[PLUG] AMD 64 Motherboard Recommendations

[Galen Seitz]

Brent Rieck <bsr at spek.org> wrote:

> Luke Eckley wrote:
> > I really want a 64 bit system, and wonder if anyone on the list has any
> > recommendations, good experiences, bad experiences...  Right now I am
> > looking at MSI and Gigabyte.
> 
> I recently got an ASUS A8N5X MB and an Athlon 64X2 3800; I like it, it's
> quite fast (at least compared to my old Athlon 1700), and seems quite
> stable so far.  No weird hardware on the motherboard, sound, ethernet,
> and sata were recognized by linux.  Be aware that this MB uses PCI-X so
> you'll have to get a new video card too, and a new power supply since
> it's got a 24 pin + 4 pin connector; your thunderbird probably just has
> a 22 (or is it 20) pin + 4 pin connector.
> 

I'll second the recommendation of the A8N5X.  I chose this board because it
is one of the few Athlon 64 boards that explicitly states that it supports
ECC.  It was really frustating to me that many of the motherboards that I
looked at did not mention ECC support.  This is despite the fact that ECC
is built into the Athlon 64 memory controller.  The only extra cost to
a motherboard vendor is 8 traces and some BIOS work.

galen