Introduction

Motherboards and processors have been the most active components with respect to PC hardware advances and development over the years. This has become even more apparent in the last year during which Intel and AMD both rolled out new sockets, new chipsets and new ways of computing. It's now very easy to create a system, or upgrade an old one, to incorporate enough computing power to make NASA of the 1960's wish that they were you. With that in mind, you can see how overkill can be had very easily and how obsolescence can be had just as easily.

We'll take a look at what's available on the market and try to find out which motherboard and/or processor makes the most sense for your needs while, hopefully, steering safely clear of buying instantly obsolete hardware.

As always, make sure that you take a look at our RealTime Pricing Engine to get up-to-date prices on everything that you see in this guide and more.

AMD Processors – Athlon 64
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  • Chadder007 - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link

    "N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478. "

    I agree about Socket 478....Intel didn't care to give those users too much of an upgrade path and just jumped all over to the new socket way too soon with little justification to do so.
  • qballshalls2002 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    Still waiting for the nForce4 boards to show before I go slurging again. Hehehe!
  • aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    Haha...sorry...I meant if you were trying to get to 1:1 DDR600 like a lot of Anandtechers are inclined to do. My DDR is bigger than your DDR

    ;-)
  • jmke - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    " The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM... "

    most A64 boards features excellent memory:htt(fsb) dividers, and the impact on performance versus running memory at 1:1 is minimal
  • aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    I agree with #8. My new 3000+ easily hits 2.4ghz which makes it $160 3800+. The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM...
  • arswihart - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    why get Athlon64 3200+ 90nm instead of 3000+? Can't they both overclock the same, as shown in Anand's own tests?
  • bofkentucky - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    In the 9xx board section, its is the intel 915 chipset, not 912.
  • Pumpkinierre - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478.
  • PseudoKnight - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    The Athlon XP 2800+ is flipping me off. I'm scared.
  • slurmsmackenzie - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

    how come the 915 chipset isn't listed? it offers pci-e without the conversion to ddr2? anandtech always puts the emphasis on the fact that an upgrade to 775 is an entire system overhaul, when 915 offers the meager upgrade of processor/mobo, or cpu/mobo/video card without a performance drop from 925x. so why a 925x board is suggested for price/performance efficiency is beyond me.

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