• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Motherboard upgrades?

WebSlave

WebSlave

It is what it is, but certainly not what it was.
Staff member
Staff
Joined
Feb 3, 2002
Messages
20,509
Reaction score
864
Points
113
Location
Crawfordville, FL
I've been thinking of a motherboard upgrade on my home PC sometime in the future, since I have updated just about everything else lately. But does such a drastic change require reloading Windows? Honestly, with all of the software I am running, it would take me WEEKS to reload everything all over again. Not something I would be willing to do unless the motherboard would wash the vehicles and clean snake cages for me as well.

If I could just dump the old drivers and load new ones, much like adding a new video card, then I could live with that. But something like "reformat the hard drives and load Windows XP from scratch" is out of the question.
 
I haven't had to reload Win XP Pro with motherboard changes. It does detect it and requires you to re-activate Windows though. I have done it so many times now with this one copy of XP I have to call in and can't do it online anymore. They seem to have a hardtime believing I update my computer so often. They must think I have this single copy of windows on ten different machines by now...lol
 
There should be no reason to have to reinstall any programs. A motherboard change has never affected anything on my hard drives. It has been a long time since I just replaced a motherboard though, I just build a complete new system instead. Technology has changed a bit, but i still see no reason why the new mobo shouldn't just take right off with a few driver installs at most.
It will however require you to re-register Windows XP thanks to their highly aggravating anti-piracy techniques. You'll have to call an automated phone number and get a 50 digit registration code to activate windows again.

If you're running an OEM version of XP and do not actually have the original disc, it may negate the entire OS registration depending on the OEM. The motherboard is considered the basis of the system by windows, and OEM versions are often licensed to one system only and sold at highly discounted prices. For the savings you lose the ability to install it to another system at all, and a new motherboard makes it a new system as far as XP is concerned.
 
Well, I have the original install disks for everything on my system. One thing I have always required whenever I have bought a new system is that I get all the original install disks and manuals for everything in the box.

One reason I am asking about this is I would strongly consider going to a dual processor motherboard this time around. I've watched the speed of processors basically hit a brick wall, so multiprocessing is going to be the wave of the future. But heck, I had this thought before. I still have a system sitting in my den that came with dual 386 processors. That was back when WinNT was needed to utilize them both, however.

Maybe I'll just get someone to do this for me rather then do it myself. I'll just casually mention that I really like shooting my .50 caliber rifles, and then later on mention how irate I will be if I get a phone call that they lost everything and have to load Windows from scratch.......:blowup:
 
Heck, I'd do it for you. You can't hit me from out there...lol
 
Remember which direction the earth turns, Dennis. You are due west of me.... So I am shooting down wind, in effect... :)

All I need to do is to get the elevation angle right. LOL!
 
So what is the hottest motherboard on the market right now?

Are the AMD processors better now then the Pentiums? I've seen some of the newer servers coming out with dual Duron processors in them, so I guess this is AMD's answer to dual Xeons.
 
Think of a Duron like you would a Celeron. It was AMD's bargain cpu at the time the Athlon was new. I wouldn't waste my money on them.

If I could afford it, I would get the AMD Athlon 64 3400+ right now. It runs at 2.4ghz and blows away the Intel 3.4g CPU. The Intel's are also having a real problem with running really hot right now too. You could put your comp in your snake room and keep it warm running one of them.

Granted there are not alot of 64 bit applications to take advantage of the full power of the CPU, it is only a matter of time. Heck, I have read nothing but good things about these CPU's. Right now, they seem to be the best bang for your buck.
 
Sorry if im posting to a kind of old topic, but i felt i should say this. I have Normally Never had a problem switching hard drives with other motherboard's. i can not count the hundreds of motherboard replacements and upgrades i have done. One time though, on my own pc at that. The new motherboard Would not work with that existing copy of windows at all. I re-installed windows, it did not work. I formatted and installed windows and it worked. I still don't know what caused the problem between windows and the new motherboard, but it happened.

Also, The high end durons (1600 and 1800) if i recall, are based upon the same chip core that the XP3200+ is made from. People have been able to overclock the 1600 and 1800 Duron to 2.2GHZ, which is the equivelent of a 3200XP.
 
Right now, the hottest boards for AMD64's are the Nforce4 chipset variety. This includes the Nforce4 Ultra and the Nforce4 SLI chipsets. Both have AMD64 socket 939 support, PCI-Express support (both x16 and x1), lots of Serial ATA inputs with support for NCQ, up to 5 IDE inputs, and lots of other features. The difference between the Ultra and SLI are the x16 PCI-Express slots. The SLI boards have 2, and nVidias SLI is basically using 2 of the same video cards together. There's SLI support on the (PCI-E versions only) GeForce 6600GT, 6800, 6800GT and, 6800 Ultra cards.

The VIA K8T890 is VIA's version of the Nforce 4 chipset. It has PCI Express and most of the same features of the Nforce 4 with AMD64 support.

On the Intel front, boards with the 925XE chipset are in. They're a lot like the Nforce 4 and VIA K8T890, but only for Intel CPU's with the LGA 775 (Socket T) variety CPU's. These will support 1066 bus speeds for the higher end (and very expensive) Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU's.

