are you sure it's not broken? I read about people using that mb on an italian hardware website (www.hwupgrade.it) and they didn't seem to have problems.
About the boot problem I think that it has been fixed in a new bios version.
I forgot to say that Anandtech has a good review on the reference board and the asrock board with that chipset. Here's the url: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524&p= 8 . The performance seems very good and if stability is the same of the old ali drivers then probably your lcds blue pixels will be safe since you will probably never see a BSOD. I can't wait to put my hands on one of the non-asrocks (I hate asrock bioses) mbs that will come out with that chipset! Oh my i'm so excited! (eeek!)
Check out the ULI M1695 chipset for amd 939 cpus... probably it is the best 939 chipset that came out since now...
it came out just 2 months ago and it seems great... not only it supports BOTH AGP AND PCI-E (you can delay your video card upgrade!!) but it also has performance near a nf4 system (no i'm not joking).
If you search on google you can find benchmark of the reference board and also of an asrock board that mounts that chipset that come out some time ago.
The ASROCK mb is very very cheap, around 60. I had asrock mbs and they seem pretty stable however i'll wait for another producer to use that chipset since asrock mbs are not very tweakable. In fact it looks that soon even asus and chaintech will release mbs based on that chipset.
I didn't manage to get one yet however I had acer laptops with ALI chipsets (uli was previously called ali) and they were very very stable, I never see one of my acer laptops with that chipset crashing (using a NT based os naturally).
BTW I hate via for the only reason that VIA MADE THE MOST HORRIBLE IDE DRIVERS I'VE EVER SEEN! They automatically scale my hd UDMA only because it spins up after being idle!! I have to reboot every 2-3 days because UDMA is scaled down... probably most people here didn't experience that problem however if you leave your pc turned on for a lot of days you'll find out.
And i'd better not to talk about the via hyperion 4.50 drivers that corrupted all my partitions because they were incompatible with ati cards... VIA was so nice that IT DIDN'T WRITE NOTHING ON THEIR WEBSITE! THEY JUST REMOVED THE DRIVERS WITHOUT A REASON!!!! THANKS VIA I LOST HOURS AND HOURS TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE WAS THE DRIVER MESSING UP EVERYTHING BECAUSE YOU WROTE NOTHING!
Also give a try to the new "cool" hd accelerator drivers on via website... they tested it so much before releasing that beta that it's almost impossible to avoid getting all the hd corrupted after installing them. Unless you keep your pc turned off. Oh well who would ever need a turned on pc? Not me I just call my provider by phone and emit modem sounds...
About nforce... first nforce drivers were horrible (expecially when nforce2 came out) but nforce4 seems pretty stable even if a bit expensive and very hard to cool down.
BTW sorry for my english I'm italian and probably most of you know how most italian make horrible grammar errors in english texts:P
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Will someday science also explain if pigs can fly? I'm looking forward to it!
are you sure it's not broken? I read about people using that mb on an italian hardware website (www.hwupgrade.it) and they didn't seem to have problems. About the boot problem I think that it has been fixed in a new bios version.
I forgot to say that Anandtech has a good review on the reference board and the asrock board with that chipset. Here's the url: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524&p= 8 . The performance seems very good and if stability is the same of the old ali drivers then probably your lcds blue pixels will be safe since you will probably never see a BSOD. I can't wait to put my hands on one of the non-asrocks (I hate asrock bioses) mbs that will come out with that chipset! Oh my i'm so excited! (eeek!)
Check out the ULI M1695 chipset for amd 939 cpus... probably it is the best 939 chipset that came out since now... it came out just 2 months ago and it seems great... not only it supports BOTH AGP AND PCI-E (you can delay your video card upgrade!!) but it also has performance near a nf4 system (no i'm not joking). If you search on google you can find benchmark of the reference board and also of an asrock board that mounts that chipset that come out some time ago. The ASROCK mb is very very cheap, around 60. I had asrock mbs and they seem pretty stable however i'll wait for another producer to use that chipset since asrock mbs are not very tweakable. In fact it looks that soon even asus and chaintech will release mbs based on that chipset. I didn't manage to get one yet however I had acer laptops with ALI chipsets (uli was previously called ali) and they were very very stable, I never see one of my acer laptops with that chipset crashing (using a NT based os naturally). BTW I hate via for the only reason that VIA MADE THE MOST HORRIBLE IDE DRIVERS I'VE EVER SEEN! They automatically scale my hd UDMA only because it spins up after being idle!! I have to reboot every 2-3 days because UDMA is scaled down... probably most people here didn't experience that problem however if you leave your pc turned on for a lot of days you'll find out. And i'd better not to talk about the via hyperion 4.50 drivers that corrupted all my partitions because they were incompatible with ati cards... VIA was so nice that IT DIDN'T WRITE NOTHING ON THEIR WEBSITE! THEY JUST REMOVED THE DRIVERS WITHOUT A REASON!!!! THANKS VIA I LOST HOURS AND HOURS TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE WAS THE DRIVER MESSING UP EVERYTHING BECAUSE YOU WROTE NOTHING! Also give a try to the new "cool" hd accelerator drivers on via website... they tested it so much before releasing that beta that it's almost impossible to avoid getting all the hd corrupted after installing them. Unless you keep your pc turned off. Oh well who would ever need a turned on pc? Not me I just call my provider by phone and emit modem sounds... About nforce... first nforce drivers were horrible (expecially when nforce2 came out) but nforce4 seems pretty stable even if a bit expensive and very hard to cool down. BTW sorry for my english I'm italian and probably most of you know how most italian make horrible grammar errors in english texts :P