Help choosing a new motherboard

[Drooling Iguana]

The story so far: About a year ago, the IDE controller on my motherboard started giving me trouble, and corrupted my boot partition (thankfully a very small 32MB partition that contained only my kernel and bootloader) before I disconnected my hard drive to prevent further damage. After that, I spent a while running everything from a Knoppix LiveCD that I had luckily burned a few months earlier, before buying a cheap laptop which has served me reasonably well for Internet browsing and other essentials, but is, as the French say, rather crap when it comes to games.

Fast-forward to the present day, in which my financial situation has improved quite a bit and I figure I have good reason to believe that I'll be afford the nevessary parts to upgrade my main computer to present-day standards. However, I'm a bit out of dat when it comes to the latest offerings by the various hardware companies, so I'm turning to you guys for help.

My graphics card selection is mostly made for me due to the fact that Nvidia is the only company out there that makes reasonably powerful GPUs with decent Linux drivers, so it's just a matter of me finding whichever one of their cards best suits my price point. I mostly need help choosing a motherboard. I'm not looking for something absolutely bleeding-edge, but whatever I get needs to be enough to play any games currently on the shelf at a decent speed with decent detail settings. I'm, of course, not going to be using the MB's onboard video hardware, so I don't really care if it's somewhat rudimentary or even non-existant. I might even be getting a dedicated sound card, so that doesn't need to be included either (although I don't know if they even still make motherboard without onboard sound. I also don't need any bells and whistles like onboard wi-fi and the like. I'm just looking for a motherboard that does motherboard-y things well.

Mostly, I'm looking for something reliable that won't introduce any unexpected bottlenecks and won't crap out on me like the ECS POS I used to use did. Also, I've been and AMD fanboy for a while now, but I've heard that Intel's got a new line of chips that offer better performance for a lower price than anything AMD has at present. Is it finally time for me to jump ship and join the Intel camp?

This computer will be dual-booting between Linux and Windows. The Windows installation will most likely be either the Win2K Professional that I used before the IDE issues began, or the WinXP Home Edition that came with my laptop (since I'm pretty much only going to be using the Windows partition for games anyway.) I'd like to keep the total price for the parts I need (motherboard, CPU, video card, PSU) under CAN$600, but can go up to $800 if absolutely necessary.

Any suggestions?

[chaosgeisterchen]

Can you afford about 180 for an Intel Core2Duo E6300? About +50 for additional water cooling or 30 for super silent air cooling. Motherboard.. about 100 the best ones. GeForce 6800 or better will do well for you, HDD with about 200 gigs should also be enough I assume. Do you also need memory?

[suprnova]

The Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP is apparently a good LGA775 board, built in WiFi and a v.good overclocker too, if thats your thing. Retails at about £130UK, might be a bit pricy for your budget though.

[~LoKe]

The Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP is apparently a good LGA775 board, built in WiFi and a v.good overclocker too, if thats your thing. Retails at about £130UK, might be a bit pricy for your budget though.

This is the system I built for $600 CAD. Mind you, I chose a terrible board (perfect if you don't over-clock, though).

Processor: Intel E6300 Core 2 Duo @ 1.86GHz -- $218
Video Card: XFX nVidia 7300GT -- $113
RAM: 1GB(2x512MB) Dual Channel Corsair Value Select @667MHz -- $138
Motherboard: ECS P4M890T-M2. Gets the job done, however, what I later found was that it doesn't support Dual Channel memory :( -- $65
Case: nGear, something black. 350W Titan PSU; seems solid -- $47

[Drooling Iguana]

I'd planned on using a low-end Core 2 Duo CPU, since I've heard that they have the best performance for their price these days. I'd also heard some good things about the Asus board when I asked this question on another forum, but I'd also heard that Linux support wasn't that great for it.

Another thing I should bring up is that I have an IDE hard drive and two IDE optical drives that I'd like to use with this motherboard. I've heard that a lot of newer boards are starting to cut down on the number of plain IDE devices they support in favour of SATA, so that'll also be a factor here.

[zenwhen]

The Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP is apparently a good LGA775 board, built in WiFi and a v.good overclocker too, if thats your thing. Retails at about £130UK, might be a bit pricy for your budget though.

Last I heard, this board's IDE ports are not supported in Linux.

[~LoKe]

I'd planned on using a low-end Core 2 Duo CPU, since I've heard that they have the best performance for their price these days. I'd also heard some good things about the Asus board when I asked this question on another forum, but I'd also heard that Linux support wasn't that great for it.

Another thing I should bring up is that I have an IDE hard drive and two IDE optical drives that I'd like to use with this motherboard. I've heard that a lot of newer boards are starting to cut down on the number of plain IDE devices they support in favour of SATA, so that'll also be a factor here.

