Any quality brand nForce2 Ultra400 chipset based board will do for Socket A, as long as it has the features you require.

SIS chipsets simply reek and VIA had their share of problems in socket A chipsets.

Chipset is of utmost importance. I suspect that people with wild, unsupported stories simply haven't got the knowledge to successfully, or even safely fool about with PC hardware, but hey, it's their money. Just because they broke their hardware or recieved faulty goods doesn't give them intimate knowledge of chipsets and the inner workings of PC's.

What amuses me is the fact that such experts care to advise at all, not only considering the embarrassment it could potentially cause him, but there is a strong chance that some associate may act on that ill advice, and be much worse off for their trouble.

But they are probably too busy trying to repair or replace their system components after doing so much damage that they hadn't actually thought it through too much before commenting.

So, anyway, you can take your advice from someone who has a pile of fried hardware, (Video card, mainboard, hard drive and CPU is it Rollerball?), or just go and check out the info for yourself.

Just google up the chipset comparison tests etc and reviews on those chipsets and you'll soon see supporting evidence of my ranting and raving.

In fact, if you are interested, you can spend entire weeks digging out all the info like I did so you can make your own informed choices.

I mean, you have personal experience with the VIA chipset, it sucks, it always sucked right? What more evidence do you need?

I tried for years now in these forums to teach everyone why it's so important to choose the right chipset, only to see member after member apparently totally ignore all my research and experience with this stuff, and then go out and buy a heap of inferior products. Well, it takes all kinds I guess.

PCchips make the cheapest and crappiest hardware using the junkiest chipsets, the reason they are popular is because non-techs can configure them because they have simple options intended for amateur home builders. I dare say this is why Rollerball is happy with it, because he could actually get it to work.
However, they are not performance hardware and BIOS and other options are limited. The gamer need not apply.

Socket A is not limited to 2800+ cpu's either, only on inferior chipsets....... An nForce2 chipset is capable of astounding performance and stability that only the latest 64 bit and intel chipsets will surpass.

This isn't new info, it's three year old common knowledge on tried and time proven technologies....

That board in the pic is a budget replacement with a quality brand Fozzer, you may want to read my last post again concerning some of the details.

Rollerball, while I sympathise with your current hardware frustrations, it's not in the interest of our members to make bad advice based on your recent experiences with numerous hardware failures. You bought and are continuing to buy some really cheap and nasty gear (PNY video cards, PCchips, SIS ......) and are obviously being mislead or confused by someone or something. I tried to help you resolve some of your issues in past threads, and I'm sorry it didn't help, but you are way offtrack with your above advice.

I don't want to get involved in any personal verbal brawls over this. I truly wish to help guide our members through the many pitfalls and problems that hardware issues present, and I certainly try my utmost not to furnish false information in these threads, after all, what would be the point?

These forums have been partially responsible for the knowledge I've gained about PC hardware. There are a lot of interesting people here with all kinds of PC hardware questions and problems. I have followed the progress of thousands of threads here, and have spent many all nighters seeking the answers to apparently simple questions, but alas, the answer is not often so simple as "Buy an nForce2 chipset". I have made those statements based on hundreds of hours of research and thousands of hours of personal experience, not just off the top of my head........

I'm fully aware that what I say may have a significant financial impact on the reader, and I choose my words carefully when I write here, trying to condense what I've learned into practical solutions for you all.

Now, I am limited in that this is a forum, I obviously can't watch over your hardware installation progress and check every step of the way what you are doing. I have to assume that the reader here has some basic PC hardware experience, and I do try to determine how much knowledge the poster has before getting them in too deep. Sometimes my human judgements are in error, and I have found (after it's too late!) that the individuals in question do not have the capacity or current required knowledge to be messing about with PC hardware safely. This occurs often enough to cause me some alarm, but I'm not aware that I cause serious problems by my advice. On the contrary, I get a lot of positive feedback and gestures of gratitude when problems are solved, and that is now the main reason I offer help at all.

It hurts me personally when my extensive efforts are undermined by inane and insensitive statements like some made above, especially after recently spending a lot of my personal time and effort attempting to help the person making those statements.

Quote:


The nforce chipsets are one of the best and the 6600GT is solid card for its price. How you managed to screw it up is beyond me. Sites like tomshardware guide and anandtech will confirm this easily. Choose your arguements carefully, because arguing that the nforce chipset is inferior to that of a VIA or SIS is like standing on thin ice.

Quote:


I speak and read English perfectly fine, thank you very much. You didn't say it directly, but you implied it. It was quite clear. If that was not what you were trying to imply, what did you mean by:
Quote:

Why mention "Never before had such an experience with VIA or SiS" if you aren't trying to imply they are better?

Quote:

Well, I'm sorry about your problem with this particular card, but this does not mean nforce is a bad chipset nor does it make the 6600gt a bad or abysmal card either. Your anger is misdirected and it seems you do not understand where fault lies. A bad card is a problem of the manufacturor (such as Asus or gigabyte), not nvidia. Same with the motherboard. Nvidia does not control the manufacture of each individual board/card.

