building a new comp, some questions.

[Hyperion]

i'm selling an old 538GB MO external archive unit for $450 to a local guy i know who's big into mass storage. after last night's LANparty and having the slowest machine there (500mhz junkbin, you guys've seen it) i decided i'm gonna use that case to do a basic upgrade:

vid card: MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 128mb AGP8x capable
mainboard: either Epox EP-8KHA+, Epox EP-8KTA3pro, or ASUS A7V8X?
proc: either AMD AthlonXP 2100+ or 2400+
512mb PC2100 or PC2700 DDR (depends on board)
80gb hard drive (at a later time)




i know i can get the mobo, chip, and ram for like $370 total

but the question is actually about the mobo.

should i go with one of the epox ones (even one not listed above) which has the really cool looking LED diagnostic readout on the board, or should i go with the expensive ASUS board?


obviously please post in the poll.

[phongn]

i'm selling an old 538GB MO external archive unit for $450 to a local guy i know who's big into mass storage. after last night's LANparty and having the slowest machine there (500mhz junkbin, you guys've seen it) i decided i'm gonna use that case to do a basic upgrade:

vid card: MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 128mb AGP8x capable

If you can afford it, find an R9500 Pro. That'll outperform the GF4 4200 handily.

should i go with one of the epox ones (even one not listed above) which has the really cool looking LED diagnostic readout on the board, or should i go with the expensive ASUS board?

Asus is better made than EPOX. Don't be suckered in by fancy LED diagnostics.

[TrailerParkJawa]

The last two mobo's I bought were Soyo Dragon's. Check those out too. Not sure if they are higher performers than the ASUS. I would compare the ASUS vs. the SOYO and decide from there.

I had the slowest machine at the lanparties for a long time ( Celeron 333 ) so I finally upgraded about 6 months ago. Although money was an issue so I only went up to Duron 850.

[Hyperion]

uh phongn, you ought to know by now that i will NEVER waste my money on a radeon (or any other trashass ATI card).

i'll stay with what i know and like, nvidia cards. besides i think the LANparty was a good indication of hardware preferances:

~25 people.
5 running various radeons, including one dude with a 1200 duron and an R8500 64mb, getting a LOWER framerate at a LOWER RES than i was with that GF2 GTS 32mb (kinda makes the radeon look like a POS don't it?)
1 running a 16mb martox saturday night special. (couldn't run most of the games)
the rest were running various cards, with the overwhelming majority running nvidias.

same went for the mobos, though i didn't have the chance to get a good look at the perfomance on the 3 epox mobo based machines, they did appear to run well and the owners talke VERY highly of the boards.

btw, i've had epox boards in the past, they are on par with ASUS for performance, at like half the price. (7 ASUS boards in one week thanks to MFGR defects when i was building an AMD K6-2 450 system some years ago, got pissed and tried the epox board that i had avoided the whole time, got money back, and the damn thing is still running 6 years later, even after the one ASUS skt7 mobo went tits up from power supply problems, something that's plagued that epox based system from the beginning, but never caused a problem.)

the mainboard preferance at the LANparty was rather varied, some had MSI's, i think a couple still had SOYO's (hate, hate, hate!!), i know 2 had ECS boards (they had more downtime than uptime btw) a good number of various ASUS boards, and some others.

btw, did you know you can kill a mobo by spilling hot chocolate in the keyboard? one of my friends did that at a LANparty at his place a few days ago, killed the keyboard, and the mobo died last night at the LANparty, he was just lucky i had a feeling to bring a spare socket A mobo i had (and a mallet)

i know i can get the epox mobo for $95 at retail prices online (is $140 out here), but i'm gonna use the business license if i can and buy direct from the company.

the more i save on the mobo, the better the chip i can get.

i will probably post on the LANparty group's webboard about the boards.

[phongn]

uh phongn, you ought to know by now that i will NEVER waste my money on a radeon (or any other trashass ATI card).

Even though the R350 is a superior chip in all areas compared to NV20? Or R9500 Pro beats the GF4 Ti 4200?

5 running various radeons, including one dude with a 1200 duron and an R8500 64mb, getting a LOWER framerate at a LOWER RES than i was with that GF2 GTS 32mb (kinda makes the radeon look like a POS don't it?)

