What's a good Socket A mobo?

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Yes, I know that these days a "good socket A mobo" is an oxymoron.

Well, I've got an MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum mobo now, and it's been running pretty nicely for a while. That is, until about 6 months ago when some RAM took a nose dive. Couldn't even get it to post with one of my TwinX Corsair sticks in there. So I RMA'd it, and the new set worked fine until a month ago. Well, I RMA that stuff, and buy a new set of XMS3200 Corsair CMX1024-3200C2PT (two 1gb matched sticks). Nice stuff, but I can't get it to run at better timings than 3-6-6-8, and I know people have gotten better results. I just blame that on my ancient mobo, though.

But now that set is showing errors and restarting my OS just like my old two sets did. It took less than a month this time. Switching slots seems to make it stable for a few days, and leaving it in a particular slot with only 1 stick seems to make it work with no errors with either stick. (Been using memtest right along to check for errors)

I'm begining to think this isn't the fault of my RAM any more, and that the mobo might be getting weird on me. It's had it's fair share of other interesting quirks, too, but nothing major.

So (I finally get to the topic question after, what, three paragraphs? :laugh:) does anybody here know of a good quality socket A mobo that is still being sold? I can find lots of good ones, but they're all "out of stock" and somehow I doubt a new shipment is coming in.

Yeah, I know I should just get a 64bit cpu and the works, but I intend to do that fairly soon. I just need something solid to keep me running for a few months when I get the cash and time to build a new rig.

EDIT: Oh, it's gotta go up to 400fsb, too, since that's what my 3200+ is.

[Stormy{CAN}]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

New are getting to be very few and far between. If you don't mind ebay, there a re few NF7-S v2.0 (not the S2 and its variants) or the AN7 for semi-reasonable prices.

[vs._9mm]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

for what a socket A costs now a days since they are rare and no longer produced, you can get a A64 combo for probably the same price. You've got the DDR for a nice nforce4 mobo.

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

Yeah, I was starting to lean that way. Came up with a couple fairly decent looking deals. The board in these two combos, while not steller, gets decent reviews on Newegg, and would let me keep my x850 pro AGP card.

http://www.aztekcomputers.com/detail.php/part_num/AZT1089

(comes with 3500+ A64, $122)

http://www.aztekcomputers.com/detail.php/part_num/AZT1091

(comes with 3800+ A64, $156)

Think either of those are worth looking at? If so, which would you say is the better deal? Bang for the buck is a bit of an issue here, since like I said, I should be doing some big time upgrading some time next year. But when that time comes, I'll probably just buy a whole new rig, since I won't have any parts that'll carry over, so I could keep whatever I get as a backup.

On my laptop now, btw. Only 500mhz... it's even more of a dinosaur than my desktop. :laugh: My main machine rebooted on it's own, and then froze solid within the hour, so I got fed up and hammered my laptop into working order. I figure I'll mess with the RAM placement and such tomorrow, just for kicks to see what's what. Still not convinced it's the RAM any more. The fact that it stops showing errors when I change slots is a dead give away.

[vs._9mm]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

http://www.aztekcomputers.com/detail.php/part_num/AZT1136

what about that one? I overclocked my 3200+ to 3500+ speeds and noticed no difference in BF2. So I put it back. That would be the cheapest route for you to go it looks like, especially since you are going to upgrade later anyway. And when you do, who knows what the 'in' chip/board will be. And this mobo has integrated graphics, so when you do upgrade you can keep it as a second computer to websurf or whatever. You don't need the extra ram slots b/c you already have 2x1gb. And you said you're keeping the AGP, just about any other deal besides these come with pci-express, and that means another $150 for a video card.

Another suggestion would be to look for a used cpu/mobo at anandtech.com or hardocp.com People are unloading combos for like $100, but you're having to pick and choose for a AGP mobo.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=45&threadid=1857831&enterthread=y

$40 motherboard.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=45&threadid=1912554&enterthread=y

3500+ for $45.

There's that $122 combo for $85. LOL

Happy hunting!

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

Well, I ordered the combo with the 3500+. It was only ten dollars more than the 3200+, and it had four RAM slots so if I wanted to I could stick my two old 512mb sticks in there and have 3gb of RAM. It's all dual channel, and it all runs at nearly the same timings and voltages. Since I've got it anyway I might as well use it, right?

[vs._9mm]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

sweet! sounds like a plan to me :) Be sure and post about it when you get installed :)

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

I'll be sure to do that. :)

I just got a call from Aztec about an hour ago saying the OEM mobo's for that combo are out of stock, but they have a retail box version (with warrenty and everything) they could send instead. I asked if they're be any price difference, and he said yes, about $30, but he'd knock $10 off of that, and give me a 3700+ CPU instead.

