Motherboards/nvidia components

perplex26 · 13 Mar 2006 at 05:16

Hello,

I will soon be building a new computer, and am looking at motherboards at the moment, but there are a few things i am unsure of. Some of the motherboards have nvidia components, eg NVIDIA nForce chipsets, ethernet, firewall etc. To me, nvidia was a graphics card manufacturer. If i buy an "nvidia" board, can i use a socket 939 amd processor, with an ati radeon card?
Secondly, what motherboard can you suggest for an athlon XP(3700 or 3800 single),and an ati card (x1800 either 256 or 512)? Good performance is all i am after. An onboard soundcard is optional, only 2pci slots are needed. (i believe pci is now pci-e?).

Regards,

perplexed.

ACESHIGH · 13 Mar 2006 at 07:50

Nvidia are primarily a graphics card manufacturer but aslo make motherboard chipsets (Nforce 4). ATI also make motherboard chipsets (Crossfire - Xpress 200). The chipset controls how the CPU interacts with the memory, expansion cards, HDD etc. Many different manufacturers utilize a few different chipset types in different configurations to provide the computer user with varying features.

Yes you can buy an Nvidia (Nforce) motherboard & run any ATI card no problems. You can also run Nvida cards in ATI (Crossfire motherboards).

Good ATI chipset based motherboards:
Abit AT8 ATI RD480 Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-091-AB)
£88.07*Including VAT
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-131-AS)
£140.94*Including VAT
Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£82.19*Including VAT

Good Nvidia (Nforce) chipset based motherboards:
Abit KN8 Ultra nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-087-AB)
£76.32*Including VAT
Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)
£72.79*Including VAT
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£93.94*Including VAT

PCI is different to PCIE.
PCI Express x16 is for graphics cards.
PCI Express x1 is replacing standard PCI slots. This will only happen when soundcard & other manufacturers start supporting it.

perplex26 · 13 Mar 2006 at 08:36

Thankyou for your reply,

I understand a bit more now about the new motherboards. One last question, is it possible to use a single graphics card on a crossfire motherboard?

regards,

perplex26

lordedmond · 13 Mar 2006 at 08:38

Yes doing it now with a A8R32-MVP

MrWhippy · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:59

perplex26 said:
...3700 or 3800 single...
Good performance is all i am after.

just a note on the CPU front, if these are the two you're looking at, and you're happy to go single core, and after good performance, the 3700 is the better chip.

this is due to the fact it has 1Mb level 2 cache versus 512Kb on the 3800 chip.

the 3700 is the single core daddy.

except there's also single core socket 939 opterons to consider.
if you're going to be wanting to play with overclocking, maybe you need to consider the opterons. if you're likely to just want to run the cpu at stock speeds though, i think the 3700 is the one for you.