Making Jump to AM2

[BucNastyHater]

Within the next couple weeks I will be upgrading to AM2. At the moment, I cant decide which motherboard to choose.

1) Asus M2N-SLI DELUXE nForce 570 SLI - $135.00

2) Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition nForce 590 SLI - $180.00

3) DFI LANPARTY UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G - $184.00

Now, I currently have a DFI LanParty board, and I love it much more than my old Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe. I would normally go all out get a 590 board, most likely the DFI, but if the Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe takes away some minor extras, then i'd like to save some money. I have lc'ing too, so I need there to no warning for NO CPU FAN. My Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe halted boot everytime I turned it on until I hit 'F1'. There was no BIOS setting to turn off the warning and it really annoyed me. IDK about the DFI because of the chipset fan, so any input would be greatly appriciated.

[Mad_Man]

i had M2N and it was... not bad but not so good. it lacs a lot of oc options.
then i switched to M2N32 and browsing through bios feels like tweakin' till i die.. lol
its wery good and stable. First bioses have hard time with some memories, but newer are very good. certainly i like it. only thing i can imagine to swap this board for would be asus crosshair. but in core thei'r just the same.

[uwackme]

The Crosshiar is the best AM2 overclocking board, it has the most extensive bios options, etc.

if you can nail a Foxconn or other 590SLI reference board on sale for $99-ish, it's a great bargain and pretty good OCing. I'm doing 3473Mhz on my 5600+ on this board. D9 ram does 270-280Mhz as well. But Crosshair gets higher OC on the same ram, thanks to being able to control ALL the memory parameters in the bios.

[Thesavage]

I picked up the M2R32-MVP a ati chipset board got it marked down cheap. Seems ok the only let down is its difficult to get Vista running properly on it.

[nn_step]

My vote http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136017

[BucNastyHater]

The Crosshair board does look really good, but its too expensive.

[Climhazard89]

My vote for a board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186098

My previous one was the DFI Lanparty and it was horrible. Half the BIOS options were unusable, it would only run at 200mhz or 400mhz dividers or else it wouldn't boot, the only BIOS revision is from when it came out, and it killed two sticks of OCZ Platinum 2,...that and their warranty is apparently non existent now as they pretty much told me to :banana::banana::banana::banana: off.

[BucNastyHater]

That board is really nice. Most expensive out of them all but it says that it holds all the 3dmark records (not sure about that). I'm not going to Quakecon or anything, but it looks good.

I will be probably end up getting an AMD 5200+. Anyone know how good these overclock?

[BucNastyHater]

ZipZoomFly.com has the board at $170 plus an $80 mail in rebate:

https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=249228

[informal]

I will be probably end up getting an AMD 5200+. Anyone know how good these overclock?

They OC really good :).Expect around 3.1-3.2Ghz stable OC with a solid mobo and an air cooling.

[Climhazard89]

I would have to put in a plug for the C51XEM its a great board there, also from switching from my DFI to it I dropped .05 Vcore and gained over 100Mhz stable (from 1.45v @ 2.8 to 1.4v @ 2.960 I know i can do 3 with this too, just haven't gotten the tweaking time.)

[topdog]

Have a good read on this

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/asus_m2n32-sli_deluxe/

[BucNastyHater]

Have a good read on this

Nice find topdog. Still reading it at the moment.

[BucNastyHater]

I am really lovin' that Foxconn board. I would've never expected that from that company. I usually skip over those manufacturers', and use only Asus & DFI. I just always thought "those" (foxconn, gigabyte, msi, etc) manufacturers' were just kinda third world i guess. Most likely i'll getting that board with a 5200+.

[mukmaster]

Save your self the pain go core 2 DUO !!!! AMD may have ore pins but 240 of them are for the memory controller !!!

[BucNastyHater]

Nah, AMD all the way. I'll be playing with C2D this fall tho.

[b1lk1]

I had the DFI NF590 that I sold to buy this EVGA NF590 board. That was a HUGE mistake. The DFI has a buggy bios, but once you get used to it, it will be a better board. I'd steer very clear of ASUS mostly because of their horrible support.

[informal]

One more vote for Foxconn C51.For me,the best out there.

[BucNastyHater]

I'm going to go with the Foxconn C51. No doubt about it really.

[uwackme]

Im very happy with the Foxconn. Though I think the Crosshair is faster.

