Hey. Does a motherboard make a big difference? I am building a new system, and the tech guy told me to get this MSI 939 express or soething, for about 40 bucks more than a regular board. How does the motherboard make a difference? I am putting 2 512 pc3200 ram, 160gig 7200rpm, AMD 64 3500.. Any info would be great! Thanks guys -Kastro
Since you are posting this on a trading site, I assume you want a stable system. Thus you want a high quality motherboard. The last MSI board I worked with was back in the late 90s (dual Intel P3). My latest board is an Abit 939 board. Works great. ASUS also makes very good boards. Just make sure to stick with a good brand name board. A company who supplies timely BIOS updates, etc. P.S. Just a word of warning to anyone buying an AMD Nforce 4 board, do not buy Maxtor hard drives. See maxtor knowledge base for more info, but best to stay away.
Kastro, goto Tom's Hardware and read some of the articles re. motherboards: http://www.tomshardware.com/index.html
i recently bought the gigabyte K8NS ultra 393 MB. In the bios it has a performance option which increases the speed of the machine slightly. Well worth it if you're trying to milk every last drop of power out of your machine. Runningbear
It probably makes little difference to performance except in cases where people overclock their machine to extract extra performance. In this case motherboard and bios may make a difference. This is mostly done by gamers and hobbyists. Overclocking is a poor idea for trading because components are being run outside of their manufacturers specifications, things run hotter and a less reliable machine is likely to be the net result. Check that the motherboard has the features you need. Number one priority - has it got enough expansion slots and the right type of slots for video cards you intend to use in it. Also consider what other cards you may like to have eg sound. If you are running multiple programs at once, definately consider getting a dual core Athlon rather than the 3500. Also be aware that both Intel and AMD are bringing out new dual core CPUs 'real soon'. The new AMD chip uses a new 940 pin socket - the AM2 socket and these CPUs will not be compatible with any current motherboard. They also use DDR2 memory, so memory used on any current AMD motherboard will not be compatible.
I build all my computers from motherboards since more than 10 years now. I believe there is a BIG difference between motherboards. Only go for well known reputable boards. From what I have seen, these give you far less trouble over the long run than most of what gets advertised as gee whiz brand new super performance boards. The latter often quickly end up on the junk pile, unreliable and unserviceable. Only go for reliability.