Best socket 754 motherboard with PCI express?

errata · 13 Apr 2006 at 07:31

pastymuncher said:
How cheap is cheap? What sort of performance are you getting?

Just built it up and got SATA disc and SLI working, not tried tweaking it yet but there are options

2Dmark2001 and 3dmark2005 put on but 3dmark2006 gives an error.

Any particular options or benchmarks you are interested in?

Paid £37 and collected

pastymuncher · 13 Apr 2006 at 11:15

That is amazingly cheap. How about 03/05, and a couple of game benchies such as Far Cry or Quake 4 if you have them. You can get the game benchies from Guru 3D. Be interesting to see how it performs and then compare it to a similar Nvidia solution.

Whats the rest of your rigs specs?

sh33p · 13 Apr 2006 at 13:44

How does that board compare with the nforce4 4x?

Just had to return an asus one because it has massive problems with the ATI x1000 series apparantly, constant random lockups in 3d games and unable to play mpeg1 videos of all things and no fix from asus or ati.

Contemplating going s939, have an old 754 a64 3200+ clawhammer atm, what would be a decent cpu upgrade without going insane pricewise? Have an x1900xt.

pastymuncher · 13 Apr 2006 at 14:17

It's a waste of time going to 939. There's nothing wrong with your 3200+. Get a decent 754 pci-e mobo and clock it. That Asrock one is dirt cheap and my Epox EP-8NPA Sli has just dropped to £65. 939 is dead at the end of the year and 754 will last a further year beyond that. If you want to upgrade your cpu try to find a claw 3700+ or try a Turion or a Venice 3000+ which should both clock very nicely.

m3csl2004 · 13 Apr 2006 at 14:42

or a newark 4000+

pastymuncher · 13 Apr 2006 at 16:45

All right if you can get one

.

errata · 14 Apr 2006 at 07:27

pastymuncher said:
That is amazingly cheap. How about 03/05, and ...Whats the rest of your rigs specs?

Its 3400 clawhammer, Arctic Freezer Pro 64, 1gb XMS PC3200, 2 gigabyte 6800GT Everything at default no tweaking at all.

3dm05 4924 single gpu, 8478 SLI

3dm01 18421 SLI

several reviews inc ocworkbench, pretty reasonable. Performance should generally be the same as the epox SLI with same ULI chipset and the asrock previous gen Asrock K8 combo & upgrade & dual ranges using ULI. Asrock still releasing new products for s 754 and 939 using these ULI chips.

One downside, nvidia disabled ULI's patch for SLI in recent beta driver sets thats not a problem for my 6800 cards though

pastymuncher · 14 Apr 2006 at 14:31

Thats not bad. Before i upgraded to sli i had a Asus V9999GE (souped up 6800) in a K8N Neo Platinum and that gave me 4324 in 05. With the Epox sli and my 7800gt's i get 7714 single card and 11824 sli in 05. Will have to look around for sli 6800gt sli scores.

TLJester1 · 15 Apr 2006 at 12:19

I am looking at buying one of these 4 boards for use with a ATI x1900xt (so SLI not required):
Asrock K8NF4G (seems to have better audio ?)
BIOSTAR TForce6100
Asus K8N-VM
Asus K8N4-E Deluxe (only here in case its a super great board)

I will be doing some overclocking.
Will be adding SATA drive (no floppy or dvd etc), 2x512mb memory, TV card, and maybe a PhsyiX card later.

Thanks for any advice

Super Tigers · 15 Apr 2006 at 12:26

All three boards are good in their own right, I have the Tforce6100 and I love it, so I am biased in its favour. Running my Vencie e6 core 3000+ at 265mhzx10multi at 1.5v for the last 2.5 weeks now, Pc has never been turned off in that time, I have downloaded 25gigs of Data over my router, burnt about 50dvds, played Oblivion and tomb raider legends and it hasn't complained or hiccuped once. Probably one of the best mobos I have ever set up and owned in my opinion ( probably setup about 250pcs in the last 6 years) overclocks like hell, damn stable and is very cheap in price. Decent onboard graphics, supports all pci-express cards, sound is decent but not spectacular, good nforce driver support, excellent IDE and Sata performance.

just my 2 pence worth.

Rob H

TLJester1 · 15 Apr 2006 at 12:38

Added 1 more that I forgot... :eek:

Thanks Rob
I had read your reviews already, and pretty happy with that one

Only thing that concerns me is the audio, and if the Asrock is better for that.
Any idea if the Asrock is a good enough overclocker?