The ddr2 mosfet is the hold back on the Foxconn.... same one as the NF4 SLI-DR DFI boards, and with 4 sticks of BH5 at high speed it was over stretched and puting out a glitch on Vtt.

Hope someone puts a scope on the Foxconn at some point.

But Im at 3473 now on the 5600+, 1.55Vcore in the bios (still no idea where to measure on this board). Ram maxes out at 278Mhz 1:1. The Ultra120Extreme settled things tamp wise, but it blocks the closest DDR2 slot, so 4x1G isn't possible till I can make a custom 90degree mount for the UE.

I have no complaints otherwise, everything works fine.

SuperPi 32min is 22min 33sec. 8 hours Orthos stable. But that last 25Mhz just aint happening, no Vcore etc can make it happen. So not sure where the limit is.... PWM, mosfets, ddr2 mosfet, etc. I dont know.

I can do 248x 14, but I can't get to the 291Mhz needed for 291 x12. Wondering if going off 1:1, using the mem divider can help me. Too much research yet to do. So annoying, I think the mem would do 291 if the alpha's etc were loosened up.

The bios is not likely to ever be of help, no changes or support for OC'ing likely ever. The alpha timings are too tight, and I've been unable to locate them in the bios yet with editing software. But to get the max it will require a modified bios with loose alphas, etc.

But bang for buck, esp on sale for $99 that I got it at, definitely a great board.

[BucNastyHater]

Nice OC. When I used a ram divider when oc'ing my 3800+ to 2.65ghz, I got some weird results. I made a thread about it and quite a few ppl tried to tell me that it was the ram divider causing the problems, so I just went back to 2.6ghz @ 1:1.

I would like to go with the best board, most likely being the Crosshair but its just too much above my budget. The graphics decision is holding me back right now. I'd like to have John Hillig do the WB for me, as he did an unbelievable job with my 7800 GTX (runs @ 27*C idle, never over 38*C on full load). He doesn't mod lower end cards tho, only the GTX and Ultra's. For financial reasons like best bang for the buck. A stock GTX would smoke a fully modded GTS. So I might get a 8800 GTX now, then sell it once the 9 series comes out, before the resale value of the 8 series card drops too low. I just cant make up my mind right now.

[uwackme]

Yeah, I was trying to keep it cheap and grabbed the Foxconn at $99 instead of the Crosshair at $250.

Some time I'd love to find the time to just write my own bios, take the best of Crosshair and the Foxconn reference, and reverse engineer a dream bios.

I have the same issue on video. The X1900XT is fine, but for Crysis the next gen is needed. So the GTX looks like the only viable option. ATI has not come through, and the SLI motherboards are infinitely better than the CFire ones. Oh well.

[BucNastyHater]

That would be sweet. I would love to learn how to do that.

As for the graphics, my card is ok. It runs most games pretty good, but with NFS: Pro Street coming out and other titles, I would love to upgrade. I've have this card for two years now, being liquid cooled for over a year and a half. Great, solid card.

I have been with Nvidia for 3 years and havent used ATI since my 9800 Pro (haha, AGP). I've just heard about poor ATI drivers and of course they have not made there release dates either. Case and point, the x1800 series. That was like 6 months late I think, while Nvidia was close to releasing there next series. SLI has had more time to mature tho, as CF is still young. I'm hoping CF gets better sometime soon.

[BucNastyHater]

I dont often upgrade parts of a computer, I usually get everything new at once. Is it recommended that I do a fresh install of windows? I've heard of problems with windows after changing a motherboard.

[Mad_Man]

it is recommended to reinstall but it can be done. pretty good possibility it will work. except going from amd=>intel and vice-versa
step up from NF4 to NF590 should be possible. but you have to uninstall all drivers prior to change mobos.
if its not working (bsod) repair option from install disk should be able to solve that.

all it deppends on your willing and time to make it working and your laziness to reinstall all programs ;)

[mAJORD]

absolutely do a fresh install.

a fresh system calls for a fresh install, make the most of the higher performance after all.

[BucNastyHater]

I will probably do it, so its clean and fresh. I was just wondering if it was necessary. Thanks for the info.

[Mad_Man]

generally its better to do fresh install. but then... i installed this win on sempron with nf6150, then changed to nf550, then to raid, then to X2 windsdor, then nf590, brisbane, windsor, single disk... swapped 3GFX in the proccess and its still going strong...