help me choose an AMD-based chipset

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know a decent bit about computers, but I also know enough to recognize when something’s over my head. I know what I need and what I want, but I don’t really keep up with benchmarks and motherboard reviews and etc.

After spending too much money on Pentium products for years, I want to make the switch to an AMD processor and a Mobo to support it.

This is what I need:

A decently-priced, fast AMD processor. I assume that they’re all 64-bit now, even though WinXP (my OS of choice) is a 32-bit system. I want it to be comparable to a Pentium IV, and to be around 3ghz in speed.

As for the motherboard:

I need an onboard SATA controller and the ability to support whichever RAID configuation gives you the best performance (I plan on having two SATA hard drives set up in that RAID array for “speed”/“performance” - for streaming large chunks of audio and video from the HD).

I’d also like onboard ethernet, USB 2.0, and Firewire support.

The goal of the system is to record and edit large audio projects (64+ stereo 24-bit audio tracks) and edit video projects, so any other considerations (L2 cache, FSB speed, or other common bottlenecks) that will affect that performance will apply.

Anyone? :slight_smile:

2

You will not find an AMD cpu running at 3GHz.

You will not need to either.

I think you need to wait a little while, the next generation of AMD boards is on the way, and has been sent to reviewers for pre production evaluation, there are plenty of reports online.

It appears that both Via and NVidia have PCI-E chipsets coming up very soon, there are dirver issues and certain amounts of tweaking to be done, and these pre-production units do not quite match the Intel solutions…yet.

The VIA K8T800 seems to be fastest at the moment, however on some things the NVida Nforce 3 250Gb pulls ahead in other areas.

The PCI-E versions are for VIA K8T890 which requires more development and for NVidia the NForce 4, which will have 3 differant performance and feature specifications, the top one being the ability to run two GFX cards at once.

At the moment the NVdia chipset looks most useful, it has all that you require, plus the ability to morph from one RAID set up to another without loss of data or reinstall.

As for the cpu, it depends upon what you call reasonably priced and also what you decide you want in future proofing.

I’d suggest that the 939 socket is the way to go, however the 754 sockets are going to become more mainstream and so cheaper to buy, but have a less obvious upgrade supported path, if you look at AMDs roadmaps.

Look around here, maybe put up a post on their forums asking what you wanted to know here,

http://www.amdzone.com/

3

First of all, I would like to mention that currently AMD chips don’t go up to 3ghz. However, Athlon 64 chips are sigificantly faster clock-for-clock than Pentium 4 chips, which is why they use that number rating thing. Thus, you are going to want an Athlon 64 3000+(1.8ghz or 2.0ghz, depending on cache size/dual memory channel support) or maybe 3200+.

Secondly, right now you have three options - get an AGP/PCI board with a socket 754 chip (the cheapest option) or with the Socket 939 chip (which adds dual channel support, and will the faster future processors, including dual-core chips, or to wait for a PCI express board.

Personally, I recently went with the Socket 754 route myself, because I had a good AGP video card already, and was on a budget. The motherboard I just got was the Asus K8N, which uses the nForce 3 250Gb chipset, and has the onboard Serial ATA Raid, ethernet, USB 2.0, and Firewire support you want, for $89. It also has a rather nifty built-in hardware firewall as well. So far this board has been working wonderfully for me, though I mostly using for gaming, not audio work.

I am using it with an Athlon 64 2800+, though this board is also pretty good for overclocking. Even with my bad RAM, I have moved the clock speed from the default 1.8ghz to 2.25ghz without a single problem. Even with just the stock heatsink/fan, the temps only went up 2-4 degrees under full load. With good RAM, many people have no problems pushing these chips up to 2.4 or 2.5ghz.

As for cost, the Socket 754 Athlon64 2800+ is $135 , the 3000+ is $155, and the 3200+ is $190 at Newegg for the retail versions that come with a heatsink/fan. The socket 939 versions of this are somewhat more expensive.

I must reccomend buying from Newegg - so far they have had very competative prices, their service is wonderful, and they are pretty quick at getting the order out. I haven’t had a single problem with them.