Topitoff · 15 Apr 2006 at 13:08

I have the ArSock mobo, and at £35 it's good value for money.

Bought it to "play around with" - it has almost identical BIOS options as the S939 Dual Sata. Two things of note: there is no VCore adjustment if a cpu with no "cool and quiet" is used - ie Sempron 2800 or less; to get HTTs of over 280 a modded BIOS is needed.

Currently I have a Sempron 2800 running at 2.5GHz (310 x8) in mine with 512mb Corsair C2 @ 1T - this gives a Super-PI 1M of 38s. This is with the modded BIOS and I've had absolutly no probs. with stability.

pastymuncher · 15 Apr 2006 at 14:00

I would'nt touch the Asus ones. I have heard of quite a few failures on these. Not great overclockers either.

Another good one to add to your list is the Abit NV8 nForce4 4X. This is an excellent overclocker and not too badly priced either.

The Gigabyte 754 pci-e boards are not great either.

sh33p · 16 Apr 2006 at 17:29

Stay away from the asus boards, they have major issues with ATI x1000 series as well as other things.

They're blaming it on nvidia's 4x chipset but haven't heard of any problems with other boards, I think I'm gonna get the MSI neo3 nf4x board, reviews seem good.

clemenzina · 18 Apr 2006 at 00:08

Super Tigers said:
Try the biostar Tforce 6100 socket 754 version. Absolutely rock solid board, clocks like a good'un, very stable and is damn cheap at £45inc vat.

And even cheaper, Biostar's GeForce6100, which is apparently (I read it somewhere) exactly the same as the T (turbo) version and if updated with the TForce's bios is very overclockable.

That's if you can download the bios, which I can't, there seems to be a fault on website.

clemenzina's ha'pence worth

clemenzina · 18 Apr 2006 at 00:12

Good grief!!! I wrote to Biostar-USA five minutes ago and I've just received an email from them with the latest bios attached.

I can't wait to get my setup done, but this bios update is all I've physically got at the mo, all the rest is in the post

Fingers crossed.

clemenzina

2StepSteve · 2 May 2006 at 10:11

Im in the same situation aswell, need a good overclockable 754 board with PCIE.

Looking at the BT 6100 as a possible choice... do you find it to be very overclockable clemenzina? Not sure I could live having just 2 PCI slots though

I was gonna get the Asus but after what ive read here maybe not a good choice...

clemenzina · 2 May 2006 at 11:40

2StepSteve said:
Looking at the BT 6100 as a possible choice... do you find it to be very overclockable clemenzina? Not sure I could live having just 2 PCI slots though.

I know what you mean about 'only 2 PCI slots', and having to fork out a fortune (well, it would be for me) on a PCIe graphics card if the onboard didn't quite meet, say, gaming needs, would put some people off too.

'Is it overclockable?' - my Biostar GeForce6100-M7 won't even POST

and I've had to order another, refurbished, board, an Epox EP-8HMMI-A* from official EpoxUK person. Very nice man, he's putting mini-heatsinks on the mosfets for me (which I had to Google

).

Here is a link to user-reviews of the TForce6100-M7 (it's on newegg.com, who do not supply to the UK) http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813138268

*Please don't anyone tell me the Epox is a bad board, I'll kwy. I was in such a financial fix, not being able to get my money back on the Biostar before buying another - I got a Socket A for only £15 for my brother, but 754s are not easy to find on the very-cheap, and at least I can use existing graphics and sound cards if the onboard are not very good.

clemenzina

2StepSteve · 2 May 2006 at 11:59

Damn that sucks you had bad luck with that board, its a nitemare when things don't work and gotta be RMA'ed know how u feel.

Thanks for the link... thinkin about it even more, 2 PCIs just isn't enough.. Not sure what the manufacturer was on when they wrote up the specs! Funny enough im seeing it a lot now with mobos only having 2 or 3 PCIs slots.. Strange indeed

I was looking at the epox EP-8NPA aswell doesn't look bad some ppl have recommended in this thread.. EDIT: haha only has 2 PCI aswell! Whats going on here :rolleyes:

pastymuncher · 2 May 2006 at 14:09

It's only got 2x pci because of the second pci-e slot. You can also rule out the pci slot right under the lower pci-e slot too if you have an after market graphics cooler (it's touch and go even with a single slot graphics card) so that leaves one which is an even bigger pain in the butt.