Motherboards with i845 Chipsets

manplusdog writes: "Dan reviews a couple of i845 motherboards here and lets just say he doesn't hold back! "Mainboards For The Stupid" is the verdict. I have no affiliation with Dan or his site (aside from being Australian) but found the review..... entertaining. Cheers"

Comments

Good article

[Inthewire]

He reinforced my belief in the value of a competitive market...without AMD, Intel would have a lock on all of our business. It's interesting how destructive human nature can be...logically, the thing to do is run a single company that can leverage suppliers, research, manufacturing, distribution, administration, etc. This would reduce all the redundancies in the market and allow for superior products at reasonable prices.
Advertising could be focused on actual products, not competitive differentation. If something new was developed by this company, they would only need make the value known...no more blue men.
INstead of this utopia, when a single company gains the majority of the market they tend to maximize profit instead of customer value.
It's a hell of a world, isn't it?

Speech output

[kingdon]

The coolest part was the ASUS board which speaks for power on self-test errors, rather than the age-old cryptic beep system. And the fact that you could download new messages. Anyone done the Klingon translation yet?

Custom Errors

[Myriad]

Instead of using lights or mere beeps to tell you about its Power On Self Test progress, it speaks its errors,in a quite comprehensible female voice.

The P4B also comes with a Windows utility that lets you convert WAV files to make your own error messages.

In related news, Asus will begin shipping the Custom Error Pack with errors including:
- I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that!
- It's Microsofts Fault - Really!
- BSOD my ass!
- Doh!
- Need Beer!
- I've been Slashdotted!
and many more!

actually i am kind of bummed.

[motherhead]

All my personal boxes are currently Athlon 1.2 and 1.4 GHz 266FSBs running DDR, except for a little sad rarely used mother that was once my main box, a 1GHz P-III on a Asus "Black Pearl" BX board.

So I love AMDs, they are swell. But there is one thing about Athlons that frosts my ass, well no, the opposite. I have had to build in the odd year of 2001, twenty-two separate AMD Athlon/Thunderbird boxes. I have had seven Athlons burn on and die on boot up (stinky silicon).

I am not a retard. And that is just unacceptable.

I have never dealt with a chip as volatile as the Thunderbird. Some are just hardy little bastardos, others need a level of anal retentiveness that borders on owning ones own clean room. For me and my absolute need to have a box that makes apps open before I can remove finger from the enter key, or off the mouse on the second click. This is okay. When I am building a blah beige business box, for a client, or a friend or Auntie Ann. Then this makes me borderline homicidal.

The fact of the matter is, any monkey with a hammer can knock together a P-III box. Intel chips tend to be as robust as those freaky bubble glass ashtrays that weigh fifty pounds. I can knock together a P-III box and have an operating system installed in an hour, mostly while I am doing something more important then watching Win2K load or whatever.

I honestly wanted to see a nice Asus/Abit P4 board available so I can do more of the same for business clients ("Oh! goodness Bob! look! ONE POINT EIGHT GIGAHERTZ!!! INTEL BOB!!! HAVE AT IT BAYBE!!!... But first, pay me.")

Cheap boxes that run as stable and reliable as hell and can be assembled almost by remote control rock, the extra cash keeps me in Geforce 3 cards and klipsch speakers and other shiny things I see in the forest. I would be happy as a clam to see this whole i845 thing straighten it's wings and head into the promised land that the BX chipset promised us exists. Speaking of BX, that Asus black pearl box in the corner. It's not nearly as fast as my other three Athlon boxes, but damn it, it is as reliable as my subzero fridge.

As for myself, I will stick to my yummy AMD goodness until the data becomes more compelling otherwise. I am still a sucker when I notice that something is really "noticeably faster"

Trivia

[Daniel Rutter]

Howdy. Page mine. Server looks fine to me. Site hosted in USA, not here in Australia. So if you can't see it, not my fault. And I can get my mail just fine, thanks :-).

On a more interesting note, I put that review up on the 30th of August, which was while motherboard manufacturers were still getting busted for even saying that they'd shipped i845 boards, because the chipset hadn't officially been launched yet.

But here in Australia, for some reason, the boards were already being sold retail. I just grabbed those two from m'verygoodfriends at Aus PC Market.

I should probably update the review; I bet Abit and Asus have product pages for those boards, now :-).

Re:His page is upside down

[Chagrin]

I'll bet that once the server gets slashdotted it will go down counter-clockwise.

Where should I buy an Athlon

[JeffL]

This is serious, and hopefully not too offtopic. I purchase lots of desktop machines, and for myself I can build exactly what I want from whatever pieces I think are best. However, for some random new post-doc I just want a decent machine that is easy for me to buy, and easy to get fixed if it breaks.

I have always bought Dells, because they make doing educational institution purchases incredibly easy, and if I need service I just call one place. I can customize the computers I am buying, and their prices are reasonable.

I am finding myself in the position of having to buy a very fast computer for somebody else. The problem I am running into is that Dell does not sell Athlons. I can buy a 1.8Ghz P4 from them for about $1900 fully loaded. I can also build myself a dual Athlon 1.2Ghz for the same price, and the Athlon is much faster.

So my question, is there a reputable and reliable company which sells customizable Athlon machines for a reasonable price?