Asus A8V-Deluxe or Abit AT8?

[WOVOW]

Planned system:

A64 4200+ X2
Crucial 1GB (2 x 512 - 3200 - CT2KIT6464Z40B)
Matrox G450 (PCi)
BenQ 1640
Samsung HD080HJ SATA 80GB/8MB (OS & Programs)
Samsung P120 SATA 250GB/8MB (x 3 ? Video Storage)
Antec P150 case c/w NeoHE 430w PSU - will be swapped for a Seasonic/FSP if it gives trouble.

Business computer. General office work including database and web. Networked to two other computers. Increasing amounts of video work, involving some encoding and making DVD?s. Must be very quiet, stable, reliable, compatible. No gaming. No overclocking. No raiding.

Asus A8N-SLI Premium was on my shortlist, but I?ve ruled out NF4 because there appears to be one too many issues with this chip. Various tweaks fix most issues, but I then read about the hard drive corruption problem, here. No certain fix yet, and I don?t want my big drives, choka full of video files, corrupting on me. So that leaves ATI and VIA.

The Asus A8V-Deluxe (K8T800 Pro & VT8237) is being phased out, but it has/had the highest customer review score for a 939 board at NewEgg, of 4.74 (out of 5). Been around for a while, but all the more stable for it. One drawback is AGP instead of PCI Express, therefore less future-proof. Also SATA-I not SATA-II.

The Abit AT8 (XPRESS 200 CrossFire & ULI M1575) is brand new, of course, which means, unlike the A8V-Deluxe, it?s stability isn't fully proven yet. Has PCI Express, so is more future proof and PCI Express also speeds up things between NB and SB, right? Also SATA-II. Review here. Only problem found was with the RAM switching from 2 back to 3, but my planned RAM is ?3?, so I?m guessing I bypass that problem.

Any help appreciated.

 

[imported_taku]

hmmm that is a lot of machine to be using a matrox g450 in a pci slot. you wil not be much of the amd dual layer chip. . some asus a8n boards have problems with the antec Neo HE 430 ps. depends on model/age when it was made.

Matrox have a dual dvi pci express. card check the millium edition of matrox.

check out the msi K8NGM2-FID . one dual port video card such as xfx 6600 or xfx 6600Gt will give you three dvi ports and one rgb analog port. much cheaper than the options you have listed.


memory make sure memory is compatible iwth what ever board you do buy.

no idea what benQ 1640 would be.

Cross fire, good thought. check out how many cross fire video cards you need and price.. May be reasonable choice. Your research time. sorry . About all i know is it is ATI answer to Nvida SLI.

 

[WOVOW]

Sorry for the uncoventional quoting, I can't get the quote button to work.

Taku wrote: hmmm that is a lot of machine to be using a matrox g450 in a pci slot.

What do you mean? Most video pro?s use the matrox 450/550/650/750.


Taku wrote: you wil not be much of the amd dual layer chip?.

You mean dual-core? What are you saying?


Taku wrote: some asus a8n boards have problems with the antec Neo HE 430 ps. depends on model/age when it was made.

I?ve read it?s a lot more than just A8N boards the NeoHE has ?incompatability? problems with. I don?t think it?s been defined exactly what the problem is. Suck it and see. Doesn?t work, replace PSU.


Taku wrote: Matrox have a dual dvi pci express. card check the millium edition of matrox.

Yes, but the PCI Express version is mental money. The G450 is a Millennium.


Taku wrote: check out the msi K8NGM2-FID .

I don?t know anything about GeForce 6150 nForce 430 ?same probs as NF4? Onboard video and mini ATX I notice. I?ll check out those chips.

Taku wrote: one dual port video card such as xfx 6600 or xfx 6600Gt will give you three dvi ports and one rgb analog port. much cheaper than the options you have listed.

I?ll check ?em out. But analogue performance of the G450 is unsurpassed apparently, which will be good for my current CRT and for checking video on a TV monitor.


Taku wrote: memory make sure memory is compatible iwth what ever board you do buy.

Yep.


Taku wrote: no idea what benQ 1640 would be.

DVD writer.


Taku wrote: Cross fire, good thought. check out how many cross fire video cards you need and price.. May be reasonable choice. Your research time. sorry . About all i know is it is ATI answer to Nvida SLI.

I don?t need a Crossfire card, because I don?t game. It?s just that most decent boards seem to come with dual graphics these days, and the price premium isn?t that significant. So no biggie.

