DescentBB

At present, ASUS is offering two Socket 939 mainboards for AMD 64 ...

The A8N-SLI Deluxe

and

The A8V Deluxe

I have been a fan of the nVidia chipset ever since I bought my A7N8X-Dx a while back and I remember having problems with VIA boards before that.

Apparently they both have the same FSB bandwidth (2000 MT/s) so ... disregarding the other features ... What are your thoughts on the nVidia chipset versus the VIA chipset? Has VIA improved their reliability? Any other thoughts?

Thx in adv,
Icey

Go for the nVidia chipset, the A8N-SLI deluxe has many more features like the NV RAID, SLI PCI-E video card support, just to name a couple.

The Nforce 4 board should be faster then the Via board, though I'd have a hard time buying an SLI board at a premium(or do you really want to throw down $600+ for a pair of 6800 GTs?). No Nforce 4 Ultra boards?

I'm not particularly convinced with the whole "one now, one latter" upgrade path, since by the time you need another card, new cards should be out that would probably be faster then two old cards in SLI.

Mr. Perfect wrote:The Nforce 4 board should be faster then the Via board, though I'd have a hard time buying an SLI board at a premium(or do you really want to throw down $600+ for a pair of 6800 GTs?). No Nforce 4 Ultra boards?

I'm not particularly convinced with the whole "one now, one latter" upgrade path, since by the time you need another card, new cards should be out that would probably be faster then two old cards in SLI.

Perhaps, new cards will be out and will be faster. However, think about this; the new cards will cost up to $600, assuming they are about twice as fast as a single card in this generation, say you get one now, and then when you get another one later it will nearly double the performance for less then half the price of one of those new cards and come with 90% of the performance. The only real advantage to getting a $600 dollar card at that point would be for features not in previous generations or for lower power requirements.

SLI doesn't double the performance -- 150% if you're lucky.

Give them a couple driver generations, it was showing 177% on several websites that actually tested SLI. Also keep in mind they have a hard time with CPU limits in some cases.

Wow, I didn't realize that the nVidia board didn't have AGP8X ... thought the PCI-Ex was in addition to it. I don't want to spend an extra $600 for a video board right now, I want to keep my Radeon 9800/256 for another year or so ...

Thats the problem I have myself. The tech is still fresh so mayby its best to wait a bit longer.

Id go with Nvidia chipset over VIA any day. Quality is a factor when you compare the two.

If you're not ready for PCI-X then just get an nForce3 250 Gb board... Darn good boards and you still get all the spiffy sata raid and gigabit ethernet etc extras

Capm wrote:just get an nForce3 250 Gb board

I have stuck with ASUS so far because I have had great luck with them. Any suggestions?

All the OCers swear by Abit boards, but I have no idea what they offer in their line.

DFI is going to come out with a nice SLI board soon.

Man, I can't shed any light on either of those boards. But the one to get it would seen is that asus or the one I just ordered today that overclockers are creaming about

here

Oof man, stay away from MSI, I've had nothing but problems with them.

This is a darn good board. And is the board you want if you want a relatively high-end board that will last you a long time but are not ready for the pci-x yet, its got all the bells and whistles...


And of course, my #1 recommendation with all new major equipment is to make sure you have a good size Battery Backup unit with Automatic Voltage Regulation. An APC 800va is usually enough, I run a 1500, and it powers everything *and* my laser printer, and doesn't even sweat.