Athlon 64 MB now or wait?

M

MIchaelM

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 15, 2003
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I'm jonzing to put together an Athlon 64 3200 system. I'm probably going to get the MSI VIA MB, but am considering waiting until the Nforce3 250 MB's hit the market. What at re these going to offer that the VIA doesn't have? I know about the 1 GB hyperthreading, but that's not going to make a difference yet. What else will the Nforce3 250 have the the VIA doesn't? Should I wait? And when do you think those boards will actually be available?
 
Wait until new socket. You are almost always better off waiting until the 2nd generation of new hardware.
 
there are supposed to be a bunch of new chipsets nf 3 250, sis, etc. out soon. Also amd is supposed to come out with their new socket stuff in april (anandtech.com)
so I'd wait a bit as the new DX9 games havent arrived yet to show us the deep need for upgrades...
 
how much of a performance difference is the new socket going to make? April is a long time to wait for. :( I've got a fricken AMD xp 1900 and I'm dyin!
 
i need a new mobo bad.. my ide controller is going out. it's strange.. my master 40 gig works just fine.. slave 80 locks up machine doesn't allow it to boot. When 80 is slaved on secondary IDE same thing. havn't tried the 80 gig as master on secondary IDE however the cd-rom as master works.. the slave does not, and my floppy does same as slaved 80 gig. I need a new mobo. The drives work fine in other machines, not the cables either.

i need a new mobo.
 
are there any definitive dates on when the MB's will be out or on the new socket?
 
Best I've heard is Q2 2004. If you're just itching for that upgrade though, I don't think you'll notice the socket difference in the long run because by the time the current A64 is obsolete, something better than 939 will probably out or just ready to come out.
 
The only thing keeping me from getting a A64 system right now is that I am not to excited by the current motherboard selection. The nforce3 250, hopefully the expected ASUS SIS755 based mobo and the Intel prescott CPU's should both be out in a couple weeks so we should know how they each perform and I can decide then what route to go. I am not to concerned about waiting for the 939 pin A64's. Sure they will have dual channel memory controller, but the mainstream 939's will have only 512k L2 while the 754's (except 3000+) have 1MB, so I expect the performance difference to be small at best. I am not to worried about the possible short upgrade life of the 754's either because I upgrade both the processor and mobo at the same time anyway.
 
Maybe I am too much of a newb to know anything!! but i just got the Asus K8V Deluxe from techstreet.net, and this thing flies.. Cheaper than Abit too.. Not sure why?? Via cs seems to be rock solid with my OCZ 3200 ram.. Notr really cramked it yet.. But I really havent seen much reason to try.. Just my opinion.. know nobody really cares. .....
 
If you decide to wait you should know that the cheapest procesor to put on it will be A64 3400+ so it won't be cheap.
 
You could wait for the next great thing and get that... or wait again for the NEXT great thing... in the mean time you will still be "jonesing". I know the feeling. Do I get it now or wait until the price comes down or the faster thing comes out? You can go thru this process forever and never buy anything. Yeah, I know, that is the extreme.

I can tell you about my experience. I researched and found that for me the best thing right now is the FX-51 on MSI's K8T Master FAR motherboard. Yes, I know this very site, HardOCP recently reviewed the 64-3400+ and in their benchmarks it looked like that is the one to get. However, what you might want to note is they put the FX-51 on an inferior-chipset motherboard and the 3400+ on a rockin motherboard. I brought this to Kyle Bennett's attention, the owner of this site, and his reply was "I am very comfortable with our results and will not be changing them." Sad because people like us who are shopping and looking for advice will take his results seriously.

But I'm straying from the point. I am VERY happy with the MSI motherboard and the FX-51 cpu. IF you go this route, be sure to Flash the motherboard's BIOS to 1.1 as soon as you can. I AM recommending an expensive solution but you get what you pay for and in this case it is QUALITY. From the moment you open the MSI box you will see what I mean. And if you can go with SATA drives (unless you are rich enough for SCSI) then please do so because you will not regret it. I mirrorred two of them for data safety.

If you are jonesing for a fast machine, why wait for the next thing to come out? Get it now. Use it. Have fun with it. Be the fastest hot rod on the block ... for now, heh.

Here are the motherboard reviews I showed Kyle that he chose to ignore. I think if you run a site like this you have a responsibility to have the strength to change your mind sometimes if someone courteously shines light on something you posted and gives you information showing why your information needs updating/changing. Here are those URLs:

http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20031117/athlon64fx-mobos-05.html

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/Motherboards/asus_sk8v.shtml
 
the new socket for the althlon 64 & fx are supposed to be officially launched at the end of march. less than a 3 month wait.
so what you want to do - buy a known to be near obsolete cpu/ socket set or wait the three months?
I am waiting ...
 
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