Motherboards

[Digoy]

Hello all. I am in the process of buying a new board and processer. I want an Asus 800 FSB and I have one in mind. Thing is I dont know the difference between just your standard mother board and a server mother board.
(Seound Question) I know what FSB stands for and I'm seeing some that say 1066/800 and 800/533 What does the other numbers mean.
(Final question) With All the Asus boards I have looked at some are cheap and have an AGP slot and the high dollar boards do NOT have an AGP slot. Am I just missing something or isnt it a must to have an AGP slot for high end video cards.

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Specs now
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Pent 3
1000mhz
512 ram (Can go no higher)
Not sure what FSB it cant be good though (Store Bought 5 years ago)

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What I want
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Pent 4
3.0 ghz
4 GB ram
Atleast 800 FSB

Thanx for the help in advance.

[@tt!tud3]

Thing is I dont know the difference between just your standard mother board and a server mother board.

Server motherboards are just that, for servers, they take Server CPU's like the Xeon, not worth it for home use.

(Second Question) I know what FSB stands for and I'm seeing some that say 1066/800 and 800/533 What does the other numbers mean.

That is MAX and Min FBS so 1066/800 would take CPUs that run on 1066 or 800 mhz FBS.

800/533 works the same way.

(Final question) With All the Asus boards I have looked at some are cheap and have an AGP slot and the high dollar boards do NOT have an AGP slot. Am I just missing something or isnt it a must to have an AGP slot for high end video cards.

AGP is the older standard now, PCI Express (Not the same as PCI) is the new standard, faster and more effective than AGP was.

[nihil]

Well, you don't say what your budget is, or what you mostly intend using the machine for.

I would suggest that you look at the specs you require and what the MoBo will support in a bit more detail.

1. What type of RAM (dual channel?)
2. What type of graphics card?
3. SATA HDD?
4. RAID?

At this stage I would suggest that you hold back on the RAM..............4Gb seems rather excessive. You might want to get better video and HDD, and add more RAM later. That way you don't have to replace anything?

[The Duck]

If your building a gaming machine, I'd suggest PCI-E at this point... Even though AGP still has atleast another year left thanks to the new nvidia 7800gs (And you all thought AGP was dead, pfff shame on you ), since your basically doing a whole computer rehaul, it would be more upgradeable for the future and cost efficient if you went with PCI-E...


Yeh, basically I posted this to let everyone know that AGP isn't dead yet ...

[nihil]

Well, I would say that The Duck is pretty much spot on. An AGP card will still work fine and they are available.

The secret is:

1. Balance (all components are compatible and of similar quality)
2. Define your user requirements up front
3. Calculate your budget up front
4. Decide on your planned obsolescence model, and where you want to be with that kit in "x" years time.

You are then ready to go. So often I see someone who has bought a cheap component, that can only be replaced, and is then worthless. This is a waste of money. You can add a new HDD, you can
add more RAM, you can add a DVD writer to a box with a player..........the thing to bear in mind is the difference between add and replace , because "replace" is an expensive road to travel down.