AGP A64 motherboards

[Brock Landers]

I know, I know.... Probably been asked a few times, and I have searched. I have been lurking for the last two years or so here. I have a 9800 Pro that I am not so dead set on getting rid of yet. I am planning more of a stopgap upgrade from my Barton 2600.

So far I have it narrowed down to the DFI, an EPoX 9NDA3+, and the Abit AV8 Deluxe / K8T800 Pro whateverthehellitsreallycalled board. I already have 4 512 sticks of DDR 400 mem at my disposa, two of theml to be paired up with a Venice 3200. I picked the 3200 because it seems that voltage options are limited with AGP boards and I could use the 10x multi over 9x with lower vdimm.

I am looking at first to hit 2.4 or so on boxed cooling, and then adding an XP-90C for more. Like 2.8 or so.... :)

Do any of you have some advice about which board to get? I have pretty much eliminated the MSI Neo2 because of how picky it seems to be. And, truth be told, I am sick of MSI boards. I am on my fourth in a row beacuse the place I used to work at had the best luck with them for AMD systems.

Thanks in advance.

[4rory]

Look at the msi, the dfi is buggy, and the msi now with the 1.8 modded bios is much more memory friendly, I got it and I got a great overclock on it, my lbble 0515 apaw +3200 is at 2.9ghz prime stable. This board has been out for a while now, and I say it's worth the money, and the 1.9 bios seems promising.

[Flak Monkey]

The MSI, Epox, and Gigabyte boards are all great.

[Garrett]

I have the MSI K8N Neo2 since November last year, so that makes it 8 months.

Not once have I encountered strange problems or whatsoever.

The 3.3v to vdimm mod has also been present from day 1, hasn't given me any problems either :)

Before this board I wasn't too fond of MSI either, but this one is really good imho... a friend of mine has the DFI nf3 but it has lots of quirks, problem this... error that...

the Epox and Gigabyte might be good too, although I have no experience with those.

Good luck with your 'quest' for the right mainboard :thumbsup:

[Poki]

The 3200 is the smart move with the NF3 boards for sure. If you can deal with the buggy bios on the DFI it would be my #1 choice, second would be the epox as i had a Neo2 Plat and wasn't that impressed and the Epox seems to be a good overclocker from most reviews i've read. The MSI i had topped out at 285HTT or there abouts which might be a limiting factor if you had a really good chip with 10 multi. I would have to suspect that the DFI would be the HTT king of the bunch in the right hands.

[Brock Landers]

I would have to suspect that the DFI would be the HTT king of the bunch in the right hands.

That's what I was thinking, but I am unfamiliar with the black magic voodoo wizardry of ocing with the K8 architecture.

Bios bugginess doesn't really bother me that much because it will most likely be fixed with future updates. As long as it works up to about 240 HTT out of the box, I'll be a happy camper.

Thanks for the help, it's appreciated.

[LBJGH]

Well I can give my personal experience with two of the boards you've noted.

I used a Epox 9nda3+ with a 3000+ winchester and found the combination to work extremely well provided I had TCCD/TCC5 based memory. I was able to run the 3000+ at 283x9 even with the limited Vcore and Vdimm options of the Epox. If Epox had released an X2 bios I would still be using the board.

I currently use an AMD X2 so I needed a mobo that would support the dual core, hence the DFI motherboard. The first DFI board lasted two days before it died :slapass: however I was overclocking the CPU when the motherboard died. The retailer replaced the board without problems and I'm currently running my 4200+ at 2.4ghz dual core at 1.344v. The DFI does have a Vcore undervolting problem by about 0.2v which can be rectified in the bios prior to startup however this has initially limited o/c'n success. I expect a bios update will correct this problem. I do like the better voltage options on the DFI but I'm a little concerned about the first board dieing as soon as it did.



I know, I know.... Probably been asked a few times, and I have searched. I have been lurking for the last two years or so here. I have a 9800 Pro that I am not so dead set on getting rid of yet. I am planning more of a stopgap upgrade from my Barton 2600.

So far I have it narrowed down to the DFI, an EPoX 9NDA3+, and the Abit AV8 Deluxe / K8T800 Pro whateverthehellitsreallycalled board. I already have 4 512 sticks of DDR 400 mem at my disposa, two of theml to be paired up with a Venice 3200. I picked the 3200 because it seems that voltage options are limited with AGP boards and I could use the 10x multi over 9x with lower vdimm.

I am looking at first to hit 2.4 or so on boxed cooling, and then adding an XP-90C for more. Like 2.8 or so.... :)

Do any of you have some advice about which board to get? I have pretty much eliminated the MSI Neo2 because of how picky it seems to be. And, truth be told, I am sick of MSI boards. I am on my fourth in a row beacuse the place I used to work at had the best luck with them for AMD systems.

Thanks in advance.

[SPiKE]

The DFI LanParty UT nF3 Ultra-D is the best AGP mobo out there IMHO.