Aargh! Too much choice...

I'm trying to repair a fairly old system which died recently during a
thunderstorm. So with surge protectors first on the list, I'm then into
the chaos of trying to choose a motherboard/CPU/GPU combination having
not kept up to date for a couple of years...

Currently I'm looking at either an A8N-VM CSM or an A8V-XE with a
Sapphire X550 GPU. I'll probably put an Athlon 64 3500+ or an Athlon 64
X2 4200+ and two Kingston 1GB sticks in. My questions are:

1. What's the difference in raw performance of the 2 motherboards, if
any?

2. What's the OpenGL performance of the A8N-VM CSM like? Compared to an
X550? I'm not gaming, but need decent OpenGL performance for
OpenCroquet (it needs at least OpenGL 1.5 to work at all I think).

Finally, are there any other motherboards I should consider apart from
the 2 above in the same sort of price range?

Many thanks for any advice...

Dave.

On 22 Aug 2006 09:53:15 -0700, dl2 RemoveThis @pale-eds.co.uk wrote:

>I'm trying to repair a fairly old system which died recently during a
>thunderstorm. So with surge protectors first on the list, I'm then into
>the chaos of trying to choose a motherboard/CPU/GPU combination having
>not kept up to date for a couple of years...
>
>Currently I'm looking at either an A8N-VM CSM or an A8V-XE with a
>Sapphire X550 GPU. I'll probably put an Athlon 64 3500+ or an Athlon 64
>X2 4200+ and two Kingston 1GB sticks in. My questions are:
>
>1. What's the difference in raw performance of the 2 motherboards, if
>any?

My guess, not much at all for general performance. Personally I would
go clear of a VIA-based motherboard -- in my experience, there is less
hassle with Nvidia nForce4-based solutions. Havn't had so much
experience with K8T890, but had quite much trouble on different
K8T880-boards, and a lot of other newer and older VIA-based boards for
both Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Pentium III and Pentium 4.

You allready have the memory-modules? If not, you might should
consider a AM2-solutions with DDR2-memory. Price should be about the
same.

>2. What's the OpenGL performance of the A8N-VM CSM like? Compared to an
>X550? I'm not gaming, but need decent OpenGL performance for
>OpenCroquet (it needs at least OpenGL 1.5 to work at all I think).

I havn't checked the integrated Nvidia-solutiuon towards Radeon X550.
Thus, Nvidia usually have much better OpenGL-performance than ATI. But
the X550 should I theory be a faster solution.




--
Clas Mehus
- "Den som har flest prylar när han dör vinner..."