The Unofficial List of Good mATX Motherboards (Overclocking and Not)

I'm writing this from a library, so I just can't search the whole thread. My power supply fried my Asus P5L-MX and I'm looking for a better mobo. Another problem I had was high temperature of NB, around 70C even if the case was opened.

3 most important factors (besides C2D processor) are:
- my moded Apple G3 case allows only 2 ram slots
- if possible, holes around NB for water cooling (I'm getting Zalman Reserator)
- at last, if possible, something with newer 965 chipset

Please help :confused:
 
Does anyone know of a fix for Brisbane support for the NF-M2 nView? I just got it with the 3600 and supposedly it's idling at 60 C....
 
I believe the NF-M2 nView should be pulled for lack of proper Brisbane support. The temperatures for my X2 3600 are not reporting correctly. Also would not post when the external clock was upped from 200 to 210. I'm planning to RMA my board.
 
Gibby82 said:
I'm planning to RMA my board.
Click to expand...

I just shipped off my Abit NF-M2 nView yesterday for RMA. My reason is a bit more severe. The board stopped POSTing using the same parts it was working with before. With the board outside the case and after clearing CMOS, I tried other parts in the board, plus tested all the parts in a Biostar Tforce6100-AM2 and everything worked in the Biostar board.

Incidentally the onboard NIC of the Biostar board doesn't work. I recall people having problems with the NIC failing on the socket 939 version though I never had that issue with any of the 5-6 s939 boards I've had.

Basically I no longer have any fully operational socket AM2 board, but have two AM2 CPUs and a bunch of DDR2. :( Maybe someone's trying to tell me to go Core 2 Duo? :p
 
Zap said:
I just shipped off my Abit NF-M2 nView yesterday for RMA. My reason is a bit more severe. The board stopped POSTing using the same parts it was working with before. With the board outside the case and after clearing CMOS, I tried other parts in the board, plus tested all the parts in a Biostar Tforce6100-AM2 and everything worked in the Biostar board.

Incidentally the onboard NIC of the Biostar board doesn't work. I recall people having problems with the NIC failing on the socket 939 version though I never had that issue with any of the 5-6 s939 boards I've had.

Basically I no longer have any fully operational socket AM2 board, but have two AM2 CPUs and a bunch of DDR2. :( Maybe someone's trying to tell me to go Core 2 Duo? :p
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Is the Tforce a good board for OC'ing on AM2? I have a couple for S754 and like them. Also, does it support Brisbane properly?
 
Gibby82 said:
Is the Tforce a good board for OC'ing on AM2? I have a couple for S754 and like them. Also, does it support Brisbane properly?
Click to expand...

I don't have any Brisbanes so I can't answer your second question. The only socket AM2 CPUs I have are two Sempron 2800+ chips (1.6GHz 128k cache). As for overclocking, the board does just fine. I got the same results with both CPUs, topping out at around 330-335MHz HTT. The same CPUs were getting 360-365MHz HTT on the Abit board. On both boards the CPU vcore needed a HUGE boost for stability at those high speeds.

I did have some RAM glitches with the Biostar board. Some of my RAM would not work in this board unless I used some RAM that did work, and manually set the timings (instead of AUTO). Then, I could swap out to the other RAM which then worked just fine.
 
Zap said:
I don't have any Brisbanes so I can't answer your second question. The only socket AM2 CPUs I have are two Sempron 2800+ chips (1.6GHz 128k cache). As for overclocking, the board does just fine. I got the same results with both CPUs, topping out at around 330-335MHz HTT. The same CPUs were getting 360-365MHz HTT on the Abit board. On both boards the CPU vcore needed a HUGE boost for stability at those high speeds.

I did have some RAM glitches with the Biostar board. Some of my RAM would not work in this board unless I used some RAM that did work, and manually set the timings (instead of AUTO). Then, I could swap out to the other RAM which then worked just fine.
Click to expand...

After looking around I've decided to move away from uATX and go full ATX-it would seem there aren't any great AM2 uATX overclockers. Tforce 550 is what I'm looking at now, along with a CM Centurion mid tower.
 
The best AM2 mATX mobo for overclocking currently is the ABIT NF-M2 nView. Its due to be replaced though sometime this year. I'm guessing it'll be out before the new Barcelona chips which debut Q4 for desktops. Server version debuts Q3 supposedly.
 
Skott said:
The best AM2 mATX mobo for overclocking currently is the ABIT NF-M2 nView. Its due to be replaced though sometime this year. I'm guessing it'll be out before the new Barcelona chips which debut Q4 for desktops. Server version debuts Q3 supposedly.
Click to expand...
Best for NON-Brisbane chips maybe.
 
Gibby82 said:
Best for NON-Brisbane chips maybe.
Click to expand...

Correct. Near as I can tell from ABIT's site that the 3600 and the 6000+ are not supported. At least they havent been listed as supported yet. I'm guessing a BIOS update is needed first.