Then something is seriously wrong. An R8500 should handily beat a GF3, much less a GF2. It is highly unlikely that it is the fault of the video card. More likely his configuration is messed up somehow.

1 running a 16mb martox saturday night special. (couldn't run most of the games)

I have a 16MB G400. I feel your framerate pain.

btw, i've had epox boards in the past, they are on par with ASUS for performance, at like half the price. (7 ASUS boards in one week thanks to MFGR defects when i was building an AMD K6-2 450 system some years ago, got pissed and tried the epox board that i had avoided the whole time, got money back, and the damn thing is still running 6 years later, even after the one ASUS skt7 mobo went tits up from power supply problems, something that's plagued that epox based system from the beginning, but never caused a problem.)

Everyone has had their share of manufacturing defects. Asus seems to have had problems with the Super7 line, but that's long ago. And colliquial stories are all well and good, but not neccessarily indicative. I have a Shuttle AK31A which by all indications is a most picky board - but it booted up without a hitch. Many persons, OTOH, have had major issues even getting them to POST (not post on the board, but bootup) on the AMDMB forums.

I care less about performance than build quality. An Asus board will cost you more as it uses a 6-layer PCB rather than the average 4-layer PCB. They also put more effort into QC issues these days it seems. Of course, you can always go for Tyan, but they're really expensive...

[Hyperion]

i've heard some bad stuff about tyan, especially for the price.


btw, the guy's config was actually good, far superior to the kludge mess i brought with me. his was a duron 1200, 512mb ram, r8500 (*blech*), and winxp.

other config stuff i don't know about though.


btw, one thing i'm leaning towards with epox is the price, i can get a decent and really cool looking board for $95 versus $150+ for the asus.

[Beowulf]

I've never had an ASUS board fail on me. Then again, I've never had an Epox board fail on me, but I've never owned one of those.

[MKSheppard]

If you can afford it, find an R9500 Pro. That'll outperform the GF4 4200 handily.

But it does not support Fog Tables and has shitty driver support from
ATI......

[Darth Wong]

If you can afford it, find an R9500 Pro. That'll outperform the GF4 4200 handily.

But it does not support Fog Tables and has shitty driver support from
ATI......

It also runs cooler than the GF, which has always been an NVidia problem; theirs were the first cards to tax motherboards' AGP slots for power, and then to demand extra power direct from the P/S.

As for the R8500, that was actually not a particularly fast card, so I'm not surprised that it didn't put up a great showing. It could hold its own against a GF2 when it first came out but a GF2 Ultra would eat it for breakfast. The new R9500 Pro and 9700 Pro, on the other hand, kick ass.

Shep, I'm not a huge graphics guru, but what is "fog table" support? The Radeons do have full DirectX support, and I've never noticed any missing features. Are you talking about some particular game which has been hardwired to activate certain functions in NVidia cards?

[Enlightenment]

But it does not support Fog Tables and has shitty driver support from ATI......

In what way would ATI's driver support be any different from nVidia's, then? NVidia drivers--particularly the Linux/XFree drivers but also the Win2K/XP drivers--are unstable crap at the best of times.

[Enlightenment]

Shep, I'm not a huge graphics guru, but what is "fog table" support? The Radeons do have full DirectX support, and I've never noticed any missing features.

The idea behind OpenGL and DirectX is to present a uniform software interface pretty much regardless of the hardware's underlying feature set. Features that aren't present on a hardware level will simply be performed in software by the DirectX or OpenGL driver components, albeit at a potentially severe performance penalty.

AFIAK fog tables as a GPU feature are simply a hardware implementation of distance fog.

[MKSheppard]

Are you talking about some particular game which has been hardwired to activate certain functions in NVidia cards?

The new Radeons do not support VESA modes, and don't have fog tables...
which means that you cannot play the following on them:

"Steel Panthers: World War 2"
"Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank"

and the weather effects in Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin
and Combat Mission Beyond Overlord are SEVERELY limited
on an ATI card..

[MKSheppard]

In what way would ATI's driver support be any different from nVidia's, then?.