Are you planning on overclocking? If not, the ECS board I suggested would be best. I've got two IDE drives running on it, while it's actually a SATA board. Most SATA/SATAII boards will have a few UDMA (Ultra DMA, aka ATA, aka PATA, aka IDE) interfaces, so your Optical Drives, Floppy Drive and Hard Drives will all work.

But again; it's terrible for overclocking. You could get an E6300 up to 2.15GHz from 1.86 and it'll be stable, but don't expect much more.

[Drooling Iguana]

I'm not planning on overclocking, but my previous motherboard was an ECS and having its IDE controller crap out on me and possibly damage my hard drive (I haven't tried to access it since I disconnected it from my computer over a year ago) kinda soured me on the brand.

[CREEPING DEATH]

I build, sell, and service computers.
Gigabyte boards oftentimes have Nvidia chipsets and integrated video, work great. $500 USD would get a decent case, Athlon CPU, WD SATA drive, etc. Most boards with integrated video also have a PCI-E slot or two, 512 MB or better.

CD

[chaosgeisterchen]

I would suggest RAM clocked at 800 MHz or higher.

[Drooling Iguana]

I'll look into Gigabyte's 'boards, although I don't really need much in the way of integrated video. I don't really need any integrated video at all, but I suppose having something simple that could work as a backup if I ever need to remove the video card might be useful.

[mips]

I'm a long Gigabyte user and their boards are great.

Cannot really go wrong. Which ones are you looking at ?

[Drooling Iguana]

The Gigabyte GA-8I945GMF (http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=007822&cid=MB.157) is within my price range and seems to have everything I need. Is there anything missing there that I should be aware of?

[mips]

What CPU do you intend getting ??? Just check that it will work on that board.

[Drooling Iguana]

A low-end Core 2 Duo, unless someone can give me a good reason to stick with AMD (or any reason, really. I really prefer AMD as a company but I won't pay more for an inferior product just to support them. *Sigh* I miss the days when I could always count on the companies I hate to produce nothing but crap...)

[zenwhen]

A low-end Core 2 Duo, unless someone can give me a good reason to stick with AMD (or any reason, really. I really prefer AMD as a company but I won't pay more for an inferior product just to support them. *Sigh* I miss the days when I could always count on the companies I hate to produce nothing but crap...)

You would save yourself a lot of pain by not being emotionally attached to corporations.

[Drooling Iguana]

Well, I'm more or less indifferent to AMD. I just dislike Intel, and AMD's the only other game in town.

[mips]

Well, I'm more or less indifferent to AMD. I just dislike Intel, and AMD's the only other game in town.

Go with the Core 2 Duo I would say. Intel has the edge on AMD right now. i also like supporting AMD but right now I would go Core 2 Duo if I was building a system.

[mips]

A low-end Core 2 Duo, unless someone can give me a good reason to stick with AMD (or any reason, really. I really prefer AMD as a company but I won't pay more for an inferior product just to support them. *Sigh* I miss the days when I could always count on the companies I hate to produce nothing but crap...)

I might be mistaken but that board will NOT support Core 2 Due, look here;
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/CPUSupport_Model.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=1910&ProductName=GA-8I945GMF

Look at the GA-965 boards for core 2 duo support.

I would also advise checking the linux support on the Marvel 805x chipsets used for the LAN.

[Drooling Iguana]

Actually, upon noticing that that board only supports up to 667 MHz RAM, I took it out of the running and am now leaning towards this (http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=011028&cid=MB.157) one. I'll still have to do some research on whether everything on it's supported in Linux, though.

(Though, really, not being able to get the onboard Ethernet controller working is hardly the end of the world, seeing as how cheap PCI network cards are these days. I may have to settle for 100BaseT until support is added, but it's not like my DSL modem could pump enough data to max that out anyway and I don't have a terribly extensive internal LAN. The IDE controller being supported is far more important to me.)

EDIT: What about the motherboards made by Intel itself*? The DG965SSCK (http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=011182&cid=MB.157) seems to have everything I'm looking for. Anyone know if these motherboards are any good and if there are any components that might give me trouble in Linux?

* Or at least branded by Intel. Not sure if they farm out the actual design/construction to subcontractors.

[v8YKxgHe]

Just make sure you get a compatible Motherboard, I can't even install Ubuntu and many many other Linux distros because of my Abit AB9 and the jmicron ide controller.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Core_2_Duo_Support

[chaosgeisterchen]

Has anyone yet testet 1066-MHz-RAM? I would be dead interested in knowing how fast a computer can get by using it.

[mips]

Ok, if you google around you see lots of people having issues with 965 chipset & linux, something to do with the kernel, also saw issues on the Jmicron controller as mentioned above.

