Your dream motherboard

[Brian Frank 0]

This can be anything. It doesn't have to be an actual spec or even be in the works. It doesn't have to conform to an ATX standard... It's your imagination.

 

Me: I'd like a dual Athlon MP board with an nForce chipset, 3 32-bit PCI slots, 2 64-bit/33MHz PCI slots, 3 64-bit/66MHz PCI slots, 1 100MHz PCI-X slot, 1 AGP Pro 8x slot, dual-channel memory with 8 banks per channel, 7.1 channel sound, 1 Gigabit NIC...

[Alien 1]

How about something like Abit's AT7 but with a PS2 keyboard port & dual Athlons? I think that might be kinda cool.

[sapiens74 0]

How about a stable athlon chipset..

 

 

Thats probably asking too much

[Marktait 0]

Sumthing that has 80 cpu's and 999Mhz RAM

[JP- 0]

Good call Stable athlon chipset

[Alien 1]

Quote:

How about a stable athlon chipset..

Thats probably asking too much

Mine's stable. [Abit KT7A-RAID v1.3 with KT133a chipset]. Only prob I have is my soundcard which Videologic admit is a known issue with my soundcard & XP, & not the chipset.

[JP- 0]

Yeah thats the thing though you 'think' its stable but really it isnt

[Alien 1]

Well, hopefully once I've saved up for & got my Audigy my sound prob will be cured, which will mean that I won't have any probs with my PC @ all.

 

Ok, so that's not strictly true - I still don't have a DVD drive, & my needs for HDD space are greater than the capacity of my current 1, so I want 1 of those 120GB WD special edition drives. Both of those things are probs that I hope to solve sooner than later, but I'll be much happier when my sound doesn't die after a random amount of time, requiring me to reboot to get it back.

[pmistry 0]

Well yeah we can go all hogwild with our imagination, but right now I want INTEL to support DDR333 and DDR400, what the hell is the point with the 845E, all they did was add 533 FSB, could have added new DDR support.

 

Anyways I want a motherboard with 4 DIMMS with DDR400, 6 PCI slots, AGP 8X, 8 USB 2.0 ports, and 2 Firewire ports.

[Cynan 0]

A board that supports: -

 

Dual Athlons,

DDR support,

On-board SCSI (U320?),

On-board IDE ATA-133,

Dual integrated NIC,

3 32bit, 1 64bit 33MHz and 2 64bit 66MHz PCI slots (each with there own IRQs),

AGP Pro 8x,

 

Oh and a working onboard USB2 that doesn't crash when used with a USB-slub from Alcatel! - though if I had this and all of the other upgrades I'm thinking of atm, I wouldn't be using that anyway.

 

It'd be nice if all the connectors on the board were layed out well.

[Alien 1]

Quote:

Anyways I want a motherboard with 4 DIMMS with DDR400, 6 PCI slots, AGP 8X, 8 USB 2.0 ports, and 2 Firewire ports.

The closest mobo I've seen to the specs you want is Abit's AT7. It kinda falls slightly short on most of the features you want:

4 Dimms - yep
DDR400 - nope, 333
6 PCI slots - nope, only 3 - it's second biggest disadvantage IMO [no PS2 being the biggest], but then it does have way more onboard than your average mobo. Then again that gives you the issue of if you have a prob with something onboard you're stuck with it unless you disable it & get an alternative in PCI form, which might make the only-3-PCI-slots issue more significant.
AGP 8x - nope, then again not many have yet [i can't think of any off the top of my head]
8 USB 2.0 ports - nope, 4x 1.1 & headers for 4x 2.0
2 Firewire ports - nope - has 3!

on top of that it has the usual 2 IDE connectors, plus another four for RAID - meaning that you could actually have upto 12 IDE drives running from this mobo! Plus onboard NIC & 5.1 sound, plus an optional card reader that can read a bunch of different formats including Sony memory stick & compact flash.

[pmistry 0]

Interesting board, but yeah 3 PCI is very limiting, if I don't get RAID on the motherboard, I would need 1 slot for it, plus I have 2 LAN cards, 1 Sound card, and 1 modem. =4 PCI cards, I can live with 5 slots, but not 3.

[Alien 1]

Quote:

Interesting board, but yeah 3 PCI is very limiting, if I don't get RAID on the motherboard, I would need 1 slot for it, plus I have 2 LAN cards, 1 Sound card, and 1 modem. =4 PCI cards, I can live with 5 slots, but not 3.

