I'm looking at getting a new motherboard and I'm totally lost as to what brand I should get or what specs that I want besides it being able to support DDR ram. Should I get an AMD board that supports AMD 64 (kind of an AMD fan since that's all I've ever used)? What is AMD 64 exactly? Do I need to have a "Northbridge" on it? So many questions... Somebody get me started. What do you think? Thanks!
I'm also looking at video cards as well. Do I want a video card that plugs into the PCI or into the AGP? What are the differences?
AMD 64 is amd's 64bit chips, theyve been around for a while, intels only just caught up. Th northbridge is part of the motherboard, as is the southbridge. do a google for "athlon 64 motherboards" and you will get your answers. They are very good cpu's for the money, and overclock easily. Definitly get a n-force 4 board by nvidia, heaps better than the others available. As far as graphics card, id go PCI-E only because theres more available these days and they're the new generation (so you can buy a good one now and put it in your next motherboard later on, agp is gone pretty much) Its really up to you, if you have a computer already you need to look at what you can bring across (ie- if you switch to intel you need new ddr2 ram but amd can use the old sticks, if you have a brand new agp graphics card you could get away with another agp motherboard....
Just to help you out a little metabaron, PCI and PCI-E are different,, just making sure you dont run into confusion, because PCI cards suck... and PCI-E cards are amazing.
ASUS Motherboards are my favorites and are very highly recommended in the Industry; check out this link: http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/mbindex.htm
if your looking for something new id reccomend a socket 939 athlon 64 motherboard (id reccomend MSI theyre expensive but worth it) with PCI Express (PCI Express gives better graphic perfomance than AGP) and as for the Graphics card its got to be a Nvidia 6600GT id sugest checking out http://www.eclipsecomputers.com theyve got some cheap parts
AMDs like athlons and semprons are 32bit processors the athlon 64 is a 64bit processor basically theyre twice as good ;P
Depends on how much money you want to spend. AMD is more value for money than Intel. Then what AMD CPU. Top of the range Athlon64 are expensive. You don't really need 64 bit CPU as most software doesn't support it. Personlly I'd stick with 32 bit. So that means AMD Athlon or the new Sempron. Next you want a motherboard that supports the Sempron. (Socket A) Semprons run at 333FSB (Front Side Bus). So get a motherboard that has a FSB of 333 or 400. Memory has to be 333Mhz (PC2700)or 400Mzh (PC3200). It all depends on price but an Athlon XP 2500 can overclock to 3200 if you run at FSB 400. But some CPU are locked so they only run at FSB 333.
Thanks for the heads up, I didn't realise AGP was being phased out. See I don't use my PC for games so it doesn't really effect me. I'm still using a GeForce 3, 64MB.
you want to looks for specs like: Hyper-threading, 800fsb bus, 1 mb cahce but 512 will do, more than gig of ram. All the other specs is up to you
Hey metabaron, check this out: http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=639 They are selling these for only $119 bucks (CDN)! Socket 939, and they have integrated Radeon graphics, plus a PCI eXpress graphics slot :^) I have built a 1/2-dozen rigs with these; very pleased with everything so far... Top performance, very reliable and good quality, good support ;^) Regards
