Replacement for ABIT AW9D-MAX

mattywhi

mattywhi

mattywhi

Associate
Joined
4 Sep 2006
Posts
23
Location
Surrey, UK
Hi all,

I have just had my ABIT AW9D-MAX die on me :(

I keep getting the F.5 post error which I cannot shift despite trying a few tricks mentioned in the ***** forums and as such im looking to replace the motherboard in the PC.

My current setup is as follows:

Core2Duo 2,4Ghz E6600
Tagan TG580 PSU
Corsair XMS2-6400C5 (2GB)
Gainward 8800GTS 640MB

I am not really considering replacing much else inside the PC as the rest of the setup appears OK but I would like a similar spec'd motherboard and with an Intel Chipset (unless you can recommend anything better)

My budget is £100-150 and as always help is appreciated
 
I used to have the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe which was a wonderful motherboard so no problems with Asus at all!

Any other suggestions
 
Thats cool - Is there much benefit of getting the deluxe instead of the pro as I do like the dual onboard nics but not sure what other benfits i will get
 
Dual NICs and the 16 phase power are the only real benefits of the Deluxe. I suppose the former is handy if you can use the extra NIC, and the latter is only really useful if you're looking to overclock a quad-core on very high FSB.
 
Main difference is in no. of lanes available for Crossfire performance (X38= 2x x16 PCI-E 2.0 & P45 =2x x8 PCI-E 2.0) although I dont think that you would see any difference unless building & gaming on an extremely high end system in terms of gfx cards & monitor(s).
 
if i only have a single nVidia card will it be worth the step up?

also as its been a while since i looked at all this... crossfire is the ati equivalent of sli or am i completely wrong with this?

Whilst i am not thinking about it now my thought had been to sli my next graphics setup as i have always bought nvidia but is are most boards more crossfire compatible than sli compatible?
 
No point getting an X38 board with an nVidia card. You would need two ATI cards to take advantage of the extra lanes.

Only nVidia based motherboards will let you run SLI, and as such you would be stuck with a small selection. There are many many more Intel based boards that are able to run Crossfire.
 
780i is a bad chipset, and should only be considered if you're definately going to be running SLI and haven't the money for DDR3 (the better 790i chipset is DDR3 only).

The P5Q Deluxe is a far far better motherboard.
 
Thanks guys - made up my mind and put through the order for the Intel motherboard

Decided to upgrade CPU and RAM in the PC at the same time so should be running sweetly afterwards

Thanks for all your advice!
 
i dont know!

came home one day and It wouldnt respond to anything and the display on the mobo had F.5 showing which isnt documentedand i cant get any life from it
 
Hey guys,

new mobo has turned up and after a few worrying moments when it wouldnt post its now running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

My problem is that when I run the chipset installation software it crashes out and does not complete.

Tried to get the latest installer from the Intel website and had a quick google but cannot see anything obvious. Any ideas as to what is happening?
 
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