Soon, AGP will be phased out. A lot of the major GPU (Graphics processing unit - what video cards actually are) manufacturers will be making lots of PCI-E only GPU's in the near future. Nvidias GeForce 6200 and 6600 are current examples, they probably won't be making AGP (accelerated graphics port) counterparts.

I always re-install windows with a board change. I've had problems with hardware when I've not bothered before, problems like blue screens and freezes. Problems that stopped with a fresh install.
 
Pug said:
Right now, the hottest boards for AMD64's are the Nforce4 chipset variety. This includes the Nforce4 Ultra and the Nforce4 SLI chipsets. Both have AMD64 socket 939 support, PCI-Express support (both x16 and x1), lots of Serial ATA inputs with support for NCQ, up to 5 IDE inputs, and lots of other features. The difference between the Ultra and SLI are the x16 PCI-Express slots. The SLI boards have 2, and nVidias SLI is basically using 2 of the same video cards together. There's SLI support on the (PCI-E versions only) GeForce 6600GT, 6800, 6800GT and, 6800 Ultra cards.

The VIA K8T890 is VIA's version of the Nforce 4 chipset. It has PCI Express and most of the same features of the Nforce 4 with AMD64 support.

On the Intel front, boards with the 925XE chipset are in. They're a lot like the Nforce 4 and VIA K8T890, but only for Intel CPU's with the LGA 775 (Socket T) variety CPU's. These will support 1066 bus speeds for the higher end (and very expensive) Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU's.

Soon, AGP will be phased out. A lot of the major GPU (Graphics processing unit - what video cards actually are) manufacturers will be making lots of PCI-E only GPU's in the near future. Nvidias GeForce 6200 and 6600 are current examples, they probably won't be making AGP (accelerated graphics port) counterparts.

I always re-install windows with a board change. I've had problems with hardware when I've not bothered before, problems like blue screens and freezes. Problems that stopped with a fresh install.
Click to expand...

I'm not happy with Nvidia any longer. The 6800 Ultra card locked up every time I blinked twice. After weeks of driver updates, prowling the support boards, and trying every tweak combination in the universe, I finally just sent it back and got an ATI Radeon X 800 Pro. NO problems at all after that.

CompUSA gave me some grief about returning the card (I ordered it mail order), but I just sent it back to them and disputed the charge on my credit card. Dummies tried to send the card back to me a couple of times, but I just refused it. Heck, I had the ATI card by then, and I even bought it from the local CompUSA store.

Oh and about the comment to reload Windows.... No way, Jose! With the number of software packages I have installed on my machine, it would take me weeks, maybe months, to get back to the point I am now. The ONLY time I will change or reload the operating system is either one of two ways: (1) everything gets destroyed anyway and I have no choice, or (2) I buy a new system, in which case I will be moving everything over to the new system. I have actually had some minor problems, like with game software, where the developers would suggest to reload Windows and see if that fixes the problem. Yeah, right...... That would be like replacing the engine in your car to see if the rattle in the trunk stops afterwards.

Anyway, I guess the system I have is going to stay until maybe next fall or winter. I do have to replace the power supply in it, though, because it seems to have a problem when I cold start the system every morning. It doesn't recognize the SCSI boot drive 4 out of 5 times, forcing me to shut it down and then restarting it. I've got the new power supply, but just haven't had the time to swap it in.
 
My GeForce 6800GT runs wonderfully, and it overclocks it Ultra speeds easily, so I run it as an Ultra all the time. I did have very similar problems with my GeForce 5900 Ultra in 2003, which ended when I replaced it with an ATI 9800 Pro. I have lots of programs, but in order to save them, I've been messing around with installing them to an external hard drive, actually an Iomega Rev drive with 35gb removable disks. It's the next step up from a Zip or Jazz drive, but it has faster seek times and is like having as many extra external hard drives as you have disks. Each disks can hold 30 gb's or up to 90gb compressed. Two weeks ago I bought a Maxtor 300gb hard drive with a 16mb cache size. It's pretty darn fast, nearly as fast as my Western Digital Raptor, a 10,000 RPM hard drive. The Raptors are fast and expensive, but lack space. The biggest one is 74gb which turns into 69gb's usable, and it costs from $150 to $200. The 16mb cache Maxtors come in 300 and 250gb sizes and are the same cost as the Raptors. My Raptor is the primary drive, so Windows is replaced on it only, and the only other thing I will need to re-install will be the many games I have.

ATI has a new top end GPU out, the X850XT PE. It's nearly as fast as 2 GeForce 6800 Ultras running together in SLI mode. Currently it's PCI-Express only.

How did you isolate the problem to the power supply?

Since my computer has no trouble running anything, I really want to wait for dual core CPU's to appear before I buy anything new. Supposedly, AMD has a dual core solution (2 CPU's on a single chip ) that runs faster and cooler than its current CPU's. According to most tech reports, the Intel dual core is running nearly twice as hot as its current really hot Prescott CPU's above 3.6GHz. It's really wierd to see how much the roles have reversed. AMD CPU's run cool and will throttle themselves down in clock speed and temp if they get too hot, but Intels will just burn up :erm:

For the heck of it, here's a pic of my computer as of 2 weeks ago: http://home.comcast.net/~sparkpug/Misc/Camera_Pics_005.jpg
 
Back
Top