[CS-FSLUG] Motherboard recomedations

[Frank Bax]

At 09:41 AM 6/30/05, Nigel Ridley wrote:

>I'm thinking of getting a new computer (amd processor) and am confused by 
>all the different makes of motherboards.
>I don't really like all the *onboard* stuff which most systems come with 
>nowadays.
>The names that are popular here in Israel are Foxconn, Asus, Gigabyte, 
>Albatron and Abit.

I've not been fond of integrated systems either, but it has been suggested 
to me that the problems I experienced in the past are no longer an issue 
with newer boards; but it will be hard to convince me if I don't buy 
one.  I don't have a problem with integrated sound and network.  I do see a 
problem with integrated video, especially if ram is "shared".  I don't need 
to use modems anymore, but I probably won't want that integrated if I 
needed one (I'd look for a controller modem, which integrated is not likely 
to be).

>Any suggestions or cotchas?

If you go integrated, I would still avoid boards that do not have separate 
video ram.  If the board uses "shared ram", so that a portion of main ram 
is given to video subsystem, then a program that uses both video and cpu at 
the same time will suffer seriously.  If RAM reported by the OS is less 
than RAM installed (by at least 8M); then ram is being "shared".

I've heard that motherboard brands starting with "A" are good ones; 
although I've only used ASUS.  I recently switched suppliers and the new 
guy sells Albatron and not Asus, but I haven't tried Albatron yet.

Frank