Ummm... what do you mean about not getting RAID on the mobo? AFAIK there isn't a non-RAID version of it, which means you wouldn't need your seperate RAID card. It has onboard LAN, so you'd only need 1 of your LAN cards + sound card & modem = 3 cards. 3 cards & 3 slots. Though admittedly it wouldn't leave you any room for expansion - @ least not with PCI cards anyway [but plenty of USB expansion room ].

[pmistry 0]

I meant other boards with optional RAID etc. I wasn't referring to the Abit one, sorry about that. I am not a real big fan of Abit boards, I find them to be a bit [no pun here] wonky. I had a KA7-100 which had some weird problems. I prefer Asus.

[Brian Frank 0]

I understand the Abit thing. The only Abit board I've been really happy with is their NV7-133R, which I'm running in my main box ATM.

[sapiens74 0]

Actually here is my dream Mobo:

 

No PS2, serial, or parallel connectors.

 

Onbboard 4 channel IDE ATA 133 Raid.

 

Intel Chipset

 

AGP 8x

 

2 USB 2.0 controllers. 6 Ports on back of motherboard and 4 for the front.

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

Quote:

I prefer Asus.

I second that

Lotsa USB/FIREWIRE/RAM Slots/CPU Sockets/IDE connectors and floppy connectors at the TOP (acording to how it sits in a case) /DDR333 at least, if with AMD / On-Board ATA133 RAiD so I can use my existing raaid conttroller(s) with another system for a server that has redundancy / built in surge protection / really small capacitors / never ever any onboard sound / beer keg attachment

[Jerry Atrik 0]

supermicro p4dc6+

it's a monster

ata100, scsi 160 x2, raid, lan,

it's got everything, takes a different power supply for xeons

and a bigger case

[pmistry 0]

Also I wouldn't mind having a motherboard with 2 AGP slots, for dual monitor action and double graphic fun, ie. a GeForce for fast gaming and maybe a Matrox card for desktop work. Instead of AGP / PCI stuff or AGP card with 2 monitor ports etc.

[sapiens74 0]

want to add boot from usb 2.0

 

that would rule

[SHS 0]

Actually here is my dream Mobo:

 

No PS2, serial, floppy nor parallel connectors.

 

No Onboard NIC.

 

No Onboard Raid.

 

No Onboard Audio.

 

No Onboard IDE.

 

Intel Chipset.

 

AGP 8x must be backwaord compatible with 1x,2x,4x.

 

6 PCI slot or someting that better 33MHz PCI.

 

4 Dimms support 4GB.

 

Serial ATA supporting 4 device.

 

1 USB 2.0 controllers with 8port hub upgrade to 16port hub rear of case Option 4 or 8 port hub in front of the case it self and must be backwaord compatible with 1.0, 1.1 spec.

 

And all device get there own damm IRQ.

 

I will need 1 Serial ATA Harddrive 80+GB, 1 Serial ATA DVD/DVD+R/DVD+RW/CDR/CDRW/CD 32x/32x/32x/32x/32x/32x, 1 the fastest and bad Video card on this planet min of 128 of video memory upgrade to 256MB or better and must supporet all API yes that mean glide to heheh "Wishful Thinking", 1 Sound Card support ever thing under the sun as in Full HW as in Real audio decode and all other know audio format like DVD/MP3 you name it, 1 HW Capture support everthing under the sun which can decoding/encoding MPEG1,2,4/DV/DivX at full frame 720x480 or 576 or higher and with VIP support and dircet S/PDIF to the sound card and must have FM/AM support plus able to record audio only plus support all type of Broadcast, 1 Wirelees NIC, 1 Wireless Routor with ever build and must support 56K/ISDN/DSL/Cable.

[Mr.Guvernment 0]

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q2/020514/index.html

 

VIA P4X333 with DDR333 and AGP 8x

 

USB 2.0

UltraATA/133.

VIA emphasizes that the bandwidth of their bus between the Northbridge and Southbridge has been doubled, now delivering 533 MB/s (just as fast as SiS, twice as fast as the Intel Hub architecture).

AGP 8x

6 PCI

gett'n there

[INFERNO2000 0]

My dream board:

 

Quad Channel 400mhz or better DDR supporting 8gb of DDR

Dual CPU

No serial

No PS2

No Parallel

No onboard sound

No floppy(*but supports boot from USB floppy)

Onboard intel chipped gigabit Ethernet(2 ports)

Onboard Firewire.

Onboard USB2.0

Onboard 802.11b(or a)

Onboard 4 channel HPT374 ATA133 RAID

Onboard Serial ATA (support for 8 devices!)

AGP8x

6 PCI (64/66 that supports 32/33) slots

Support for 2 PSUs.

a dozen fan connections with their own dedicated leads(that won't burn out)

onboard support for Compact Flash and SmartMedia