Which board for Opteron 165 please?

[Mumbly]

I have tried searching for an answer to this question but haven't come up with a clear answer so I was hoping that perhaps if I posted my own thread I could get some help.

I am about to upgrade to a Opteron 165 but having trouble selecting a good board. I was hoping you guys could please offer your opinions on a "middle of the road" board that would be a good overclocker with this cpu. I am not looking at going sli but might be good to have that option for a "down the road" scenario.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Mumbly

 

[MrWizard6600]

"good overclocker" and "middle of the road" usually means asus. If you wanna drop the "middle of the road", you might consider the prestige of a DFI board. You know someones hard core when you see the yellow PCI-e slots on a black mobo in their comp. Basically, the differance between the DFI boards and the Asus boards is that the DFI ones can be a little[/a] more on the unstable side, but will overclock better, and as such, of course, perform better.

so, I have a few recomendations:

--hmm... my plan was to give you a list of boards you should try, link you to reviews, their home site and neweggs price but, im just too tired, so insted ill just list the board--

Asus A8N32 SLI - 16 lanes to each slot, doesnt overclock amazingly, but it is a strong overclocker, usually yielding ~320fsb. This is a great all round solution/

Asus A8R32 MVP. 16 lanes to each (crossfire) slot. overclocks half-decent ~300fsb seems to be the average. once again a great all round solution, just this one offering crossfire.

DFI Lanparty UT Expert - This board is not for the faint of heart! it set a couple OC records for an Atholon 64 overclock. But it has some known issues with PSUs that support both 20 and 24 pin power connectors. anywho, I have yet to work with a DFI expert, but as i understand it, the usual overclock is an amazing 360MHz FSB. This would be one of the higher end performance solutions, but it may require several hours of trouble shooting. (one thing to note, DFI Street is now gone, DFI Club Forum is now up and running, it is the official support page for DFI products).

DFI Lanparty UT CFX3200 - This board is like the expert only on the Xpress 3200 chipset for amd. It does not overclock as high, yet supports crossfire. Basically its your preferance, crossfire or SLI, you do sacrifice a bit of overclocking headroom by going with this board but, its a great overclocker none the less, usually around 310? 320?

as you may have noticed, i only listed NV and ATi chipsets, its just cuz theres nothing else out there that will oc for a damn (on S939 course).

you may also notice, "no abit solutions!" well, ABIT's Fatal1ty line has a bad reputation around my shop for being made with very little quality in mind. crappy caps and semi conductors lead to voltage problems and blowing caps all over the board. i have seen 13.. (thirteen) Abit Fatal1ty mobos in this shop, all of em only a few weeks old.

MSI is definatly someone to look into, they make high performance solutions. But really, if you just want a nice overclocker with little to no work involved, you want an Asus or an MSI, and not a DFI. They could (and I stress could, it is highly unlikly) cause you problems.

crash time!

 

[haste]

to the op:

also consider the a8n32-sli, its an awesome board with great features. especially for the price u can get a new one for nowadays...
and to agree with the 2nd poster in this thread...DFI would be the other brand I would also consider. i use both an a8n32-sli and a Lanparty UT SLi-DR board. both work great and each have a opteron 165 in them running at 2.95+ghz.
also check out the Abit AN8 32x.

something else to think about also...
you will find that the a8n32-sli and DFI boards will have the most available support information than most of the other boards because of the enthusiast community.

Asus K8N32 SLI - 16 lanes to each slot, doesnt overclock amazingly, but it is a strong overclocker, usually yielding ~320fsb. This is a great all round solution/

did u mean A8N32-SLi? and not K8N?

 

[dawp]

Not to thread-jack, but since we're on the topic:

I'm looking for a good OC'ing 939 board for an Opteron165. It needs AGP and DDR....do I have any options? Or are the only AGP 939 boards out there shitty overclockers?

if you can find a asrock 939dual,that is about the only option,tho i believe they have been discontinued.

 

[reswob]

I wish I could find a DFI Expert Venus...the DFI Expert with the 2 x16 lanes.

 

[BUFF]

you may also notice, "no abit solutions!" well, ABIT's Fatal1ty line has a bad reputation around my shop for being made with very little quality in mind. crappy caps and semi conductors lead to voltage problems and blowing caps all over the board. i have seen 13.. (thirteen) Abit Fatal1ty mobos in this shop, all of em only a few weeks old.

If you mean the original AN8 Fatal1ty I suppose that's possible (although I haven't heard of anybody else with such nos.) but the later AN8 boards are fine as are the KN8s.
Caps failing isn't a common problem on recent abits.

 

[Zeldor]

I have great luck with DFI boards. Im running two opty 170s on DFI boards ATM one on a Venus(you probably wont find one of these there were only 1000 made) And One on a expert. The experts the SAME EXACT board as the Venus it just dont have the Ubbar cap/resitor thingies.(is thingies a word?)
Anyways Good luck with the new Opty. I have a Expert, a Asus A8N32, And a Abit Fatality and a couple other 939 boards for sale here in the forums if your looking for a deal PM me

 

[Zeldor]

The DFI Lanparty UT CFX3200 was the one that was pleaged with problems wasnt it? Read its feedback at newegg. And when DFI street opens back up(supposedly any day now) Read up there as well or go to http://global.dficlub.com/ and ask around.

Ive never owned one so Im not bad mouthing the board. But I read alot and have seen lots of mixed posts about it on the DFI-street.

