I need a "cheap" computer -- mainboard suggestions

A

athlon1.2

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 10, 2001
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Not that I am on a budget or anything but here are my current specs:

ASUS A7V600
Athlon XP 2600+ (1.9ghz)
1.5gb of RAM
2x 250gb RAID-0
Radeon 9600 AGP

Thing is the system is just fine for what I do but for whatever reason if I leave it idle for hours the screen sometimes will go black and I need to reboot. Happens in Windows XP and happens in SuSE Linux. I know its probably the video card but the system is old and I don't want to deal with it. I am looking at AMD Athlon X2 as I am not really interested in the Intel CPUs nor am I interested in overclocking.

I need suggestions for an AM2 socket board the only requirement is that it have a DVI connector for my monitor and work well with SuSE Linux. I would like it to be the board with the best onboard graphics but I'm not willing to spend double on a board just for the graphics. I'd also prefer an ATX board but the majority of the ones I've seen that fit my requirements have been MicroATX so that's no big deal. I hear the newer ATI (AMD) onboard graphics are currently the best?

Cliffs:
-Looking for "budget" mainboard
-Must have DVI & work with Linux
-I like full-size ATX.

/edit: you can try to convince me to go Intel if Core2Duo combo (not interested in "DualCore" or dual core Celeron) is going to be +/- $30 MAX between that and something along the lines of an AMD X2 4200+
 
how much are you willing to spend?
primary purposes for this computer?
why not get a cheap premade computer if all its for is internet and word.. etc.
 
Well I bought a Dell but it only has 1 SATA port. Cost isn't an issue but there's no need to pay for performance I won't use I'm certainly looking for a board with onboard graphics. I don't think that should cost more than $150... most I've seen have been in the $70-90 range but there are just so many boards out there I don't know which to pick.
 
Is that board any good? How does the Radeon 1250 onboard graphics compare with a Nvidia7150?
 
Both chipsets perform similarly, graphics-wise. I would think the NVIDIA chipset has better Linux driver support than the ATI/AMD chipset.

BTW, "Pentium Dual Core" is just another name for Allendale CPUs, which are also called "Core 2 Duo." Despite having only 1MB cache, they still perform well in most cases.
 
What about "allendale" is it just as good? I am shopping on the low end for the cpu. Am I wrong to assume these are faster than my current CPU (Athlon XP 2600+ 1.9ghz)?

Intel vs AMD

I do not plan to overclock. No need to create more heat and burn more fossil fuels for CPU power I don't need.
 
Yes Allendale is just as good. Allendales are based off the Conroe line. In fact the only major difference is smaller L2 cache for current C2D CPUs and Pentium Dual Cores.

However since you are not overclocking, go with the AMD CPU. That AMD CPU performs on par with that E2160.

And yes you are wrong to assume that those two CPUs will be slower than your current. Clock speed does not matter as much these days. You also have to factor in how efficient it is, it's architecture,which process it's made on/from, etc.
 
Really, the 4200 being on par with the 2180 ?. My 2200 (@stock) slaughtered my 4400+ (at an oc of 2.8ghz)
 
It seems the Allendales are a bit faster at the same clock speeds as a Brisbane X2. Outside of media encoding, I doubt you would be able to notice a difference.

I'd bet people are getting sick of me pimping out this board, but the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H is a nice board. It's micro-atx but it's actually one of the faster AM2 boards at stock speeds and if you want to mess with overclocking, it's pretty good for that as well. I have this board running a Brisbane 4000+@3.0Ghz with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro. I mainly just got it because it was a hell of a deal at the time for the parts. It mostly just sits around and runs F@H but it's perfectly fine for everyday tasks.

I have openSUSE 10.3 running on it with no major problems it seems. The only problem I seem to have is with the optical out. I'm not sure if the problem is with the Linux drivers or what. I just haven't gotten around to really troubleshooting it and it's not a big deal for me at this point in time.

I have not tried playing any games on it so I'm not sure how the onboard video is in regards to gaming. More than likely, overall it's probably better than the nVidia current onboard solutions if I remember correctly; at least in Windows I believe that's true. As I said, I haven't tried any gaming with it although the ATI Linux drivers installed fine and I do have 3D support. As far as gaming goes, I would still recommend a PCI-e video card no matter what. Onboard video just doesn't cut it for most things. I believe the onboard video is actually in the class of an X600 card. It's not very good and isn't going to play very high resolutions or have much eye candy on any game made in the last 3 years or so.

I have a 17" CRT hooked up via DSUB so I'm not sure about the DVI port but I would expect it to work without any trouble. I could test it but I'm too lazy to unhook my LCD from my main system, sorry.

Since this has been a problem on Intel boards with the JMicron controller, you don't have to worry about the onboard IDE ports. They work just fine in Windows and Linux as I have 2 IDE hard drives and a SATA DVD burner hooked up to it. No trouble out of any of them.

One final thing, Gigabyte does have a BIOS update to allow support of Phenoms on this board if you wanted to go that route at some point in the future.

That's about all I can think of off hand in regards to the board. Choose it or not, it's up to you.

 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I am going to wait a month and get an AMD 790G-based board. Given how long this system lasted me 1 month is no big deal.
 
forrehmmnd said:
Really, the 4200 being on par with the 2180 ?. My 2200 (@stock) slaughtered my 4400+ (at an oc of 2.8ghz)
Click to expand...

I said on par with the E2160. But yes at stock speeds the X2 4200+ does perform on par with the E2160 when both CPUs are at stock speeds. Should have made that clearer in my earlier post. But OC that E2160 or any C2D based CPU and clock for clock, they will beat ANY AMD CPU. But since the OP isn't planning on overclocking, the X2 4200+ is the better buy since it is cheaper yet offers the same performance as the $20 more E2160.
 
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