 

[WOVOW]

^ bump ^

 

[WOVOW]

^ final bump ^

 

[GOREGRINDER]

ive had a few nforce4 (2 abit;s epox etc etc)motherboards and ran raid0 stripe with my raptors on all of them,.. the only board i ever had a prob with was an asus,and its just that i thought the board was a hunk of junk lol,... nothin to do with coruption of any kind

id take another look at an nforce4 chipset in SLi or Ultra flavor IMO,...ABIT,DFI or MSI

but if you dont trust that,.. then id take the ABIT AT8 easily over the ASUS VIA chipset

 

[Pyrokinetic]

Well, being that you need a stable system, and you have a PCI video card, go with the VIA motherboard. Most of the gamers here despise VIA as a budget chipset, but I run a K8T890 chipset (not compatable with dual-core, except for the revised chipset, which would be the ASUS A8V-E SE instead of my A8V-E Deluxe -- however, the SE version does not have firewire support) and I am really happy with my board.

As for future upgradability, PCI-E would be a plus, but only you can determine how important that would be to you. Since you do alot of video stuff, I presume firewire support would be important, so you would need in add-in card for something like the A8V-E SE. VIA also uses a technology called hyper8, which speeds up the HyperTransport bus, which also uses asynchronous bus architecture, which allows me to set my Hypertransport bus independant of the FSB.

I have used Abit boards in the past (socket A) but now I vastly prefer ASUS. The main reason is that in upgrading BIOS versions, ASUS' website is far easier to use and less confusing. A friend of mine killed his Abit board of his when he flashed the wrong BIOS because there were something like four different versions of his board. Then afterward, we found out you had to remove the motherboard to even figure out what version it was, which at that point, was too late. That kind of stuff is not customer friendly. Maybe Abit will clean it all up at some future point, but with their financial problems and recent merger, it might take some time. Others may have a more positive experience, but I for one, will bypass Abit for now.

Anyway, thats my thoughts.

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: Pyrokinetic
The main reason is that in upgrading BIOS versions, ASUS' website is far easier to use and less confusing. A friend of mine killed his Abit board of his when he flashed the wrong BIOS because there were something like four different versions of his board. Then afterward, we found out you had to remove the motherboard to even figure out what version it was, which at that point, was too late. That kind of stuff is not customer friendly. Maybe Abit will clean it all up at some future point, but with their financial problems and recent merger, it might take some time. Others may have a more positive experience, but I for one, will bypass Abit for now.

I must say that I find ASUS' website to be a disaster although as in most things possibly familiarity helps.
There is no need to remove any Abit mobo to find out what it is as they are printed on the front & indeed identifiable in software.
I will agree that they have had some boards with very similar names over the years but I don't think that is unique to Abit.
At most all your friend needed was a new BIOS chip.

for the OP as has been suggested you could also look at VIA's K8T890 PCI-E chipset boards e.g. Abit AX V2.0 (the V2.0 has the A64X2 supporting version of the chipset) or indeed boards using ULi's promising 1697 chipset are starting to appear.

 

[Pyrokinetic]

The Abit board in question was the NF7-S, which comes in v1.0 and v2.0, which are in no way compatable with each other. (Thus why call both the NF7-S?) However, the version number was listed on the bottom side of the last PCI slot, which is in no way visible when installed in a case. The software -my friend claimed- described the thing as a NF7-S with no version number (yeah, real helpful) so my friend did a stupid thing and guessed. When his system wouldn't even post, he called me. Only when we removed the motherboard did were we able to see the version sticker. For something to vital to know, why the hell would you put it where it could be missed?

At least ASUS has the sense to alter the name of their board. And yes, all it needed was a BIOS chip, but it still could of been avoided with better labeling on the board itself.

And another thing -- ASUS' flash program will not install (that I know of) an incompatable BIOS with out a warning. Why couldn't Abit have a similiar fail-safe? (Although they might now.) These are small things that define customer service. Just inexcusable oversights in my opinion.

 

[Heidfirst]

Yeah, I knew that it would be an NF7 of some description.
However, the model no. was visible when installed in all of my cases (& I had several NF7s) especially as the sticker should be to the side of the PCI slots - both V1.x & V2.0s had it there. The only 1s that I know of that don't have it there are -S2 & -S2Gs but they actually have that printed on the PCB by the CPU socket ...
Not only that but if he had looked at the first page as the BIOS posted it lists the BIOS no. & the BIOS for the V1.X & v2.0 do differ slightly in their naming.
I can't help but feel that your friend contributed largely to his own downfall.

Abit did change the name, they stuck a V2.0 on it in the same way that ASUS have stuck an -E or similar on revisions of their boards.

Whilst I have used several ASUS boards over the years (last was an A7N8X) I don't think that I have ever used their Windows flash programme - largely because I seem to recall many tales of woe on the forums regarding it so neither has a perfect track record there.

 

[Pyrokinetic]

Fair enough. Had my friend called me before he even tried to upgrade his BIOS, I would have made sure he wouldn't of had to guess. Price to pay for his impatience. Anyway, I personnally never had an issue with my own early Abit socket-A boards. But my friend was (and still is) a newb and I feel all companies should be newb-friendly and idiot-resistant when it comes to BIOS updates.