the Asus A8R-MVP, which is an ATI Xpress 200 crossfire chipset and seems very solid. It may be a little hard to find in the future though...but right now it's a fantastic deal for a very good price. The only negative comments would be that the passive heatsink on the north bridge makes it a little tricky to install the CPU heatsink/fan, and that there possibly are some inconsistancies with the onboard NIC.

At any rate, it depends. You certainly can't go wrong with most Asus boards right now, so I think you're on the right track. MSI and DFI also make some boards worth checking out...but if you really want in-depth advice, just throw up a list of specs when you pick out the machines. :D

[Lord_Vyper]

The bad things you're hearing about are due to weirdness between XP and all dual cores, not just x2s.
Every game I've tried will run perfectly well on a x2, provided you force that game into residing on a single core.

As for board recommendations, I've got a A8N-SLI Premium that I'm quite happy with at the moment, and it'll handle any 939 processor out there. (Had to update my bios to handle my x2 though.)

Sole issue with that board is that you can't use it in any of the cases that have upside down designs (Lian Li is a good example of this.)

Edit: And Fozzik beat me to it :( ah well.

[tennex]

Thanks to the both of you for clearing up my comments on the whole X2 situation. I am looking to save money and go with a sapphire radeon x800 model that has 512MB of ram and more than likely my friends will follow suit. Not the completely cheap one either (that one only has 4 pixel pipelines), the one that is around $260 that does have 256-bit MI and I believe 16 pixel pipelines. I am now pissed off that I spent a whopping $1200 on a socket 478 pentium 4 machine a year ago. I wish knew back then what I know now especially the AMD vs Intel benchmarking war that has been going on with AMD winning 90% of the time. Anyway Lord_Vyper mentioned flashing his bios to support X2. I am not completely ignorant on that subject, but I have never done that before. I tried to do my machine, but I had no floppy drive. Is there a way to flash your bios without a floppy drive?

[Razorwire]

Depends on the company some companies offer BIOS flash software that you can load from inside windows (Lenovo/IBM for example)

[Lord_Vyper]

I am looking to save money and go with a sapphire radeon x800 model that has 512MB of ram and more than likely my friends will follow suit. Not the completely cheap one either (that one only has 4 pixel pipelines), the one that is around $260 that does have 256-bit MI and I believe 16 pixel pipelines.
For what it's worth, pipelines aren't *that* important where ATI is concerned.
ATI has designed their chipsets around doing more per pixel, versus nVidia's more pixels faster.
What I'd be more concerned with are supported features.
With both ATI and nVidia now supporting SM3.0, more game companies will want to adopt it. IIRC the x800/x850 doesn't.
I'd suggest X1600XT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102657)instead.

Anyway Lord_Vyper mentioned flashing his bios to support X2. I am not completely ignorant on that subject, but I have never done that before. I tried to do my machine, but I had no floppy drive. Is there a way to flash your bios without a floppy drive?
Didn't mean to scare you there. I bought my motherboard right after the x2s came out, so nearly every motherboard needed to have an updated BIOS to handle them. By this point, any board you buy should be able to detect/handle x2s with no problem.
On the slight chance that you get a board that doesn't, not having a floppy drive won't matter. If your board doesn't detect a processor, it won't work, period.
You'll have to do what I did, accquire an updated CMOS chip for your board. The BIOS guy (http://www.biosman.com/)is a good shop for such things.

[Breogan]

Almost any current board will detect the X2 without problem, and even if it doesn't, it will see at least one of the cores and still boot, although you'll need a BIOS update so the 2nd core is recognized. You don't need to buy additional parts like a BIOS chip anymore.

[tennex]

Lord_Vyper, I like where your head is at. Was not aware of SM3.0, and thats a good point. I really could overlook that as I only play call of duty 2. I dont feel the need to own every latest and greatest FPS like DOOM3, Quake4, BF2, and all those. I was more concerned with buying a system when we get more information on vanguard system requirements. Unfortunately that could be 2 to 6 months the way they are going. I was looking at the x800 model because that was the model they were using for the E3 demo as I remember reading that somewhere. Also, judging by Aradune's comments he does recommend a 256MB card. I always like to kind of have an upgrade already with whatever game I have in mind. I think it's safe to assume that vanguard will require 128 MB graphic accelerator, and more than likely recommend a 256 MB card. I am not totatly sure, but I think he said in the future a 512MB card could be useful. I would guess to support expansions, new armor loads, etc. However, the price on the card you picked out was outstanding, I must have overlooked it browsing for a 512MB card. Anyone oppose to a 512MB card? That might not be as fast as a 256MB card for the same price.

[Lord_Vyper]

Thus far I haven't seen any games/reviews where 512MB card significantly improves a game, versus a 256MB card.
Not to say that games won't take advantage of it, just that it hasn't been common enough in general for developers to optimize their graphics engines to take advantage of it.
SM3.0 is supported by ATI & nVidia from their cheapest card to their most expensive, while 512MB cards are usually placed at the upper end of the spectrum. So, it stands to reason that more people will have SM3.0 capable cards then will have 512MB cards, and developers will cater to SM3.0 over 512MB.

