Can anyone recommend Athlon M/B?

sharc · Post by **sharc** » Mon Apr 07, 2003 7:15 am

I know Athlon boards have a bad rep on the CW scene, but my old Athlon machine was working great until it died the other day. Thought it was processor, so I went out and bought a new 2100XP chip only to find out that it was the mainboard which had went tits up. Can anyone out there recommend an Athlon board which uses PCI bus efficiently?

sharc · Post by **sharc** » Mon Apr 07, 2003 7:23 am

PS: I know there are plenty of threads on this subject already, but the search isn't working for me and I was hoping to get as a more up-to-date mobo.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Mon Apr 07, 2003 3:07 pm

I believe the Nforce2 is a really good chipset for Pulsar.

Check this thread
http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... orum=19&19

There is a guy claiming to load and run 14 masterverbs which i believe is a new record!!!

[ This Message was edited by: jupiter8 on 2003-04-07 16:09 ]

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Mon Apr 07, 2003 3:43 pm

i use my trusty old Asus A7N266-C. I have two lunas (6DSP), no trouble. i dunno hiw the masterverb test actually work, but i loaded 8 of them into an empty project, then i got DSP capacity reached. No PCI overflow ever.

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Wed Apr 09, 2003 5:32 am

This is a bit silly but after 30 minutes of googling I really can't find anywhere in the UK that will sell me a ASUS A7N266-C.

Does anyone here know a UK-based seller that I could get one of these boards from?

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Apr 09, 2003 2:52 pm

It's an old board, nForce chipset (as opposed to nForce2 chipset). Just go for the Asus A78NX, the newer nForce2 model.

peace

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Tue Apr 15, 2003 11:51 am

bought the a7n8x... I'll return with feedback after I've used it for a while. Here's hoping it's stable!!

aMo · Post by **aMo** » Tue Apr 15, 2003 2:26 pm

I would recomend my MSI KM2M Combo mobo, but it has a VIA chipset (KT266 or whatever), so it can't possibly work, not even for me.. although it does.. hmm..

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 7:01 am

hows that A7N8X doing?

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:23 am

Currently I've only used it for about 2 hours, and I've not installed my Pulsar yet. But so far, no BSODs! lol That much is good news.

I promise I'll report back when there is something worth saying

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 2:28 pm

okay, so i put the card in 5 mins ago and went to load some masterverbs!

When I try to load the 9th I get the message "A capacity limit of your DSP cards has been reached... (so on and so forth)"

That is with no other modules, mixers or i/o loaded.

So it seems I can run eight masterverbs with no mention of a PCI bus anywhere.

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:08 pm

after updating to 3.1c I can now open one more masterverb, i.e. I open 9 and on the 10th I reach my DSP capacity. Still no mention of the PCI bus

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 4:08 am

15 days later now, and not a single BSOD. I've also tried playing some heavy-load games like unreal II awakening with no problems where before I was getting crashes/freezes every 10 minutes.

(note: I dropped directx sound acceleration to stop glitches in games. Do you think this will interfere with music production?)

sharc · Post by **sharc** » Fri May 16, 2003 8:06 am

Although everyone seems to be recommending Asus boards, I finally opted for an Epox 8RDA+. It's got everything that I need (nforce2, USB2, firewire) and none of the stuff I don't need (SATA). I got it at a good price also - 20 euros less than the basic Asus board. Here's just hoping that it works OK with my CW card. Has anyone tried it already?

asktoby · Post by **asktoby** » Mon May 19, 2003 4:46 am

For the sake of continuing the story, I'll post to tell you that just over a month after first installing that A7N8X board, I got my first system crash yesterday.
Pretty nasty one as it happens, I ran Black&White (a game) and went downstairs. When I came back to a locked black screen I rebooted the machine. Now I get the error that ntoskrnl.exe is corrupt or missing, and am unable to boot windows in any way. I recognise this error from my old K7VTA3 mobo but I can't say that it was caused by the new mobo yet. On the old mobo, the problem went away after about 24hrs, so I'm hoping when I go home tonight my machine will boot up!

sharc · Post by **sharc** » Mon May 26, 2003 8:51 am

Now that I've got my Nforce2 board, I wonder if you can help me out with one small question:

I haven't used DDR memory before. So what am I best to use - 266,333 or 400? My processor is a 2100XP and board is Epox 8RDA+. If the FSB is 266 does this mean the memory should be 266 also or will I get a performance increase with DDR333 or 444(dual)?

boskovic · Post by **boskovic** » Wed Jun 25, 2003 3:47 am

I would recommend going for DDR400.
BUT!... Set memory modules to run synchro with FSB (266)and than overclock FSB. Maybe you would have to unlock your CPU in order to downclock it a bit.

Also watch out for PCI and AGP speeds (lock them or set not to go so high along FSB)

Anyway the point is that memory works synchro with CPU and to be pushed by FSB.
People say it's better way than setting memory to work asynchro (RAM (333/400);CPU 266) particuraly on nForce2