I am helping a friend build a pc, He has a AGP card and would like to have pci-e too.

[DARQ MX]

So I recommend the perfect board for him. The Asrock ULi M1695. Now he games does not care about OC0ing cause he does not know how and he has a AGP card now and would when he is ready get a card in the future...

So qustion is. I never used Asrock before, so what are the pros and cons of this board?

 

[DARQ MX]

He also wants an X2 so I told him to get the 4200+ Cause it really is the best one for him to get cause the 4400 is not needed if he does not oc...

Also, IS this bios X2 ready? Or do I have to update the bios for him?

 

[MasterOfNone]

When I built my system it had the 1.2 BIOS and I had no problems with my Opteron 175 running right from the first time I hit the power button, so I would say you shouldn't have any problems. Most boards being sold now have newer BIOS versions.

I'd say that to get the pros and cons, just look at the features of the board. It has most everything a regular user would need, except Firewire if that matters to him. There are three separate SATA channels and two IDE channels so having a decent number of drives shouldn't be a problem.

There are a few people who haven't had good luck with their boards that you can find on this forum if you look a few pages back, so consider their experiences as well. I personally can say my experience has been a good one. My biggest problems were with the USB ports and overclocking. It turned out that my microdrive (Centon SUCKS - there goes $80) was going bad so the USB ports are actually fine, and the overclocking was fixed by flashing to the OCWBeta 1.2 BIOS. I just couldn't run the HTT past 240 and get it to boot. After the flash I could get it to boot at 300x8, but with a warm boot issue where I would have to reset the BIOS every time I started the computer. That got old after a few days, so it sits at 245x10 and it runs just fine.

Anyway, that's my $.02

Tim

 

[Tutelary]

I have one, I like it a lot. Even the old bios supported X2 at at that rating, the new ones support everything including opterons up to the FX60. Just leave ram at 2T and you should be fine.
Mine:
2gig of corsair 2.5 (4x512)
2 WD drives
1 Plextor
an evga 7800gt (formerly a 9800 pro in the same system)