Best Socket 754 mobo..!!

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Hi guys,
Please suggest me the best motherboard for socket 754 Athlon 64. Is nForce3 250Gb is better than VIA's K8T800 chipset?? I'm basically looking for Asus or MSI mobo............I can see two models of Asus......namely K8V-X and K8N which are cut down versions of K8V SE Deluxe and K8N-E Deluxe. How are these models. I don't require kinda IEEE ports and all those stuffs...!!

The old nForce3-150 was inferior when comapared to Via K8T800 chipset...but now nVidia eliminated all the flaws of nForce3-150, in the nForce3-250 Gb.....
now, Via has also upgraded it's k8T800 chiset to K8T800 PRO, but this new chipset is hardly different from the older one....

some of the pros and cons:-
nForce3 has integrated Northbridge and Southbridge int one single chip, and due to this more real estate is freed up in the motherboard...
nForce3 natively supports 4 SATA drives whereas K8T800 supports 2...

nForce3's integrated Gigabit Ethernet is faster and superior to that of K8T800's...

but the onboard sound of nForce3-250Gb is not as good as K8T800 (both have integrated 6.1 channel audio)...

But these differences doesnt help to pick out a winner of the two..both chipsets perform equally well in gaming and as well as in regular office use...

so u can go for the motherboard that has any one of these chipsets (nForce3 250Gb or K8T800Pro) but provide extra features such as easy Overclocking ability (like D.O.T of MSI) or More memory capacity or features like EZBios (of Asus ), which makes Bios updates an easy process or more USB connectors etc...

so u can check out these motherboards...
1]MSI K8N Neo
2]MSI K8T Neo FSR
3]Asus K8V-X
4]Asus K8N

generally MSI motherboards r rich in features....choose that motherboard which has more USB slots, DIMM slots etc. within ur budget.....

[Edit]sorry guys....forum was not responding when i posted this..clicked Refresh couple of times....i wan not able to Logout also...so those Forward and Backward things....all summed up to this multiple posts....forum was not opening today morning...giving some php error, can not connet database....well, i will now inform Batty...he may delete these posts....
will inform Batty now...may be he will delete these....

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Kt8800 is still good , i am an nvidia fan to some extent , but in this case .. nvidia's chipsets gives more features , but VIa has somewhat superior performance in benchies. .mybe negligible but noticeable .

Hey I bought MSI K8N Neo Platinum

I could not find the difference between Asus K8V and Asus K8V-X and what is there in ASUS K8V SE. I personally stayed away from SE .. i thought it might be some kind of a bottleneck.

I didn't want to take any chances.

MSI K8N Platinum is an expensive but feature and performance rich board go for it.

BTW i coupled it with AMD ATHLON 64 2800+ and Kingston DDR400 512MB

Geforce said:
Hey I bought MSI K8N Neo Platinum

I could not find the difference between Asus K8V and Asus K8V-X and what is there in ASUS K8V SE. I personally stayed away from SE .. i thought it might be some kind of a bottleneck.
I didn't want to take any chances.
MSI K8N Platinum is an expensive but feature and performance rich board go for it.
BTW i coupled it with AMD ATHLON 64 2800+ and Kingston DDR400 512MB

K8V-X does not have IEEE 1394 Firewire port, that's all...
also, K8V Deluxe and K8V-SE Deluxe have similar features and both r top end models in K8T800 chipset...

swatkat said:
K8V-X does not have IEEE 1394 Firewire port, that's all...
also, K8V Deluxe and K8V-SE Deluxe have similar features and both r top end models in K8T800 chipset...

Thanx for the info.

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I'm planning to buy Athlon 64 3000+ (754 pins), but I'm totally confused about mobo. I can see two good mobos in market. Asus K8N-E Deluxe and K8N........I know the later one have less features compared to first one. Like K8N don't have Sil RAID, Gb LAN, and IEEE 1394 ports. But is there any actual performance difference in these two??

There will be no performance difference as such.If your dealers isnt offering much price difference,better go for K8N-E-Deluxe.

There will not be any performance differences between them, as they both use same chipset, has same FSB, same Onboard Audio etc.....The difference will be in terms of features like RAID, IEEE 1394 support etc....

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But I can see two chipsets in these two mobos......one is nForce3 250 and another one is nForce3 250Gb.........is there any actual chipset diff in these except of Gb LAN??

parimal said:
But I can see two chipsets in these two mobos......one is nForce3 250 and another one is nForce3 250Gb.........is there any actual chipset diff in these except of Gb LAN??

There r two differences between 250 and 250Gb:-
1]250Gb has 10/100/1000 Mbit/sec Gigabit Ethernet MAC, whereas 250 has 10/100 Mbit/sec Fast Ethernet MAC.
2]250Gb has FireWall built into it, whereas 250 doesnt have it.

and everything else is same on botth the chipsets...

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Are you sure about the firewall??......K8N do not have the same??

MSI has 3 motherboards with nForce3 250 and nForce3 250Gb chipset:-
1]K8N Neo Platinum
2]K8N Neo-FSR
3]K8NM
The Neo Platinum is the top end model...
K8N Neo series have nForce3 250Gb chipset and K8NM has nForce3 250 chipset...

K8N Neo Platinum and FSR have 7.1 Channel Audio, 4xSATA, max 3GB DDR RAM 333MHZ and max 2 GB DDR RAM 400 MHz.....

K8NM has 5.1 channel Audio, 2xSATA, max 2GB DDR RAM 400 MHz...

Asus has two motherboards with one having nForce3 250 and other having nForce3 250Gb:-
1]K8N-E Deluxe
2]K8N

here, K8N-E Deluxe has nForce3 250Gb chipset and K8N has nForce3 250 chipset...
but, Asus website says, both the motherboards r having FireWall!!!!
K8N-E Deluxe Features
K8N Features
But the Gigabit lan is present only in K8N-E Deluxe, as expected for a nForce3 250Gb chipset...

it's better to enquire some vendors or users of K8N about harware FireWall....