Stable motherboards for Athlon 64 X2 dual core??

[upscaps]

been hearing horror stories. wanted to upgrade PC setup w/ athlon 64 x2 4400 and some SATA drives but motherboard stories got me holdin'.

waiting on intel mac desktop setups as well b4 upgrading mac system.

this is the weirdest time i can remember computer land. alot of flux

[DAWgEAR]

A little old and harder to find, but the ASUS A8V (no firewire, no Promise) and A8V Deluxe are proven, solid, and stable, especially for UAD-1 users ... as long as no Powercore is involved.

Three things to consider:

Update the BIOS with great care from floppy and only if necessary
Can be finicky regarding PSU (e.g. Antec Neo Power hasd issues)
Must use latest Matrox drivers and set AGP to 1X with Matrox G series (see Matrox forum)

[Dan DeTora]

right now, i'm running an AMD X2 3800 w/ an Asus A8V. Getting my SATA drive to work was a bitch, mainly because i could never get my floppy drive to work (needed it to install 3rd party drivers). What i ended up doing was 'slipstreaming' the sata drivers into my WinXP pro install disk. That worked perfectly, but getting there took alot of effort.

that said, my setup is pretty freakin' stable. i built my machine about 2 months ago and have basically ran it 24/7 without any crashes or hiccups, aside from the usual reboot after a software installation.

[FS0420]

I have the X2 and A8V. Its pretty solid, the only thing I cant figure out is why the sata drives are slower than the ata drives on the board.
On my old asus p4p800 the sata drives were ahead of the pci buss and were blazing fast. Im using the same drives now. In the RME FF800 manual they praise the P4P800 and disrespect all VIA chipsets due to their lack of proper bandwidth across the pci buss. I dont have the manual here anymore but this info can be found in their online manual....
So far no other conflicts with the A8V other than the stock MB USB setting was 12mbs. That was annoying for the first spin on the machine but ever since all is well.

[johnjm22]

From what I've heard the A8N-SLI should be pretty stable with that processor just don't try to use any UAD cards or Powercore stuff with it.

[captawesm]

http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16813131530

An Asus A8N-E ATX, its what i have and im running an AMD 64 X2 4200 and its running awesome. i def reccomend it, really easy bios. def get it

[Manfriday]

I'd get the A8v if I were you

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...358&CatId=1571


As someone else mentioned, it doesnt have any bells or whistles, but for a DAW computer, I think that is the way to go.

I had another MB based on the same chipset, but it had two onboard raids, two gigbit ethernet, firewire, and 8 channel surround all built in.
Worked like ass.

swapped that MB out for this one (same chipset, NO BELLS AND WHISTLES) and I have had no troubles since then.

[T9c]

My A8N-SLI got fried from the thunderstorms we had Mon. morning. So did my cable modem and gigabit switch...all bit the dust. Thank God the CPU (3800/X2) survived! $300 would have been a tough one. I just installed a A8V in the system, so I'm hoping for a more compatible (meaning UAD-1) system, although it does seem a little slower at the moment, but I haven't installed any software yet.

I liked the A8N-SLI for all the bells and whistles, but UAD-1 didn't, so if you're ever gonna think about getting the UAD-1, then I'd start with the A8V or A8V-DLX. Unless you're getting the PCI-e version. The A8V has 5 PCI slots, though. Nice! You'll probably need a PCI firewire card.

[MT Groove]

So up till now there's still no solid motherboard option that will support Athlon X2 along with a UAD-1 AND a Powercore?

[osci]

Originally Posted by MT Groove

So up till now there's still no solid motherboard option that will support Athlon X2 along with a UAD-1 AND a Powercore?

my 8av was working ok with a powercore element and a uad-1. I just cant get my matrox parhelia to work with ableton live

[jcschild]

HI,
there are several mobos that work with both.

plus you can always buy a PCIe UAD and it will work with Nforce 4 and 5.
the new M2s are out and work well

Scott
ADK

[Jamesie]

Hi Scott,

Sorry to hijack this thread but it is related

I have been watching your thread testing Conroe vs AM2 over at the Nuendo Forum but havn't been able ask questions over there as I am a Cubase User.

Can you tell me if you have you had any luck running the UAD-1 PCI cards with the Nforce 5xx series of chipsets at all??

Is there any improvement over the nforce 4 chipset???

Thanks in advance

Paul

[osci]

I have totaly given up on the A8V and am looking for a replacment. I am not sure what chipset to go for at this piont. I have had so many computer issues in the last year that I have finialy decided to sell my UAD and my Powercore. I just need to make music for @#$%^ sakes. I just bought the entire PSP product line and am looking for a good native reverb. I think wizoo is going to be the one, but now im off topic.

It seems that if one goes to Asus there is the gForce4 and the ATI chipsets. I am so outdated right now that I rely dont know what would be bettre for audio. If anyone has any advice I would love to hear it. The only reason that I bought the A8V was because of the UAD, now it is gone and I feel there is better out there. I am going to start reading around.

Thanks

[jcschild]

Originally Posted by Jamesie

Hi Scott,

Sorry to hijack this thread but it is related

I have been watching your thread testing Conroe vs AM2 over at the Nuendo Forum but havn't been able ask questions over there as I am a Cubase User.

Can you tell me if you have you had any luck running the UAD-1 PCI cards with the Nforce 5xx series of chipsets at all??

Is there any improvement over the nforce 4 chipset???

Thanks in advance

Paul

Hi Paul,

yes the M2 boards we have tested have worked perfectly with UAD/Poco even together!

Scott