Seeking MB recommendation

D

dorkbert

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 20, 2005
Messages
306
My old nForce4 (with Opteron 165) is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I am thinking of replacing it with something more ... recent, so I can playback video encoded with H264 in 1080p. I have no real preference of intel or AMD, but would like to leverage the G92/8800GT and avoid DDR3. As I don't expect to play much games so SLI and CrossFire isn't required. Many thanks in advance.
 
What's your budget? Also, you do realize that you'll need a new CPU as well, right?
 
Thanks for the reply. Yes, I know I will need to get a new CPU as well, since for the sort of price being charge for 939 chips are so high I figure I will be better off going to a new CPU/MB combo instead. I am thinking probably around $400 for MB, CPU and 2 GB of memory.
 
I have the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P (basically same board as Zero82z referenced) plus I have that same Corsair RAM in it, very good overclocking setup for me anyway - no problems getting up to 450 FSB with a dual core, and that board will overclock a quad really well too.
 
Thank you for the suggestion. A coarse search through the forum, it seems that the jmicro chip on board EP45-UD3P is a source of some problems. Is it safe to use its ports to hang optical drives off from?
 
dorkbert said:
Is it safe to use its ports to hang optical drives off from?
Click to expand...
Yes.

Also note that the UD3P is basically the same thing as the UD3R except with a second PCI-E graphics slot for Crossfire and a second LAN port as well. If you don't need either of those things, you'd be better off saving the cash and going with the UD3R.
 
Except recently I landed a matching pair of E5350 Xeon engineering samples (rev B1), so now my dilemma turns into that of keeping the LGA771s (and hunt for motherboard/RAM) or chuck them and buy a whole new setup.

(sigh) and I thought this would get easier.
 
The cost-effective option would be to sell the Xeon chips. It would cost you more to buy a Skulltrail motherboard than it would for an entire new system, and for that price you may as well just go with a Core i7 PC. So IMO, it's a decision between going the budget route and getting the parts I suggested to you (or something similar), or going high-end and springing for a Core i7 setup (which would really be overkill for watching 1080p video, but it's more "future-proof" if you believe in that sort of thing).
 
Well what you can do, to stay around $400 and still use your two Xeons would be to get a board like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182116

And say some of this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148066

You can always upgrade later on to more memory as it comes down in price some.

That was a quick look on Newegg, and I specified the motherboard to have an ATX form factor. If your case can support Extended ATX you can probably find cheaper options out there.
 
that cpu was never released. but the 5355, which is the same except has 333fsb and 8x multi (yours has 266fsb and 10x multi, which is better for oc) was released a couple years ago for $1150, and revised to a g0 in 2007 for $750. xeon has moved on to socket 604, but you should be able to get 300 or so each, being that they are 65nm, quad core, 80watt, 2667mhz, 8mb l2, socket 771. there are a few guys here and at xs with skulltrail boards, also you can try ebay. but if you could find a used skulltrail board, or a cheap one, with some fbdimms, that would be a screamer, even non-oc.
 
If they are engineering samples wouldn't that mean no warranty? If he drops a fortune into a mobo and FB dimms to find out one chip went to CPU heaven, he's gonna be SOL.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions and opinions. The Xeons are pull from... retired equipment. I'll probably try'em out with office boxes (yes, those we have lots. It's good to be working in a tech company :} ) If I do sell'em, I would include non-DOA warranty. If I don't sell'em, I'll want to know if they work before committing lots of cash into a skulltrail board and FB DIMMs. In either case, I'll test them beforehand.
 
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