Introduction

Well, it's that time again for another one of our motherboard price guides. Like many of our other guides, we would like to start off with pointing out a few things about our RTPE. Our RTPE is the only engine to use our own bots to fish price data directly from the vendor. It uses a search technology called Irk that crawls through thousands of links per hour to assure the best prices for our consumers. We constantly track all of the highly recommended and rated merchants and since we do not collect revenue from the merchants for link traffic, we are free to use merchants that have competitive pricing rather than deep advertising pockets . Go ahead and give our RTPE a try next time that you're in the market for computer hardware; we're sure that you'll find it especially useful.

Socket 939 motherboards are slowly declining in price; catching up to the prices of their Socket 754 counterparts, making the Socket 939 front the most logical solution. Our recommendations are usually not really specific to any brand, but this week, we've noticed the best deals from Gigabyte and MSI. Most prices are roughly the same since our last price guide, while we observed the most changes in the nForce4 SLI - Socket 939 platform.

Athlon 64 - Socket 939

Out of all the SLI boards that are showing up in our RTPE, the one with the most significant price decrease is the Abit AN8 SLI [RTPE: AN8 SLI] with a change of $3.45. On the other hand, recently the Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI [RTPE: GA-K8NU-SLI] has increased about $21. Everything has either stayed at the same price point since our last price guide or has had a small fluctuation of a few cents to a couple of dollars. The price leader this week is the Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI [RTPE: GA-K8N-SLI] going for $91 shipped.



The Asus nForce4 Ultra A8N-E [RTPE: A8N-E] has gone down about $8 over the past week; bringing it down to about $105. While the Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra [RTPE: GA-K8N Ultra] has been steadily increasing in price over the past few weeks, currently up nearly $18, which can be seen in the graph below.

Gigabyte nForce4 Ultra (939) GA-K8N Ultra-9

We would like to point out the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra VE [RTPE: VNF4 Ultra VE], which is an excellent deal for a mere $77 shipped. Not the cheapest price that we've seen, but definitely one of the lowest. Another good deal is on the DFI Infinity [RTPE: NF4 Infinity] going for about $96 shipped.





Not as popular as the nForce 4 chipsets, VIA is still hanging in there with a few boards. Just as the last price guide, currently, the best priced board is the Gigabyte GA-K8VT890-9 [RTPE: GA-K8T890-9] on sale for $76 plus shipping.



For those who have invested in a nice AGP card and also want the ability to upgrade to a PCI-E card later on, the Asrock ULi M1695 [RTPE: 939Dual-SATA2] would be a great option. At the moment, it is going for $72 shipped. The 939Dual-SATA2 has both a PCI-E slot and an 8x AGP slot, which will allow you to upgrade to a PCI-E card without having to dish out extra cash for a new board.



Lastly in the Socket 939 platform, we have the boards with the nForce 3 chipset. We wouldn't recommend one of these boards again unless you already have invested in a nice AGP card because these motherboards only have AGP slots. Currently, of these boards, the MSI K8N Neo2-F is the only one that has had any price changes. It decreased a mere one dollar and is still the cheapest of the bunch at $74 shipped.





More AMD Motherboards

Now that there are many Socket 939 motherboards in the market, their price has dropped considerably and has actually begun to catch up to their Socket 754 counterparts. The Socket 754 platform is still an excellent option for the builders who will be going with a Sempron based system.

The nForce4 4X (Socket 754) based motherboards are relatively close in price; most are hovering in the $70-$80 price point. The DFI Infinity [RTPE: nForce4 4X (754) Infinity] is a great board for overclockers at $75 (plus shipping). Another excellent motherboard we recommend that you take a look at is the MSI K8N Neo3-F [RTPE: MS-7135-010] going for $70 (plus shipping).



If you're looking for a board with decent integrated graphics, we propose you look into the Xpress 200 from ATI. The MSI RS480M-IL [RTPE: MS-7145-020] is at a decent $79 shipped. It also has 4 SATA controllers, a single PCI-E slot and supports up to 2GB of RAM. Nothing spectacular, but it does contain many of the extras that one may require.





ATI's Xpress 200 CrossFire, currently only being marketed by DFI, was found to be an exceptional enthusiast board competing well with NVIDIA's nForce4 series, as Wesley Fink describes here. The DFI LanParty UT RDX200 [RTPE: LP UT RDX200 CF-DR] is not your average run-of-the-mill board, going for an expensive $200. Not something we would recommend just yet. We would like to see other manufacturers create some competition for DFI to bring the price down.



Competing with ATI's Xpress 200 integrated graphics is NVIDIA's GeForce 6150/6100 - nForce 430 and the GeForce 6100 - nForce 410. The 6100/410 comes in both Socket 939 and Socket 754 variants. In our first look at the Biostar TForce 6100-939 (6100/410) [RTPE: nForce 410 GeForce 6100 (939)], we were very satisfied with the performance of NVIDIA's integrated graphics; currently going for about $70. A fair price if integrated graphics will suit your needs and is competing with ATI's Xpress 200 nicely.



Currently, the only 6100/410 motherboard on the Socket 754 platform is the Biostar GeForce6100-M7 [RTPE: GeForce6100-M7]. Down about $1.00, the GeForce6100-M7 is on sale for $64.



At the moment, Gigabyte is the only manufacturer producing a motherboard based on the GeForce 6100 nForce 430; the GA-K8N51GMF-9. Down about $1.50, the Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 [RTPE: GA-K8N51GMF-9] is going for $78.99 shipped.





Intel Motherboards

Intel's main two chipsets for the LGA775 are the 955X and 945P. The difference between the two is that the 955X supports 8GB of RAM, ECC-RAM (which is great for low end servers and workstations) and the main difference is the Intel Memory Pipeline Technology (iMPT). Through testing, we've seen that the iMPT benefits are small and are only seen in synthetic benchmarks. And if you won't notice it in real-world workloads, then it is obvious that there is no purpose in spending large amounts of money on such a feature. Between the 955X and the 945P chipsets, we suggest the 945P because we don't see the huge price difference warranted in the 955X.

As one of the most expensive yet one of the best of the 955X based boards, the ASUS P5WD2 Premium [RTPE: 955X P5WD2] supports dual core CPUs, 8 channel HD audio, DDR2 800 (ECC and non-ECC) and one revision with WiFi-TV.



Hovering in at around $108, one of the good buys this week in the 945P chipset category is the Gigabyte GA-8I945P-G [RTPE: 945P GA-8I945P-G]; fully-featured with SATA 3.0, support of up to 4GB of DDR667, dual core processor support, and Gigabit LAN.



For those who don't need a high-end graphics accelerator, the 945G may be right for your application. It's definitely not something for gamers, but should be adequate enough for most 2D work. We recommend either the Gigabyte 945G GA-8I945G Pro [RTPE: GA-8I945G Pro] or the MSI 945G Neo-F [RTPE: MS-7176-040]; the MSI board being the cheaper alternative.





More Intel Motherboards

As Kristopher Kubicki reports, it appears that the 975X will not support NVIDIA's SLI technology. Currently, in order to be able to run a SLI setup on an Intel based system, you'll need the nForce4 chipset. Another advantage to the nForce4 chipset is that it also supports dual core processors.

Two boards that we recommend are the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Pro [RTPE: GA-8N-SLI Pro] and the MSI P4N SLI-FI [RTPE: MS-7160-020], both of which are on sale for $131.50 shipped. We noticed that the MSI P4N Diamond [RTPE: MS-7160-010] had a decent reduction of about $11, bringing its price down to $188.20 shipped.



For those still interested, you can also pick up an old, cheap 915G motherboard with basic integrated graphics.