New Motherboard - Suggestions?

DavidNW

DavidNW

Big Geek
I've been scouring the Net looking at motherboards to replace my 'elderly' mobo (see My Computer). Basically, want to achieve a processor speed of 3GHz and would slightly prefer to stick with Athlon (if they run to such a speed) - unless someone can offer a good reason to change.

I'm not into gaming, so a mega-fast box is not a requirement. I just want something that has reasonable potential for upgrading. The ever-increasing advance in technology has meant that I've gone about as far as I can with my old board.

As I said, I've looked at some motherboards, but the more I look, the more I get confused about what to buy. Any advice would be very much welcomed.


Thanks,


David.
 
Right now, Intel has the CPU performance crown with the Core 2 Duo, so that would be the advised position if you're looking purely at the performance angle. The motherboards for this use Socket T, more commonly known as LGA775.

AMD's current socket for the desktop is Socket AM2. You can still find some Socket 939 boards, AM2's predecessor, but it is a dead solution.

Both solutions are paired with DDR2. A few niche solutions for Socket T may use DDR3, but that's new and rather expensive, so I don't see that being up your alley right now.

AMD boards:

MSI K9N4-F SLI.
Biostar T-Force 570 SLI

I've found MSI's starter boards to be reasonably priced and good performers. I haven't used Biostar before, but from what I've read on them from the user standpoint, they're nice little boards that offer a lot of bang for their price. I'd almost say their the poor man's DFI LanParty.

Intel:

-Gigabyte P965-DQS/DS3
-MSI P6N-SLI/P6N-SLI F1

These are some of the most popular boards for overclocking, and are around the $100-130 marks. The Gigabyte is probably the most popular P965 board around, so there's plenty of documentation.
The MSI board is based off the nForce 650i, which allows for SLI, should you so desire. It's another popular board among the overclockers, as not everybody wants to drop $200-300 for an nForce 680i.
 
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