 

[mICKEL]

Do your self a favor and stay away from DFI's ATi chipset boards. There are too many complaints to ignore. I have a 165 on a DFI UT LanParty nF4 Ultra-D, I've had it to 340 HTT. The mobo has many querks. If I didn't have so much DDR around I may have given up on it--it is so very picky.

 

[Mumbly]

Thanks so much for the replies guys. I have been a bit snowed in the last few days so I wasn't able to reply.

I used the term "middle of the road" to indicate a somewhat mid-priced board. I am probably doing myself an injustice here but I didn't want something really cheap and with my budget I didn't want something high end either. I had read the posts on the Biostar Tforce and also some posts on a Foxconn sli board but my gut tells me to stick with a more mainstream name like Asus, Msi, Abit, DFI.

Having said that I am not very knowledgable when it comes to motherboards so tweaking a DFI might be difficult for me. I had looked at the a8n32-sli and I know it is a great board but it might be just past my budget.

Is there something that is in between the lower cost Foxconn/Biostar and Asus a8n32-sli? Am I overlooking a good board in the Foxconn/Biostar lineup?

I just don't see anything that is standing out to me so I need your help.


Mumbly

 

[MrWizard6600]

I wish I could find a DFI Expert Venus...the DFI Expert with the 2 x16 lanes.

the venus does not have 16 lanes each. the venus has higher quality solid capacitors, ultimatly resulting in an extra couple MHz.

understand that even eight lanes cannot fully be used. a 7950GX2, an 8800GTX, an X1900XTX, neither can use 8 full pci-e lanes, let alone 16. I can prove this with several benchmarks, but two of the most outstanding are Quad SLI on Nforce 570, resulting in the exact same score as quad SLI on 590. and 8800GTX SLI on Nforce 4 resulting in almost the same score as 8800GTX SLI on 590. The advantige just isnt there. And, Intel has already proposed PCI-e 2. nuts huh... infact, while were on the topic. AGP 8X still isnt dead. anyone remember the Gainwaird 7800GS+? the one with a G71? yeah, it scores the same as a 7900GT.

anywho, the expert is an excellent choice, I have worked with a few (i think, all DFI boards you know, they look the same). It had more options then bush does mental issues .

and as for more mainstream: you gotta tell us a budget.

I would suggest maybe a DFI Nforce 4 SLI - DR, its one step down from the expert. it is probibly the most common enthusiast mobo, and can be found at newegg, refurb, for $80 a great buy, but if your system right now is in any trouble, i might suggest a differant board, as it is a possibillity this one will have some issues. And i dont want to rag on DFI support either. DFI club forum and DFI street are excellent sources of help, and are perfectly willing to RMA your board if need be. Anywho, im not trying to scare you, if you want odds i would say 5-15% chance you get a non-functioning board. And if its refurb, odds are, Neweggs managed to get it to boot. Just stay away from Aspire PSUs and "no-name brand" memory.... (london drugs sells "PCsmart" ram or something like that..... smart my ass corsair, crucial, or OCZ are the way to go).

But DFI is farr from mainstream, you are looking at an Asus product now. DFI is hardcore, even there econo (well, supposidly econo) boards, the inifinaties, are hard core. Asus, makes everything. Anything bearing the new "ROG - Republic of Gamers" logo is officially considered by asus, hard core.

so, for a ~$90 budget:
from DFI: Infinaty Nforce 4 Ultra
from Asus: A8N-E
from MSI: K8N Neo 4 (edit: let me look into this board a little deeper)

i can vouche for the overclockabillity of the DFI, but not for the other boards, but they should overclock perfectly well. it is the same chipset as there high overclocking brothers. "e deluxe", "Lanparty" and "Diamond" are the terms designated for boards designed for overclocking, from Asus, DFI, and MSI respectivly.

as for Foxconn and biostar:

Foxconn does not produce mainly motherboards. They are a company, contracted by Nvidia, and other companies, to come up with prototype, and eventually referance boards. If foxconn managment sees a board they like, they turn it into mass production. such was the case with Nforce 590, when Foxconn was the first company to release a model based on the Nforce 590 chipset. It overclocked, by AMD standars, to hell'n'gone. A great board, but $300 at release. It has since dropped into ~$230.

anywho, what this means is Foxconn boards are really sparse and dont generally have a fully developed line of mobos.

Biostar, is not, and has never been, really into the enthusiast crowd. The did shock me, when they released a little known about board called the Biostar Tforce 680i. It is not on there official site, and so far no major e-tailers ship the board. it is something to watch out for as i suspect it will come down in price much faster then the BFG 680i and EVGA 680i boards. One thing to note, all of these boards are produced and manufactured in the Phenoix manufacturing plant, in China (note: not Taiwan). Yes, the same phenoix that makes the Bios. infact, there are no modifications to any of these boads, you could take EVGAs 680i bios and flash it over the BFG 680i board, and not have any problems. anywho im off track now.

I dont recall anything perticularly mentionable about Biostar during the S939 Nforce 4 era. I'll get back to you on this one.

 

[reswob]

I might spring for the DFI Expert as opposed to the A8N32-SLi. I too recently bought a opty 165, a year or so behind the times but I'm excited for this build, and it's been sitting in the AMD box waiting for a new mobo to pop it in. I just have a hard time deciding which board to get.

 

[Mumbly]

Huge thanks to everyone that helped. Especially MrWizard6600. I will try to pick from the ones that you had mentioned. Thanks so much for the help.


Mumbly

 

[digitalxdna]

a8n32-sli. easy enough for overclocking noobs like me, yet powerful enough for most overclocking pros. there is a reason why it was the flagship (and preferred) mobo when s939 = king.