[Fozzik]

The amount of memory that a video card has is important, but not even close to as important as the graphics processor. SM3.0 support is not complete yet, at least on the ATI side, but their current gen parts (the X1... series) all support it.

If you can give a ballpark of the price you are looking for, I could give some recommendations...but honestly waiting a bit is a good idea if you plan on playing vanguard. It will also depend quite a bit on the resolution you plan on playing at. Although we've heard that an X800-series card will handle Vanguard, how well it handles it and at what resolution is the question. If you end up only being able to get good frame rates with all options turned down and a resolution of 1024x768 or something... then it probably wouldn't be worth it. Not saying that will be the case (we really don't know), just that the longer you wait, the more powerful card you'll be able to buy with the same money.

[Slide]

The Asus A8N-SLI Premium is a great performer and a very solid board. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it at all... I own one and have installed several more. The motherboard that I'd recommend would depend somewhat on the particular situation though... for instance it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to get an SLI board if you are getting an ATI video card. Also, someone who never intends on running dual video cards might want to save a little money and go with a non-SLI Nforce 4 Ultra.

I ended up with the A8N Premium and an ATI card - at the time the passive north bridge cooling sold me on that board, irrespective of graphic card choice. The NForce 4 chipset is well featured too, even if you never plan on running SLI.

[tennex]

That's another good point about the resolution being a big factor, I was thinking the same thing when I replied again earlier. My monitor a 17" 8ms LCD by Acer is really impressive on CoD2. I know first hand about resolution, how dropping it can have a huge effect sometimes on certain games. It was just all the difference the computer needed to run that game without experiencing that ever so dreaded screen lag. My monitor supports up to 1280x1024 and no higher. I cannot play CoD2 without some lag on my current P43.0GHZ with a geforce 5500 on that resolution, so it runs fine on 1024X768. I would really like to push vanguard on the 1280 resolution, since its the highest I can go. I am assuming that fozzik is right about the wait, I really feel the same way now. BTW, the new FX60 is out on newegg if you are not subscribed to their newsletter. The FX55 now belongs to a combo package that will save you $200, but you have to take the motherboard they are offering and forced to buy some corsair XMS memory for $125 a stick. I am not a big fan of mismatching memory, and I already have 2 DDR400 512 sticks for this new rig that I will be pulling out of my old system. I would say in a few months my budget will be about $1000 maybe an extra benji or two if something looks sweet.

Speaking of CoD2, not sure if its the game or my system, but I can only run CoD2 anti-aliasing on 4x. I have my drivers set for application controlled. When I tried to force 8x in the nvidia control panel, the game ran like crap. If I try to change it within CoD2, it only lets me do 4x. Any ideas on that?

[Fozzik]

Speaking of CoD2, not sure if its the game or my system, but I can only run CoD2 anti-aliasing on 4x. I have my drivers set for application controlled. When I tried to force 8x in the nvidia control panel, the game ran like crap. If I try to change it within CoD2, it only lets me do 4x. Any ideas on that?


The graphics driver and the game are written by different people (yeah, I'm capt. obvious), so each handles AA in a different way. The game's AA is probably a method which the game developer has found works best with their game. The AA in the graphics driver is designed to work best with the hardware, and is meant to work well accross many games.

Basically, it comes down to a situation where there are so many factors at work, it's just about impossible to predict how a particular game is going to work with a particular driver with particular settings on a particular OS...etc. etc. The best thing is just to try stuff out until you find the best blend of graphic quality and performance for that game and your hardware. It sounds like you're doing this already. There isn't anything "wrong" really, it's just the fact that there are far to many variables at work for anything to be consistant. "It depends" is a sucky answer, but in this case it's really the only one.

[tennex]

I just went through like 2 days of troubleshooting with activision, anyway the only thing I got out of it was my agp drivers needed an update. That didn't fix the problem. Tried every possible resolution. They had me do all kinds of weird stuff. This final answer was...

Thanks for the reply. The game does not support greater then 4x AA. Contact us again anytime. Thanks.

Now I asked them should I try flashing my bios. Not sure if that would even take care of it. Although, reading motherboard reviews on newegg, many claim that after they flashed their bios problem X was resolved. It would be something crazy to, and you wouldn't think flashing the bios would fix it.

I dunno, seems risky and might bring on new problems. I am satisfied with the way call of duty 2 runs, but I just hate to pay for some technology and never get to use it ya know? Anyone think flashing my bios might help?

[Lord_Vyper]

Rule of thumb with BIOS updates. If you don't have a problem, don't flash.
If an updated BIOS adds some nifty feature/support, go for it, otherwise leave well enough alone.

And, BIOS controls basic motherboard functionality, so nothing you could do with it would change the fact that you can't get greater then 4xAA. Honestly with a 5500, I'm surprised you're even able to play with decent framerates with AA running.