I decided to go for it since it seemed like a fair deal, and this current mobo is falling apart so I need a replacement as soon as I can get one and didn't want to wait for them to restock.

Now I just gotta find out why I get minor artifacting in games when I enable any level of AA. Flashed it back to it's default (gimped with 12 pipes) BIOS, but no change. Seems to get worse if I OC the onboard RAM, so maybe it's a RAM problem. I'll hold off doing anything more until I get the new mobo, though.

[vs._9mm]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

In my experience artificating is related to temperature. Which OCing causes an increase in. Which is not a problem as long as you have good airflow.

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

Yeah, the temp was the first thing to pop into my head, but it runs that way even at stock speed. ATI Tool gives me a reading of 60c, max, which should be in normal operation range. It's got a big Connect3D cooler, too, so it should be fine. The weird thing is that it only happens with AA turned on. Turn it off, and everything is just fine.

I've heard that some people have fixed this by putting the card on another power connector without any other power draws in the line, so I might try that. It's only a 420w PSU, (Vantec) and I don't think it even has dual rails.

[vs._9mm]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

That would be my next suggestion. I've also read about disabling fastwrite in the BIOS improves performance, but I wouldn't know for sure.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931

is a good powersupply that has a rebate going on, in case you need to upgrade. It's the powersupply I have, and I run a 3200+ OC'd to 250FSB and a 7900GT KO Superclock and 4 SATA drives on it. Haven't had any power problems yet.

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

Nice. Seems like a decent psu. If I don't need it now, I may get it in preperation for my next rig what with the rebate on it.

I'll also try disabling fastwrite. I had never had problems with that before (actually made my 9600 run better) so it didn't pop into my head.

I would wait to test it out on the new board, but don't know when that combo is going to get here. They shipped it out monday with 3 day, but the page at aztek just says "awaiting shipping info" which it'll probably keep saying until five days after it gets here. :laugh:

edit: Well, I tried disabling fastwrite, changing my aperture size (why, I'm not sure, I'm just trying everything that has anything to do with the gpu), and going down to 4x AGP. No luck yet. Next up is the power connector.

edit again: Well, putting it on it's own line didn't help. Tried a few other odd ball things just for the heck of it, like enabling alternate pixel center, but no luck. The artifacts are always in the exact same pattern and position. I guess I'll wait until I've got the new mobo before I make my decision to RMA it. Good thing I had a stock bios for it (though it was doing this before I flashed it). It's really begining to look like a textbook case of faulty onboard RAM, though, since that's the type of artifact I'm getting. Not even severely underclocking the onboard RAM helps.

yet another edit: Swift... Aztek sent me my stuff. Sure as anything, I've got my socket 939 3700+ (since they upgraded it due to stocking issues with the mobo) and a Gigabyte GA-K8U-754 mobo. Yeah... 754... So, I called them up and they said they'll ship out the correct board today, and give me a UPS prepaid sticker to send the wrong board back. Looks like I'm stuck with this shifty system until at least Tuesday (since they ship UPS)

[vs._9mm]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

omg..that sucks getting a 754 board to go with that snazzy 939 cpu LOL. At least they are making it right, and you are getting a faster cpu too :)

Hopefully the new board will clear up all your minor annoyances you're having with the old one.

[Neat_Hedgehog]

Re: What's a good Socket A mobo?

Well, just thought I'd post an update on this (easier to understand my situation here than if I had started a new topic).

Got my snazzy 939 board a couple days ago, but low and behold, now that I can use the CPU, it cpu appears to be a 3500+, even though he said they'd upgrade it to a 3700+ because of the extra $20 charge for the retail packaged mobo. Well, the 939 mobo isn't even a retail package, either. So I got to pay an extra $20 for nothing. They'll be hearing from me soon, trust me.

At least my RAM is actually ok, because it has no errors in dual channel mode, whereas with the old board it came up with a ton of errors in dual channel mode in the old board.

And my video has something wrong with it (I'm pretty sure the RAM is defective on it) because I still get artifacting with AA enabled, and it freezes any 3D app if I set it to 2x. So for BF2 I'm gonna just fake it and set the rez really high and leave AA off while I wait for them to get the RMA information to me.

Everything else is running very nicely though. Gave me an excuse to delete my old install of windows which was completely fubar despite not having any spyware on it. I think the bad RAM interface on my old mobo might have caused errors that mess the OS up. It's happened before.

I'm gonna have to learn the BIOS all over again. I'm still stuck back at being an expert with skt A's, but I don't have a clue about this hypertransport stuff. I'm hoping that it's not as complex as it seemed the first time I poked my nose in there. edit: Now I've got a new chalenge... figuring out how to format the last MB of my new 300gb drive. Stupid thing won't format that last MB in anything other than a FAT file system. Not even FAT32. Not a big deal, I suppose, but annaoying at the same time.