Can't Settle on a Board

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I'm upgrading my pc this week and so far I've chosen:

AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache
ATI X1900XT

I'm keeping my current

GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel
Hiper HPU-4B580 Type R 580W

But I can't decide on a mobo, I'd rather not go with Asus since everyone I know with asus boards seem to have unstable pcs (but thats all with Socket A boards, have Asus improved?) where my trusty old Abit NF7-S has been rock solid since the day I got it. I've been looking at the Abit AN8-32X nForce4 SLi but I'd rather not spend quite that much when I'm not gonna be making use of the 32 bit SLI (or whatever it is). Can anyone help me out with some suggestions? The board must definatly be known to be a stable one and must have at least! 6 SATA connectors. Thanks!
 
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Anyone? :(

I think I've rounded it down to either the ASUS A8N-SLi Premium or the new Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire after reading the otherthreads. Both Asus but its seems like their the only choice as far as my requirements go. Would i'd be better going with the A8N or jumping in the deep end going with the new crossfire board (allowing me to possibly use crossfire in the future although unlikely on my yearly budget). What is everyone else doing in that regard?
 
Soldato
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I have the A8N-Sli Premium I did recieve one with a duff PCI-E slot so RMA'd it & recieved a replacement which works fantastic! the only problems I had with the board was my own doing, I think most problems that people have is because they havent set up there systems properly then blame the mobo's when in reality its all down to human error!

I upgraded a few weeks ago unknowing the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire was coming out, its abit of a gamble trying out this new board as well as the others being released as we dont know how good it really is compared to its Nforce 4 brothers but I would have probally gone for it because as sad as it is I'm a total ATI fanboy. :rolleyes:

Everyone seems to be on the DFI/Asus bandwagon especially with people taking notice of many reviews where the above mentioned seem to always come out on top for overclocking & stability in the case of the Asus, you will always find someone complaining that it isnt upto scratch etc.

I used Asus for a Pentium I as well as Pentium II systems, switched over to Abit for the KR7A (XP1700) but then had a problem with a Abit AV8 not liking my Tagan 480W maybe it was a dead mobo so bought the Asus A8V-Deluxe had no problems with it at all really untill I upgraded to 2GB of G.Skill ram which woudnt run stable even at 2.80V with that board but my 1GB Ballistix was ok, so I decided to finally switch to Asus A8N-Sli Premium which is running Excellent - the crash free bios set up on Asus is something that really appeals to me, dont have to worry about replacing your bios chip - I would like to see Abit & others make use of this.

It's a pity your not upgrading in a few weeks, let some time for the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe eager buyers to give the opinions & reviews, I'm quite cautious when it comes to buying new items I always try & choose something that has had good reviews especially with people on here.

Anyway back to my opinion! if it was me right now I would probally take the chance with the A8R32-MVP Deluxe or maybe just go for Abit or another brand when they are released just to be different from everyone else!

Personally I'm waiting till around January 07 when hopefully AM2 has matured 6 months or so, I will probally switch to Abit for my next upgrade just to be different from all the normal normans buying the same brands i.e Asus/Dfi <Yawn> lol :rolleyes: to be honest who gives a crap if its half a second slow or whatever in terms of comparisons or it doesnt do ridiculous overclocks - not me anyway. :rolleyes:

Looks like Soltek & Soyo have really slacked off making mobo's. . . .
 
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I have the A8N-Sli Premium too. Fantastic overclocker with my 170 and super stable.
I tried a DFI expert but it was fussy to say the least.

Matt
 
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Thanks for the replies, i think i will go for the A8N I don't really wanna take the risk of getting the new crossfire without knowing how good it is, since i dont really want to waste the cash of getting 2 graphics cards i might aswell go for the cheaper board.
 
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Bought it today and got it up and running havn't tested anything yet but a rather urgent question, as above I've got a Opteron 170 but it's showing up as an unknown processor. Do I need to update the bios on the board? How do I find out the current version with the A8N the normal press escape at POST doesnt seem to get rid of the Asus POST image as it seems to on most boards.

Second question the POST image colours seem all messed up i got worried at first since i thought it might be the graphics card doing it but it seems fine in windows is this a normal thing for this board?
 
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Soldato
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The Mad One said:
Bought it today and got it up and running havn't tested anything yet but a rather urgent question, as above I've got a Opteron 170 but it's showing up as an unknown processor. Do I need to update the bios on the board? How do I find out the current version with the A8N the normal press escape at POST doesnt seem to get rid of the Asus POST image as it seems to on most boards.

Second question the POST image colours seem all messed up i got worried at first since i thought it might be the graphics card doing it but it seems fine in windows is this a normal thing for this board?
Ok in Windows click on start>run then type msinfo32 & press enter.

System information should come up. Under the category System Summary then look on the right hand side where it says BIOS Version/Date - should read something like this:-
Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ACPI BIOS Revision 1009, 21/10/2005

Funnily enough my bios was as above but the disc supplied had version 1008 which had a corrupted post image colours when I reverted to this, anyway I just updated again to 1009 from a disc with the bios downloaded from the Asus website which works perfectly.
 
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I had the problem of the messed up start up screen when i built my brother in laws machine,flashed the bios cleared the cmos and voila all ok.Currently running dead stable with a 4000 chip in.Only problem i had was a borked maxtor hdd.
 
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Bios update fixed both problems thans :) running ok now although i'm not seeing a major improvement in general windows operations over my old 2800+ barton but i guess its things like hdd access times slowing things down now.
 
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