Introduction

Welcome back to another edition of the Price Guides. For those of you who need some advice on new motherboards, we have a complete look at today’s market segment along with our recommended picks. As another reminder, the RealTime Price Guides will be leaving the beta testing phase, and moving into production real soon! Please send us your comments and suggestions on how we can improve our engine. Of course, you can always view the existing release of the engine here.

We have been real busy over the last few weeks improving the engine for final deployment. Since our last motherboard update, we have added logical “NOT” searches, an improved developer RSS feed and tons of new products. Currently, our developers are working on tweaking the system to differentiate between retail and OEM products.

Over the last few weeks, we found a couple of bugs in the RSS feed, but those should all be fixed by now (apparently, RSS has strict interpretations on ampersands). For those interested, the official QuickSearch RSS feed forum thread is here.

nForce4 (AMD) motherboards are starting to show some actual maturity with decent driver and BIOS releases, and PCIe video cards are starting to really show headway against their AGP counterparts. Finally, we also have some PCIe options for Socket 754. Intel motherboards are about to undergo another revision in the next couple of weeks, and Anand had a small preview of 955X during the Dual Core Intel launch last week. Even though the 945/955 Intel northbridge revisions are just revisions on the existing 915/925 platform, the existing platform will not support dual core processors; so if dual core chips are important to you, don’t get stuck with an old motherboard.

Athlon 64 PCIe

nForce4 has really taken off over the last two months and since our last guide, we have seen another 10 motherboards added into the RTPE. While it's great to see nForce4 show more maturity, the real news over the last few weeks (to us) has been the introduction of Socket 754 PCIe motherboards. The nForce4 "4X" chipset provides enough of the rudimentary PCIe support so that low end Athlon 64 and Sempron systems are not much more affordable. For those who follow our video card guides, you may recall the relatively high price of AGP low end video cards. With ATI's HyperMemory and NVIDIA's TurboCache cards, low end GPUs are now much more affordable, as long as you have PCIe. Socket 754 Semprons combined with TurboCache/HyperMemory video cards on sub $80 motherboards seem like an awesome leap forward to us - but then again, any reason to bury AGP always seems to get us excited. Below, you can see the new Socket 754 nForce4 motherboards in our system.


That isn't to say that NVIDIA is the only player in the Socket 754 PCIe game. VIA has a few 754 boards based on the K8T890, but the only retail board available right now seems to be the Soltek SL-K890-754G [RTPE: SL-K890-754G]. Hopefully by the time our next guide rolls around, there will be even more options on the 754 platform.

Of course, the stars of the PCIe world are still those nForce4 Socket 939 motherboards. There are still a few late comers to the party, but all of the Tier 1 and most of the Tier 2 guys have pretty solid offerings at this point. Since our mini roundup a month ago, board prices have dropped dramatically, putting the MSI nForce4 Neo4 Platinum SLI [RTPE: K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI] a little bit cheaper than the DFI nForce4 SLI-DR [RTPE: LanParty SLI-DR] board that also won the gold award.

However, nForce4 doesn't come exclusively in the SLI variety; and there are certainly a few nForce4 Ultra boards that we find very attractive. The ASUS A8N-E [RTPE: ASUS nForce4 Ultra (939) A8N-E] comes with one of the better feature sets available and also throws in some very good overclocking features for modest overclockers. However, going on price alone, the four-month-old Chaintech VNF4 Ultra [RTPE: Chaintech nForce4 Ultra (939) VNF4 Ultra VE] set the bar for any other nForce4 board to follow. The Chaintech board won't set any speed records and leaves a little bit to the imagination as far as features, but if you just need a rock solid Socket 939 board, this is the one to have.


Although we really expected K8T890 motherboards to flood the market since February, it looks like only a few motherboard manufacturers were anxious enough to adopt VIA's solution. We feel that the NVIDIA based boards are a little more stable and readily available at this point, but ASUS and Abit both have comparable boards.


Finally, don't neglect the newcomer to the AMD world, ATI. The Xpress 200 chipset didn't seem to grab a lot of manufacturer support, but MSI's RS480M2-IL [RTPE: RS480M2-IL] really is a nice board for the price, particularly for an HTPC setup. For under $100, MSI and ATI have one of the best solutions for Socket 939, particularly considering the integrated Radeon X300 video. Unfortunately, the board lacks Gigabit Ethernet and comes in a MicroATX form factor.