Edit 4/25/2007: I was just looking at some NewEgg reviews and one guy is using the AM2 6000+ with his NF-M2 and having no problems so I guess it does support the 6000+.
 
Abit's lates BIOS fixed my onboard LAN problem. I'm running my Brisbane at 310x9.5. The Brisbane temperature problem is a problem with the Brisbane core, not any particular motherboard. My Biostar also OC's pretty well (not as well as my Abit, but close). It's running at 300x9.5 on the Brisbane I have in it.
 
Last I heard was that the Brisbane DTS was broken so CoreTemp wont work on it. I dont know if that applies to all programs or just CoreTemp but I do know it was confirmed CoreTemp wont display temps correctly.


And this is Gary Key's (AnandTech) initial mATX Roundup observations:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=2045431&enterthread=y



Quote:

Hi,

These are the results from testing for each category and are based on a combination of price, performance, options, and support. I would like to stress that we really did not have a bad board or one that would not be worthy of purchasing depending upon your needs or situation although the Intel VIA boards were clearly a step behind. While performance was very close between all of the AM2 boards, it was obvious that the NVIDIA 6100/6150 AM2 boards were a little better at overclocking although the top two 690G boards have come on strong if that is important to you. I personally came to the conclusion that buying a 6000+ or 5600+ at the new prices was a smarter decision than buying a 3800+ or 4200+ and going through the headache of overclocking and stressing the rest of the system. I provided some Cliff Notes for each group.

AM2-

AMD690G-

1. Biostar (best overall features, performance, pricing, support, limited fan control is a killer)
2. Sapphire (close but that x1 PCI-E location was a killer)
3. ASUS (HDMI version, very solid performance, great features, limited OC)
4. MSI (great base board, limited BIOS options, solid performance, pricing is starting to reflect it being a base board)
WildCard - Jetway, Foxconn, Gigabyte 690 boards arrived today, understand from early reports that the ECS board is looking strong as well)
Thoughts - All of the boards performed very well, all were solid and consistent, latest Vista drivers helped tremendously, still having a few rough spots with 1080P playback, overall probably one of the better chipsets to buy in the uATX market, especially considering the AM2 pricing and performance for the dollar. (This comes from a long time Intel user who even drank the i850 / RAMBUS Kool-Aid).

NV6100/6150
1. abit NF-M2 Nview (top overclocking/performance, very good features, mature board)
1.5 Biostar TForce 6100 (excellent performance, stability, features, OC behind abit)
2.5 DFI C51PV-M2/G (really nice board overall, AC97 sound is a joke though, still asking DFI why on that one)
3. ASUS M2N-MX/M2NPV-VM (toss up, depends on feature needs)
4. MSI K9VGM-V, Foxconn K8M890M2MA, ASUS M2V-MX (all of the VIA boards scored very well from an overall viewpoint, very solid performance, if onboard GPU had been a little stronger, price to performance would have led the way in the AM2 roundup)
Wild Card - Foxconn and MSI Quadro 210S boards arrived late last week, both are excellent boards, high quality, and probably will wind up in the number 2 spot.
Thoughts - The most mature group, really did not have any issues to speak of, even after two years on the market, these chipsets are still going strong.

NV7050-
1. Biostar TForce TF7050-M2 (what else can we say, it is the only 7050 board in the labs now) Performance is about 2% better than the 6100/6150 boards in certain applications like encoding and newer games, main benefits are features like native HDMI, newer driver support, and reasonable costs. More 7050 boards are on their way, a weird rollout, NDA has been moved several times, product announcements are not timely, and there seems to be a lack of interest by the suppliers in adopting this solution quickly.

SIS-
It will be June before we have their new product.

Best AM2-

Biostar AMD690G / abit NF-M2 Nview


Intel -

G/Q965:
1. GA-965QM-DS2 - (Strong performance, features, and support, OC limited to 330)
2. ASUS P5B-VM - (ditto, a little less overclocking)
3. Intel DG9650TMKR - (Rock solid board, great stock performance, compatible with everything)
3.5 GA-965GM-S2 - (Really good board, DS2 is just better)
4. Foxconn G9657MA-8EKRS2H - (BIOS away from moving to up a slot or two)
Notes- Still two months away from the X3000 performance driver, early beta shows a lot of promise, as in BF2 and other games will actually run now, Sims2 flies... . MSI board just arrived, G33/35 are still in early Alpha now, video will be DX10 base but once again, do not count on anything special. Main differences will be native 1333 support and new ICH9 Southbridge.

ATI X1250:
1. abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD - (only ATI chipset board we have for the C2D, great performer, on board graphics are decent, overclocking is up around 370FSB, really nice board) Only knock has been reliability but our last two boards have about 500 hours on them without any issues, the first board did fail.

VIA -
1. ASUS P5VD2-MX SE - (Decent performance, cheap, VIA does not fair as well with Intel)
2. Biostar P4M890-M7 - (ditto, need to test latest BIOS, price drop expected)

Intel Other -
1. Foxconn 946GZ7MA-8KS2H, MSI 945GM3-F, ECS 945G-M3, and a couple of new ASRock boards are under testing now....