Look at the link posted by AlexC_

[chaosgeisterchen]

Hmh.. so it seems as if it will be still a problem to use brand-new hardware with Linux.

[mips]

Hmh.. so it seems as if it will be still a problem to use brand-new hardware with Linux.


I suppose they would probably sorted out in the not to distant future through a different kernel version.

[Drooling Iguana]

But how distant is "not so distant"?

I'm starting to think I should put off this upgrade for a while longer. Either that or resign myself to the fact that this computer is going to be Windows-only for the first few months at least.

(Which actually won't be so bad, since pretty much the only thing that my laptop can't already do is play games, and the only thing that a Windows machine can do is play games, so by their powers combined I can summon Captain Planet! Or something...)

[mips]

I honestly cannot say.

Me i would just go for it anyway. Like you said you are installing Win anyway. Once that is done you can attempt edgy ;)

[Drooling Iguana]

I'd still like to make sure that there's at least a strong attempt going to get Linux support on whatever I choose. I'd hate to get stuck with a board that has components that just never end up getting supported, or isn't supported for months/years after I buy the thing.

[jhnphm]

Oh, hey again, I'm Pu-239 on SD.NET

Well, Linux seems to be working on my P5b- only problem now is random freezes...

You could go w/ the Asus P5NSLI motherboard- no overclockability and mediocre performance, but it should be supported according to http://www.keylabs.com/linux/results/asus_p5nsli.html and is relatively cheap.

[jhnphm]

Well, 2.6.19-rc4 seems to work well here, boots very quickly and both my ethernet ports work- Overclocking is borked in /proc/cpuinfo, but it's been that way on all kernels since 2.6.16, so I edited parts of the kernel to display the correct speed in /proc/cpuinfo (/sys is wrong, but it's best not to fiddle around w/ speedstep),

[Drooling Iguana]

That's for the P5B? Well, that's good news. I had almost given up on getting a decent Core 2 Duo board that worked well in Linux and was thinking about just getting an el-cheapo Sempron motherboard-CPU combo to get my computer running again with my existing equipment while I waited for the Linux driver support for the new hardware to mature. I might still put off getting the new parts until the 2.6.19 kernel enters the stable branch on one of my potential Linux distros (currently debating whether I should use Ubuntu or Gentoo. Gentoo served me well on my old computer, but I've grown to like Ubuntu as well since I installed it on my laptop. This'll probably be the deciding factor on which one I use, which means that in all probability it'll be Gentoo since Ubuntu likely won't move to another kernel branch until 7.xx comes out.)

[~LoKe]

ASRock Dual VSTA is working just fine for me.

[HW_Hack]

I used to work for Intel and I can say that all "official" Intel motherboards/BIOS's are tested with one or two flavors of linux prior to shipping. This is as of 2002 - 2003 time frame. So you can count on a very good chance of having no major compatibility issues - and a likley hood of decent ACPI operation. I'm no Intel cheerleader -- thems just the facts --- and yes Intel does sub-contract the final design out to a few major builders -- but the boards are sold as "Intel" and come in Intel boxes etc.

Bottom line is I'm just lazy --- I'll take compatibility / an easy system build and OS load over some exotic motherboard etc.

To each his own8)

[Miguel]

This will be an unpopular opinion but, seeing that in the "low performance" regime AMD is cheaper than intel (performance per buck, mind you), the better gaming option could possibly be getting a mid-level AM2 mobo with a 4200+ and use the rest of the money for a 7600GT or better video card (heck maybe you can even get a 7900GS).

I'm currently browsing this (http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/02/holiday_buyers_guide_2006/)

[Miguel]

Shopping in NewEgg (it's the US and it's in dollars, but I suppose that's not much of a problem for a canadian):
AMD x2 4200+ (65W) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103741): 188$
MSI K9N Platinum (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130049#spec): 100$ I've done a bit of research and the onboard ALC883 sound chipset should work with edgy (it didn't in dapper). Don't know about the other features, though. Any info on the nForce 570 chipset in linux?
XFX 7900GS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150202): 220$. It's nVidia and it is fast. With the propietary drivers this one should fly.


So we have a not-so entry range CPU in a middle range mobo plus a pretty decent graphics card for 508$. How much is this in canadian dollars? If you are running tight, you can always go for a 7600GT (the XFX model is 70$ cheaper). Oh, ****, I forgot the memory.

I'd like to add a last point. If there is somewhere I *don't* want propietary drivers it's in the mobo. I'd peronally look after a mobo that works OK with free drivers... because they work out-of-the-box and usually have less issues.

PS: Is this (http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/96509133/m/777003350831) good news about the K9N Platinum?

EDIT: If you plan on getting that MoBo, make sure you are getting the revised model, as the original one had poweroff issues due to a low capacitor (~100pF).