Other AMD Stuff

Unfortunately, it's about that time to start burying Athlon XP motherboards in our guides. With Socket 754 prices still plummeting, and Socket 462 prices starting to rise (enough said), Socket A is looking really pathetic. Coupled with the fact that Windows x64 is already shipping (our full analysis is not far away), investing in Socket A is a poor idea. Even if you are not convinced of the "64-bit revolution", even the poorest Socket 754 Sempron 2600+ processors have an edge over Athlon XP chips.


Then again, if you already have an Athlon XP and you just need a replacement board, at least ASUS [RTPE: A7V880] won't leave you out in the cold.

Back in Athlon 64 land, AGP is still rearing its ugly head. PCIe is still our bus of choice, but if you're upgrading to a new motherboard/CPU, there is no need to trash the video card too. nForce3 designs are still showing up each week, so at least some manufacturers believe that AGP won't disappear as fast as Anand and I would like it to. Unlike the nForce4 boards, nForce3 prices are very stable at this point, and we don't expect to see many new price fluctuations anytime soon.


While talking to several manufacturers over the last week, the general indication seemed to be that nForce3 boards would give way to PCIe alternatives very quickly - this contradicts what motherboard designs show. Companies like ASUS and DFI showed us nForce3 motherboard designs for socket 939 during CES 2005, but considering Q2 is well underway and we haven't seen any of these boards, even if they do show up within in the next few weeks, they will have to compete with more mature Gigabyte and MSI solutions. nForce4 continues to look more attractive to us. On the other hand, we are very pleased with VIA's take on AGP for Socket 939 with MSI's Neo2-F [RTPE: MS-6702E-020]. Priced under $100 with Gigabit Ethernet and a good SATA Raid package, this board makes the most sense for AGP. The fact that this board costs $20 less than it did during our last guide just adds icing to the cake.


With nForce4 on Socket 754, we have to wonder if VIA will be able to stay competitive with K8T800. AGP and PCIe are like apples and oranges, but with AGP cards continuing to cost 10% and more over identical PCIe cards, the Socket 754 boards are much more cost effective with PCIe instead of AGP.

PCIe Intel

We were a little disappointed that VIA's PT894 launch still hasn't produced a retail motherboard. An alternative to Tumwater for Intel SLI would be a neat novelty, but as Intel preps to launch 945/955 in the next couple of weeks (days?), we will surely see some interesting motherboards very soon. Let's also not forget ATI's upcoming Intel SLI motherboard nor NVIDIA's (in)famous nForce4 Intel Edition. We will have some words on Intel nForce4 boards in the very near future, but from some of our preliminary trials, it seems that NVIDIA has a "nowhere near shipping" chipset. If we follow the evolutionary chain of paper launches over the last few years, maybe by this time next year, we will be introducing products shipping in 2007.

Of course, Intel surprised us with a launch of Pentium 4 6xx where we could actually buy processors the day that the NDA lifted. This would be a very welcomed surprise for 945/955, and may not be too unrealistic. The second generation Intel DDR motherboards (865/875) shipped before the NDA lift dates. We have already seen the second generation 955X motherboards in some of our testing too. It only makes sense; if Intel starts pouring their dual core processors into the retail channel, the boards had better be there first.

Until then, however, we are still stuck with i915 and i925. The EPoX EP-5EPA+ [RTPE: EP-5EPA+] won a silver award in our 915P motherboard roundup several months ago, but it still packs the mightiest performance per dollar today. However, the excellent ASUS P5GD1 (non-deluxe) also has some great features plus the flexibility of DDR1 memory.


Last month, we highlighted some of the advantages of buying an 865PE motherboard with a Socket 775 adaptor. Since then, the price disparity between PCIe and AGP video cards opened up even more. The 865PE upgrade sounds like another novel idea, but unless you have a really nice AGP video card, we don't recommend it.


Once again, the cheapest 925X boards start at $160, which really doesn't make any sense considering the nearly identical performance of so many 915P boards. With a probable early ship date on Intel's next generation motherboards, if you're going to splurge on such an expensive Intel motherboard, at least get one that is dual core capable. 955X motherboard also support the faster DDR2-667 bus, which just hurts the case for 925X even more.


The Pentium M "saga" continued last month with the unveiling of ASUS's Pentium M to Pentium 4 socket adaptor. Although Anand has heralded Pentium M for years, even he was a little unconvinced as to whether or not Pentium M really has a role on the desktop, even considering the new hack to get the chip to work on cheap desktop motherboards. However, one thing is clear - buying an 855GME board at this point would be a very silly idea. Quoting Anand: "there's no reason to even consider an 855GME motherboard from AOpen or DFI; the ASUS solution is cheaper, better performing and is even a much more stable overclocker."

Of course, we still have the prices on these motherboards for your viewing enjoyment.