SIS -
It will be June before we see the new chipset.

Best Intel- (until the tests are finished)
GA-965QM-DS2 / abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD (if we make it to 600 hours ;-) )
Special Mention to the Intel DG9650TMKR, not an overclocker really, great support and quality.

Best Overall Currently-
Still have not made up my mind although I have to by the weekend, still leaning to the AM2 boards to be quite honest based on overall price to performance values at this time. This obviously changes if you use an external PCIe graphics card but still it is hard to notice differences in games if you are comparing like priced CPUs, encoding and photoshop suffer on the AM2 platform when compared heads up to C2D.

Linux Support-

Hands down the NVIDIA 6100/6150 boards first then the Intel G965/945G/946GZ boards. VIA support was decent but the ATI/AMD chipsets are just not up to the level of the others, yet.

Hope this helps, more random thoughts later.
 
Hmmm, the Tforce TF7050-AM2 seems to have decent RAM voltages. My Tforce6100-AM2 only went up to a paltry 2.0v for vDIMM, unless that's been solved by a new BIOS. Not gonna bother however, since I'm gonna sell it.

Zap said:
$77.25 at eWiz
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-CONR133
Click to expand...

Well, I decided to order this board today... except I bought it from Mwave because shipped price ended up cheaper.

Regarding that PCSTATS review, in their overclocking they mention:

"At this point I had to dive into my intimate knowledge of overclocking tricks and pull out some oldschool moves to get around the road block. What I did was increase the Northbridge voltage to the maximum the BIOS would allow, which was 1.36V. After that it was pretty smooth overclocking..."

Sounds as if they forgot to lower the HT multiplier.
 
Skott said:
Best Intel- (until the tests are finished)
GA-965QM-DS2 / abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD (if we make it to 600 hours ;-) )
Special Mention to the Intel DG9650TMKR, not an overclocker really, great support and quality.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this. I am getting ready to upgrade from a GA-945GZ board mainly to add RAID and was considering the Intel board but have decided against it mainly because of not enough fan headers. Looking at the manual, there are only two headers.. one CPU and one REAR. As I am super anal when it comes to wiring, I am now looking at the ASUS P5B-VM DO but hadn't checked out the GA offering until you mentioned it.

I'd really like the F-I90HD but not sure if I want to gamble.

Enough rambling from me.

Thanks though.

- JT
 
Ouch, I just read the GA-965QM-DS2 manual. Only 2 fan headers, 1 of them the CPU and the spot for the SYS-FAN is all the way on the wrong side of the board. Heh. Also, no IEEE-1394. Looks like the ASUS is going to be the one for me.

- JT
 
Indeed. Like the layout better than the Abit. 2 PCI slots. Now I can stuff a X-Meridian and a good TV tuner into my upcoming SG03 build :cool:
 
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R G33!
the first board to handle fsb@400
400-500FSB_Orthos.jpg


from XS
 
400fsb with a E6300 :eek: Impressive for a mATX mobo. :D I'll wait for reviews and more detailed and lengthy tests though. I hope all the mobos can do this with stability.
 
I think with these new motherboards higher FSB has become more likely. Why? Because the chipset itself now "officially" supports 1333MHz FSB (333MHz setting). Where before, the boards were having difficulty hitting 320MHz when the official highest setting was 266MHz, now we're seeing 333MHz official with 400MHz overclock. Now that's progress! This is enough to take an E6420 to 3.2GHz.
 
Word is the guy has it up to 430fsb now. Its looking promising. Heck, I'd be tickled pink if it can just do 400fsb stable 24/7 for years. :D
 
can the abit fatality matx board hit 400fsb with e6300? I cant find this new gigabyte mobo in my country, probably for the next few months..
 
Ok, if I don't care about C2D in the near or distant future because I am happy with my 3.2G Cedar Mill, what would be the best LGA775 board, with overclocking, to go with at this time?

Thanks

- JT
 
I should have made my post more clear. :) I need a board today, I'm not willing to wait for some of these vaporware boards that no one has actually used yet. I don't want/need that gamble.

- JT
 
From the list in the OP, we have an ASUS P5LD2-VM DH and we also have a non DH model of that board. Does anyone know what the difference is?

- JT
 
W6FO said:
From the list in the OP, we have an ASUS P5LD2-VM DH and we also have a non DH model of that board. Does anyone know what the difference is?

- JT
Click to expand...


I'm not 100% sure but I think one has IEEE and other doesnt. Something like that.
 
W6FO said:
From the list in the OP, we have an ASUS P5LD2-VM DH and we also have a non DH model of that board. Does anyone know what the difference is?

- JT
Click to expand...
The difference between the 2 are the viiv technology on the DH one (no firewire)
 
this board is not on the list, but I am currently running an ASUS A8V-VM on my server and it is a very nice socket 939 board. I have it running for over three months stable 24/7. Highly recommened if you want to give life to your ole socket 939 cpu.
 
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