Quote:

Watch your tone, kid. My 'superior codswallop' isn't only mine. Read around a bit and you'll see that I'm not the only one who shares this 'codswallop'. In fact, Dell (the number one supplier of PC's worldwide) chose to dump Intel's chipsets in favor of nvidia's nforce4 chipset for their upcoming ultra high-end systems.
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20050808/SFM02108082005-1.html
Be careful what you label as 'codswallop' because, ironically, the only arguement here that can be labeled as such is your arguement.

Perhaps this one is a good choice. Anything onboard except the video, SATA ports and other modern goodies in abundance (who will ever need 8 USB ports...)

Hi, Chaps...

I have had a look at the GigByte GA 7N400-L1 and it looks like a reasonably priced board £40 - £50 with the sort of features which probably suit me.
also...
Had a peek at the Giga-Byte GA-7N400Pro Rev2....
A super-dooper board, priced at around £75, looks very nice, and is crammed with all sorts of exciting features.......!
...including...RAID...!
Now, I ask myself, "what is RAID?"
...and looking at my existing spec do I REALLY need it...?
If not, it appears that if the RAID features are ignored from the more expensive board, what I am left with is the cheaper GA-7N 400-L1 board... .. ... ...!

There you go folks...?
GA-7N400-L1*....£40....?
GA-7N400 pro...£75...With RAID?

...so many choices... ...LOL... ...!
* The "L" probably means built-in LAN circuitry? What does the "1" indicate...?

Cheers all...!

Paul.... 8)...!

P.S. after 2 attempts I managed to get the system to boot-up >Delete> BIOS> set the speed at 180, (AMD 2800!)....works a treat...Flying twice as fast!... ...!
Funny innit... ...!

P.P.S.   Ooooppppsss, sorry Congo! Just back-tracked a couple of posts to read your latest report....taken note... ...!
(Present: 3 sticks of 256 Mb PC 2700 DDR memory RAM = 768 Mb).

If I give all you arguing buggers a Lollipop each, will you promise me you will stop trashing my super-dooper Thread... ...!

Please... ... ...!
LOL...!

Have fun, Chaps...!

Paul The Laid-Back... 8)...!

Quote:


Ahh, that's what I was worried about. The odd thing is that the board will actually perform better with 2 x 512mb sticks, and the third will slow it down substantially, (back to VIA speeds).

Ideally they need 2 x 512mb matching sticks to really shine, so that's something to chew over.

I mean, if you buy mainboard AND ram, that only leaves the price of a CPU difference to upgrading to a 64bit rig. (and then opens the PCIe can of worms).

You could just try it  with your current ram and see if suits your purpose of course. You may find it does what you want.

Sorry about messing up your thread, it's me who needs to get out more.    

----------------------------

Saitek, it's the overall effect you mentioned that made this particular hardware different. The supported dual channel memory finally relieved the memory bus bottleneck that's plagued systems for so long.

Synchronised CPU/FSB/RAM speeds on this architecture allowed record data flow...... ie. PC bandwidth.

Intel paralleled the nForce2 chipset with the I865/I875 chipsets, they too had dual channel ram support, but their FSB speed is 800mhz, double the nForce2 bus speed. For sheer PC bandwidth, the Intels were vastly superior. In gaming however, the AMD/nVidia based rigs, (nVidia produced the nForce2 chipset), still shined above the Intel offerings of the day, (and probably still do).

It was evident from this that the "overall effect" of the AMD/nForce2 combo was something rather special, especially to gamers/simmers.

The whole situation is reflected again in the current technologies, but now, with AMD 64 technology, AMD increased FSB speed to 1000mhz and the associated bandwidth skyrocketed, leaving little advantage (if any) for Intel based systems.

Data throughput no longer gets bottlenecked on modern systems, the barriers quickly became CPU and RAM speeds. This brought about a new urgency to develop faster CPU's and RAM, so, in a short time we have seen CPU's reach 4ghz (or the equivalent in AMD terms) and the Introduction of DDR2 system memory, currently utilised in Intel chipsets in an attempt to compete against the new AMD advantages.

The old AMD/Intel debate is alive and well!   

OK - sensible post coming up.....

RAID is essentially a security device. More of a set up actually. What you do is install and set up with specialist software an array of identical hard drives (sizes, partitions) - RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Redundant is the operative word because your data is spread over the drive array such that if any one drive fails, you don't lose your data. You can have anything from 2 (Raid 0) up to 32 disks (remembering my old NT Server training here.....). The other levels are RAID 1 and RAID 5 in order of security and I'd probably only be talking to you about RAID if you were a business client with a large volume of valuable data.

This of course is where I'll be told that I'm actually a complete bufoon and that now you can get mobos with RAID capability everyone and their brother has it. RAID 0 (2 disks) has no fault tolerance but comes with little if any performance loss whereas the others both impact on system performance.

Owzatt!