Posted: 2/16/2004 9:03:40 AM EDT
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Ok, I need opinions from those who are computer savy. I'm building a new rig for general use and gaming. I want only the best and fastest. It will sport the new INTEL P4 3.4Ghz processor. I've narrowed my choices for the motherboard to these: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe ABIT IC7-MAX3 GIGABYTE GA-8KNXP SOYO SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 v1.0 Any opinions? |
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I spend 65+ hours a week doing this. Your holy trinity is MSI ASUS ABIT in that order. I have actually heard some bad stuff coming out of asus but I havent actually been privy to it. It wouldnt stop me from getting one. If you are planning on using the machine for gaming DO NOT spend all your money on the processor. Spend it on the video card. Get the fastest video card you can and take what ever you have left and spend it on a processor. I only buy nvidia but lots of people like the ATI cards. Buy high end and if you are going to buy an Nvidia card dont buy an MX. |
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I sold the ASUS, ABIT, GIGABYTE, Intel and other mainboards for 8 years. We experienced intermittant problems and bad revisions with all the manufacturers over time. FWIW...The best advice I could give is to purchase from a seller that has a swap warranty and no restocking fee for returns. This does not always equate to who has the lowest price. |
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Quoted: Ok, I need opinions from those who are computer savy. I'm building a new rig for general use and gaming. I want only the best and fastest. It will sport the new INTEL P4 3.4Ghz processor. I've narrowed my choices for the motherboard to these: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe ABIT IC7-MAX3 GIGABYTE GA-8KNXP SOYO SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 [b]v1.0[/b] Any opinions? 3 or us at work purchased Soyo Dragons at work last year. They all went tits up within a month of each other. Not the v1.0 probably, but I will never buy another Soyo anything. |
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Quoted: Ok, I need opinions from those who are computer savy. I'm building a new rig for general use and gaming. I want only the best and fastest. It will sport the new INTEL P4 3.4Ghz processor. I've narrowed my choices for the motherboard to these: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe ABIT IC7-MAX3 GIGABYTE GA-8KNXP SOYO SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 [b]v1.0[/b] Any opinions? Intel Chip, Intel board... Only go with the Tiawanese boards if you're doing an AMD box... |
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Quoted: If you want only the best and fastest, why aren't you using amd's new 64 bit cpu??? Because if you're not running Linux, the P4 is the best and the fastest right now... AMD64 does no good for Windows (although it does run it faster than the Athlon XP), because Windows is still 32bit... |
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I have the GIGABYTE GA-8KNXP. Let me tell you it's pretty amazing. First you can connect up to 12 storage devices. Right now I have a DVD player, DVD Burner, 36gb 10,000rpm SATA boot drive, 2 160GB SATA drives, 1 200GB IDE drive, and 1 80GB IDE drive. I still have room for 4 more IDE drives and 1 more SATA drive. Simply Amazing. Also comes with 6 USB 2 ports. All the cables that you could possible need. A little special feature that Gigabyte included is the a software program to overclock your computer. It seems to work alothough I don't have a good way to test it. The only problem that I've had so far is in trying to get 2 PCI video cards to work together. The motherboard seems to disable one of them and I've tried several different combinations. That's probably a setting somewhere though. Oh yeah, I forgot 4 of the IDE drives can be put into a hardware raid, two of the SATA drives can be put into another hardware raid, and the remaining 2 SATA drives can be put into a raid under WindowsXP. |
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I've owned or supported most of these boards. First, stay away from Intel's boards their latest 865 & 875 boards have problems with the IDE and AGP ports burning out. Second, MSI makes great boards, I'd rate them just behind Asus. ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe - My current board and probably the best board I've ever owned next to the old Abit IT5H. ABIT IC7-MAX3 - Quality has gone down since the chief designer bolted for DFI a year ago. Still a good board GIGABYTE GA-8KNXP - gigabyte's products are hit or miss, I would avoid. SOYO SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 [b]v1.0[/b] - no direct experience with this board, I'd avoid a 1st revision board. Their past products have worked great for me. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Ok, I need opinions from those who are computer savy. I'm building a new rig for general use and gaming. I want only the best and fastest. It will sport the new INTEL P4 3.4Ghz processor. I've narrowed my choices for the motherboard to these: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe ABIT IC7-MAX3 GIGABYTE GA-8KNXP SOYO SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 [b]v1.0[/b] Any opinions? Intel Chip, Intel board... Only go with the Tiawanese boards if you're doing an AMD box... Intel board if you want the slowest albeit most stable, plain jane featureless board around. Very few tweaks too. Unless they did a complete about face from their norm. I'd go IC7 Max 3 then probably Asus or Gigabyte |