ATI is/was notorious for not releasing new drivers for a LONG time....and
when they did, they were pieces of crap...

[Hyperion]

their drivers (earlier at least) impersonated viruses more than anything else.


10mb download, 32mb uncompressed, then it integrated itself into everything AND the kitchen sink, slowing down load and everything... friggin' irritating.


and yes, fog table support, alpha shading, and a number of others are things the ATI cards don't have.


btw, who cares about heat or power consumption when they've got the money to spend on kickass cooling and a 500watt aluminum server p/s?


btw, about the ASUS board, i don't know the reviews and experience other people have about the A7V8X mobo. until i do, it's not really an option.

[Crayz9000]

The people at HardOCP seem to think very highly of it: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjQ5LDU=

The EP-8KHA+ is certainly one of the top KT266A boards out there right now, and for $100 retail it is hard to go wrong. Its default performance speaks for itself, and its performance in the overclocking arena doesn't just "speak" for itself...it screams. Right now EPoX is positioned amazingly well with a string of really good performance boards to its credit. If EPoX can keep the momentum, and meet the challenge of other motherboard manufacturers on a FEATURE level, their future will be shining just as bright as the 8KHA+.

[Crayz9000]

Asus is better made than EPOX. Don't be suckered in by fancy LED diagnostics.

I wound up getting a Leadtek mobo. The complete lack of BIOS beep codes was very annoying and frustrating, since I've grown accustomed to how they work; besides, it's nice not having to stare at LEDs while your system is booting.

[Hyperion]

LOL.

sounds like the epox mobo's pretty decent for the price...

even more interesting now that i know i can't get more than $300 for that unit. (the guy's broke till the 15th and then can only field about $300, but hell that's better'n nothing.)

assuming $100 for the board (epox EP-8KHA+) and 180 for the proc. i'll have to wait a week or so for the ram, then i'll have a decent machine with 2 upgrades outstanding (HDD and vid, vid first btw.)

[phongn]

In what way would ATI's driver support be any different from nVidia's, then?.

ATI is/was notorious for not releasing new drivers for a LONG time....and
when they did, they were pieces of crap...

From all indications ATI has cleaned up their act. NVidia also had their share of problems.

[phongn]

Are you talking about some particular game which has been hardwired to activate certain functions in NVidia cards?

The new Radeons do not support VESA modes, and don't have fog tables...
which means that you cannot play the following on them:

"Steel Panthers: World War 2"
"Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank"

Which VESA modes? A quick search indicated that they at least had a few supported modes.

[Hyperion]

In what way would ATI's driver support be any different from nVidia's, then?.

ATI is/was notorious for not releasing new drivers for a LONG time....and
when they did, they were pieces of crap...

From all indications ATI has cleaned up their act. NVidia also had their share of problems.

only the cooling on the early GF256's and that's been remedied.

[phongn]

I'm referring to driver issues and their POS RAMDACs.

[Hyperion]

i've never had a problem with the nvidia cards, and i've been using them since the TNT's first came out.

i've had exceedingly bad luck with 3dfx cards and ATI cards.

[phongn]

i've never had a problem with the nvidia cards, and i've been using them since the TNT's first came out.

i've had exceedingly bad luck with 3dfx cards and ATI cards.

We have a variety of nVidia cards here. The nVidia cards always perform worse 2D-wise compared to my Matrox - I hate their RAMDACs.

[Crayz9000]

We have a variety of nVidia cards here. The nVidia cards always perform worse 2D-wise compared to my Matrox - I hate their RAMDACs.

I suppose it all boils down to what you do most with your computer. Hyperion seems to be a hardcore gamer, so a GeForce is probably best for him. If I was strictly a 2D graphics artist, I'd probably go with a Radeon...

[Hyperion]

i've never had a problem with the nvidia cards, and i've been using them since the TNT's first came out.

i've had exceedingly bad luck with 3dfx cards and ATI cards.

We have a variety of nVidia cards here. The nVidia cards always perform worse 2D-wise compared to my Matrox - I hate their RAMDACs.

interesting, the machines with nvidia cards in the IMM class did by far better with the 2D proggies than the ATI and matrox cards did.