Pentium 4, what motherboard is best?

[Dredd 0]

Since it is seemingly becoming cheaper to buy P4's than high end P3's I am now in the market for a P4 motherboard. I don't see many out there and don't know much about them. I assume they are using Intel's 850 chipset and what advantages does it have? So any feedback would be much appreciated!

[Brian Frank 0]

Im not too familiar with the P4, but as far as I know the only chipset out there for it is the i850. The boards to look at for the best are the Abit TH7 and the Asus PT4. Yeah, you will pay for the name, but you will also get good boards too.

You do know your gonna have to say yes, to the question: "You want RDRAM with that?" I refuse to support any product that has to do with Rambus, if possible, plus the fact that RDRAM has a much higher cost than either DDR or SDR SDRAM.

I would personally look at an AMD based solution, because not only are they cheaper, the 1.3 GHz T-Birds are on par with the P4 1.7GHz! 8)

I would also wait and see about the AMD 760MP chipset---can you say 'dual Athlons'?

Nothing wrong with Intel, but AMD has the speed and performance that isnt as pricey. I would definitely look at the Athlon too, because it is a cheaper and just as powerful alternative to the P4.

 

I dont know if your aware of this, but supposedly the next P4 will have a different pin lay out. If you could hold out until later this year when the new 478 pin P4 comes out, you might have a better chance of upgradablility down the road.

Im not all up to date on all of the P4, but I have seen enough to caution watching out for possible dead ends in the cpu map.

[ThC 129 0]

yes the P4 architecture is due to change. You won't start seeing DDR SDRAM boards for P4s until the end of the year or begining of next year. Plus AMD is a cheaper solution plus the overclockability makes a great return on your investment. With T-birds you get an avg of 200mHZ more out of them and even more if you do motherboard 'tweaks' like pushing the voltage higher than spec'd. Plus no RDRAM so with the money you save there you can get another 256 meg DIMM . So just say NO! to intel and RAMBUS.