Price Guides August 2005: Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki and Howard Johnson on August 6, 2005 1:32 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Intel Motherboards
Although Intel does not quite have the same rich selection in motherboard manufacturers and products, there are some pitfalls you need to watch out for when buying current generation Intel hardware. Let's look at the cost of two comparable systems with the costs of hardware in August 2005 prices:
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ $394 |
Pentium D 820 $235 |
So technically, Intel has the much cheaper dual system right now. Unfortunately, if you value gaming performance at all, the Intel system is not the way to go. In fact, in Anand's recent benchmarks the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ pretty much swept the Pentium D 830 in every benchmark except office productivity (and even then that was in a synthetic benchmark). If we were to factor the price of the chips above to feature the Pentium D 830 instead of the X2 3800+, the Intel system would still come out ahead in price, but not by much. We still like the Pentium D, particularly for a work machine where you're expected to chug away in Outlook rather than play Doom3, but for the average workstation AMD is looking more and more attractive.
With Intel, the only real choices on a motherboard right now are 955X or 945G/P. The 955X boards are great, but insanely expensive. If you plan to go the way of cheap dual core (the only advantage Intel has right now), you don't want a 955X motherboard. On a mildly related note, ASUS's P5WD2 Premium WiFi-TV is the only motherboard in the last 5 years that managed to jump an extra $50 less than two months after its debut. In fact, 955X motherboards everywhere seem to be drying up and increasing in price. We sure aren't recommending them, so the initial runs must have been very low quantity to dry up by now.
Meanwhile Intel's workhorse chipset, 945P, quietly continues to introduce new and better priced models. Once again MSI has the best prices this week with the exception of a few Intel branded and Gigabyte models. The Gigabyte GA-8I945P-G [RTPE: GA-8I945P-G], MSI Neo-F [RTPE: MS-7176-020] and Intel D945PSNLK [RTPE: D945PSNLK] all cary about the same feature set, but the Gigabyte board saves you an extra $10 over the MSI alternative so we will have to recommend them again this week.
Prices are unfortunately stagnant on the 945P arena. MSI's 945P Platinum [RTPE: MS-7176-010] has a $25 mail-in-rebate, but the only advantage the Platinum board has over the non-Platinum board is the 1394/Firewire support; and you'll still have to pay $153 to get the board out the door. Your money is better spent elsewhere in our opinion.
We said above that gaming performance means you'll really want an Athlon X2 instead of a Pentium D. If you don't care about gaming, there's a good chance you don't care about high performance graphics. The only real difference between the 945P and 945G is the presence or lack of integrated graphics. While the GMA950 graphics aren't particularly fast in 3D applications, business users probably won't care. Most of the cheapest 945G boards carry the Intel name, and there are many micro-ATX designs if that interests you. We'd go with the MSI 945G Neo-F i945G [RTPE: MS-7176-040], though if you want Firewire the Gigabyte 945G GA-8I945G Pro [RTPE: GA-8I945G]is $10 more.
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Calin - Monday, August 8, 2005 - link
Both ECS RS480-M and MSI Xpress 200 RS480M2-IL are Socket 939, only MSI Xpress 200 RS480M-IL is socket 754.While I would support having a special page with integrated graphics Athlon64 mainboards (both S754 and S939), having mainboards based on Socket 939 thrown together with mainboards based on Socket 754 seems counterproductive.
I would buy such a mainboard provided it would have some kind of over/underclocking and under/overvoltage. But I think S754 would loose too much of its possible bandwidth to the integrated video, so I would prefer a Socket 939 board
Calin
xsilver - Sunday, August 7, 2005 - link
how many people are hanging out for s939 semprons?itching to get one so I can bundle it together with my AGP board -- get rid of it and upgrade to PCI-E :)
Calin - Monday, August 8, 2005 - link
I wouldn't mind one, to use with a Socket 939 Radeon XPress boardariafrost - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
I was on a budget for my college SFF rig so I went the s754 Sempron route - I got a x86-64 enable Sempron so it turned out good. The Semprons tend to clock up to 2.4-2.6GHz pretty easily too, so 'tis a good deal. :)Hacp - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
Also, DOn't you need ddr667 memory for Intel? At least thats what all the boards say is the standars... I mean I wouldn't put ddr333 memory in AMD systems, so ddr667 memory is optimal for Intel Dual core isn't it?Cheapest DDR667=100 bucks btw..
JarredWalton - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
PC4200 is DDR2-533, which is quite a bit different from DDR-333. DDR-5300/5400 is DDR2-667, and not all motherboards support that properly. Even if they do, the performance benefit is negligible. DDR2-533 is perfectly sufficient unless you're going after ORB scores.Holysmoke36 - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
I read the Ultra roundup and this board was not praised much at all.It was less than impressive if I remember right. Does anyone understand why the board is the pick here for 5 weeks in a row but in the roundup was not given good marks?
Seems like the Epox that won the roundup would be the choice.
Hacp - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
maybe because these guides don't take overclockig into account.. They expect you to run at stock, and the Chaintech mobo is a good one to run at stock.Holysmoke36 - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
sorry 5 Months in a rowformulav8 - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
I have to buy a s754 mobo and this will help alot :)