Price Guides, February 2005: Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 12, 2005 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
PCIe Intel
Intel users, unfortunately, don't get as many options in motherboards like the AMD guys this month. VIA's PT894 launch a few days ago indicated the chipset performed fairly similarly to Intel's 915P with the additional feature of SLI, but it might be too little, too late. Don't be surprised if Intel announces their next generation chipset before VIA's solution even hits shelves. However, with evidence suggesting that Intel might weigh more of its focus on Tier 1 motherboard manufacturers in 2005, PTxxx might be the only chipset that we see on motherboards from some of the better overclocking and feature manufacturers.
Prices being what they are, you are certainly much better off buying a Socket 775 solution over a Socket 478 solution these days. The older 865/875 motherboards are approaching their two-year anniversary – and unless you really need AGP support, you will pay more for a Socket 478 processor. Even this argument is somewhat flawed as Abit and MSI both have reasonably inexpensive Socket 775 motherboards with 865PE northbridges (and AGP).
Several manufacturers are still pursuing the lost cause that is 925X/E, so they are at least worth mentioning this time around. The cheapest 925X boards start at $160, which really doesn't make any sense, considering the nearly identical performance of so many 915P boards.
If you really need a Pentium 4 motherboard, there are a few options that we recommend highly. The EPoX EP-5EPA+ [RTPE: EP-5EPA+] won a silver award in our 915P motherboard roundup several months ago, but it still packs the mightiest performance per dollar today. However, the excellent ASUS P5GD1 (non-deluxe) also has some great features plus the flexibility of DDR1 memory.
If we look at the P5GD1 trend over the last few months, we see that the motherboard has clearly made some progress in dipping to an affordable level. Most other 915 motherboards have varied very little since September – which is unfortunate for the consumer. MSI's Neo2 Platinum [RTPE: MS-7028-030] also offers a solid feature set albeit at a higher price than the alternatives.
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arswihart - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
where is evidence of a v2.2 9nda3+?arswihart - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
nm zipzoomfly does not have them, although really newegg and mwave, who cares if not every single seller has them, they are easily purchasable and should've been included is my pointarswihart - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
I got my 9nda3+ from Mwave, plus Zipzoomfly has them, not to mention others. What are you talking about? I take back my comments about the nf4 boards, but you really should've included the nf3 boards.sonicDivx - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
umm the NForce3 (939) prices are missingLive - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
It did help :) Thanks for the swift replies Visual and Kristopher. These little nuggets of information could give extra value to the price guides if included.KristopherKubicki - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Live: I think Visual makes the best point. Online the prices remain very close to each other, but offline the two boards have a larger disparity in price.Visual: The Neo2 Platinum (the socket 939 nforce board) went on backorder everywhere overnight. It got real pricey. the original Neo (socket 754) is still a great buy and I would c onsider it just as good as the otpion we recommended for the guide (for a 754 board).
Hope that helps,
Kristopher
lsman - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Pretty much only newegg carry the Epox 9nda3+ or j. And Epox is yet again with newer verison. (9nda3+ up to ver. 2.2 now) Better BIOS option (but the Caps are different...)Visual - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
on their price engine, the a8n-sli vanilla is priced almost same as deluxe, so it makes sense to go with the deluxe... if the prices were such.but they aren't. i wont bother myself with checking the online shop prices, but at my local shop i got myself a vanilla asus sli for $140, while the deluxe was $40 more. in these circumstances the extra cash for the deluxe is not worth it. if you actually look around some forums you'll see a common advise is don't use the extra sata ports, and dont use the extra lan port on the deluxe, even disable them in the bios :p then why pay for them in the first place?
funny how you dont list the msi neo2 platinum nforce3 board... with it being the best nforce3 out there (at least according your reviews). has it stopped selling or what?
Live - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
Good guide as usual. One thing that I don’t understand is why the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe is recommended over the vanilla ASUS A8N-SLI.The only thing you get that is deluxe is a second LAN port and extra raid options. I fail to see what you would use a extra LAN port for? I only have one internet connection and most LAN:s are set up with hubs or routers. So what is it for?
The silicon raid controller is only useful if you want to add more the 4 hard drives in your raid setup right? How many users do this? Considering the use of raid is not that common I would guess a 4+ raid setup would be a very rare find indeed. It would seem to me that the extra $ spent on the “deluxe” would be much better invested in almost any other part of your setup.
So why the deluxe?
KristopherKubicki - Sunday, February 13, 2005 - link
The reason why we didnt mention Epox products is because - you can't buy them anywhere.Kristopher