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Intel or nforce chipsets?

slampy

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 4, 2005
Messages
70
I'm looking for a micro atx board, and I dont know much about the chipsets. I'm more familiar with nforce, but most of the mobos I've been looking at use Intel north and south bridges. so, is one better than the other?

Intel G31 north
Intel ICH7 south

or

NVIDIA GeForce 7050/nForce 610i
 
Since you're going matx, I would suggest an Intel chipset. I don't have much faith in Nvidia chipsets as of late. Type nvidia chipset and data corruption in Google and see for yourself. Could be Intel propaganda though. hehehe...

The only advantage I see of an nvidia chipset on matx is probably slightly integrated video (can play low end 3D games), other than that the G35 chipset is pretty robust and OCs well. There's a huge thread on the P5Vm-HDMI board (think I got the model# right) and it seems to support all LGA775 chips out there.
 
I believe you mean the P5E-VM

But anyway, I'd say it's probably 6 of one half a dozen of the other in the G31/7050i realm. At those low price points, you are more suceptible to getting a bad board.

I was just thinking of this the other day and I would have gone with the Gigabyte G31 chipset board for $66 shipped I believe. Some of the low end Nvidia boards will do HDMI though...might be important to you. Nvidia memory is only single channel for some reason. In HTPC world, probably wouldn't make a difference.
 
But anyway, I'd say it's probably 6 of one half a dozen of the other in the G31/7050i realm. At those low price points, you are more suceptible to getting a bad board.

not quite sure what you mean by that. but anyway, it sounds like the intel chipest should be just fine. I dont need hdmi, and I will not be using the on board graphics. so, there is really no major gain by choosing one or the other?
 
If you're not going with SLI, I wouldn't touch a nVidia board..... just my opinion though.
 
not quite sure what you mean by that. but anyway, it sounds like the intel chipest should be just fine. I dont need hdmi, and I will not be using the on board graphics. so, there is really no major gain by choosing one or the other?

I mean that the chances are greater of motherboard failure than running into problems with the chipset, and you'd probably not notice a difference between the two in terms of performance anyway.

The biggest performance difference I see is the single channel memory in the 7050i, however, the graphics are probably slightly better and some of the cheap boards even have HDMI as a video output. Since you're not using HDMI, you should probably go with the G31 as Intel chipsets are generally considered to be better than nvidia chipsets.
 
thanks. I'm pretty I've now decided on my hardware now. this will most likely be my build. on, and I'm trying to stay under 500 bucks, and with this setup I'm at about 440.

gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L motherboard
C2D E6750 processor ( however I was thinking I could save a little bit of money by getting the E6550 and OCing it. then I can use that extra cash to get a good heatsink and northbridge fan. any thoughts on going with the 6550 instead of the 6750? )
A-Data 4gb PC6400 ( I know I'm kinda skimping on this memory cuz it is so freakin cheap, but it will really help keep my cost down and from what I've read it will probably work just fine )
Lian Li PC-V350 case ( if it weren't for all other cube like cases looking so bad, I would save a lot more money, but this lian li case just seems to be ideal )

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Also, I'll be using my existing 7800GT, so there is no need to upgrade right now, because I'm not going to be gaming with this rig. it will be mainly for using Adobe CS3 software and ripping / burning dvds. :D Iike to be able to multi task without lag.
 
The 6550 is a pretty good OCer. Might be able to get an even better deal used or in the forums if you're trying to save money. I saw a Q6600 NIB for $175 in the forum. Pretty good deal on a new quad seeing as the E6550 is $170.
 
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