I'm upgrading my pc and would like know the best choice of motherboards. I have narrow it down between Abit and Asus.
I will be doing video editing and want to get a really decent model. Possibilities for lots of ram, ATA-133-200, dual processors, 800mhz buss speed support as well as any other features that is crucial for video editing.
Any takers?

If you want dual prcessors, go with Tyan. Other than that, I would recommend Abit- AVOID Asus!

While my Abit KG7 Raid board was kind of quirky, once I got it set up right, it's been rock solid. There are some soft menu options you will need to change, and some cards need to be positioned in certain slots.

Asus, on the other hand, has been highly recommended by many people. However, those were the ones fortunate to have a good board. Those who have problems with Asus products, will find zero support, a website that has no answers, and forums that are usually down.

At least Abit has a great forum for finding answers, and good tech support. I think that is the most important part of any product.

Thanks but isn't this board supprorts only AMD? I'm for P4 support only.

I myself, have been a huge fan of AMD. Over the past several years, I have only had problems with one processor out of 4. Even though the retailer refused to do anything about it a year later, AMD sent me a new replacement, no hassels. My other two PCs are still running their original 3 and 4 year old AMDs

As far as what board supports what, I believe they all have boards for Pentiums.

Thanks but I want to stick with P4's only.

Charles I don't think you will find a board for dual P4s. If you want dual processors you'll have to go with Xeons.

Anyone has this board: Abit BE7-RAID Moderkort S478/533mhz ?

Adrian is correct, P4 does not support dual configurations. For that you will need Xeons, and the FSB is 533MHz max.

I have two Asus boards and love 'em. Their website is almost useless but the newsgroups have lots of activity and several knowledgeable posters. Asus is known for reliability and is always a top rated board.

Rob- It's hard for me to argue with many satisfied Asus users... Except that I've been using a bad Asus board for 3 years now. I'm still using it, because I could never get any reply from Asus. I tried their site, and got nothing. I tried e-mailing them several times over a period, and got no response. I tried calling, long distance overseas, and there was no answer.

I did eventually get one reply e mail. It said to ship them my board, and they would look at it. Then, if they felt it was due to their error, they would send me another board if they couldn't fix it. I was not about to yank the MB out of my only PC at the time, wait who knows how long, for them to "Maybe" send a replacement. It took well over a year to get any response from them in the first place. I say, if that is the best they got for service, I'll go with another brand.

Thanks for the reply guys. Alright then. Any particular model of abit or Asus I should go for that seems to work to the T?

I use a Abit IT7 Max2 V.2 for my NLE..Its very solid. I can use Premiere/Photoshop/AE/Vegas. For hours on end without a crash. Infact I moved to this board after going through atleast 15 system AMD and Intel within about 4 months. I was trying to find a setup that worked flawlessly with my Matrox RT2500.
I also use a Abit BE7 for my other PC and its quite good as well. But full a full featured RAID board my money is on the IT7 Max 2. Although I will warn you its a Legacy free board. That means no Serial or parallel ports....Its all USB and Firewire.
I currently run that system as the following

Abit IT7 Max 2 V.2
Intel P4 2.4C @ 3.24 gHz
1.5 gig Corsair PC3200 Low Latency Matched Ram
Matrox G550
Matrox RT2500
M-Audio Delta Audiophile 24/96

I would recommend this board too anyone who is looking for a full featured 845PE Motherboard. If your interested in a 875P then try the Abit IC7 Max.

Thanks Scott. I'll take a look into it. I see it has support for a raid setup. I read that it also has a controller card for ata-150 support. Another thing. How do you find the integrated sound card?
Being an all usb and firewire connectors, I guess one could still get an adapter to fit present keyboard and mouse units to be able to connect them to the USB sockets, right?
There's also the Abit IS7-G motherboard with 800mhz, if that should make a difference.

Scott,

how do you find the overclocked P4? Is it still stable, was the performance increase worth the risk and heat increase? I tessed with overclocked PIII for video editing but it was too unstable. I pushed a PIII 667 to around 900 and the performance increase was good with only a smalle but controllable heat increase. It was stable for simple rendering tasks but as soon as I had more than 3 layers it got unstable.

Has anyone got experience of Tyan mobos?

I'm having difficulty sourcing the Abit WI-2P here. I could get the Asus PP-DLW, but I've been bitten by Asus before.

Tyan seem to have a pretty good performance reputation. I was wondering what their reliability was like.

Charles,
The IS7-G will give you better performance because it uses the Dual DDR Ram which give almost twice the performance of normal DDR. Not to mention the 800 mHz FSB will give you more bandwidth going from the CPU to the Ram. I checked the specs on it and it only has Serial ATA Raid. Either you will have to buy SATA drives ore use the Abit Seriallel adapters to connect ATA100 or 133 drives to the SATA Raid. I figure you were interested in setting up a Raid because you were looking at boards with Raid controllers.

The IT7 Max2 has PS/2 connectors for the mouse and keyboard so you dont need to convert your current stuff to USB. Only the early version of the Max2 didnt have PS/2 connectors.

As for the onboard AC97 audio....I cant use it its much too noisy for my tastes. Your better off buying a good pro level card.

Adrian,
My P4 is very stable at that speed and it also runs pretty cool. However I bought 3 2.4Cs amd only 2 of them were good Oc'ers the other one tops out at 2.88, The other two are great at 3.24gHz. Ofcourse I dont use a stock Heatsink and fan. I use larger units that are more efficent at dispelling heat. I also had a 2 P4 2.4Bs that were stable at 3.06 gHz. When oc'ing I always stop the speed at the most stable point. High rendering speed is nothing if it crashes during a complex render.

Hope this was some help

Thank you Scott for that candid reply. You've been a big help. I think I'll be going for that model then.

Scott

You state that the onboard audio's of limited use. You can probably disable it in BIOS, but does that make it completely 'invisible' to the system so that it doesn't hog IRQs and other resources?

(I'll leave my thoughts on Windows' automatic allocation of resources out of this!)

That's a good point Nigel. I'll also like to know. Another thing, What power supply is considered reasonable? 400W or more?

Yes you can disable it Bios and no it doesnt use an IRQ when it is disabled.

Charles,
The power supply is were people usually skemp. I suggest getting a 400w or better PS...Made by a company with a good reputation for quality PS Antec, or Enermax are good choices. A solid PS will go a long way towards providing a stable PC. I cant tell you how many PCs I have had to replace PS because the customer was coplaining about constant crashes. Most people just purchase a case with a no name 300 watt PS and then pack there boxes full of optical and hard drives. A cheap PS just cant handle all of those devices and still deliver a constant 5 volts for your motherboard. The just dont. Despite what some people are going to say. I have years of experiance building and troubleshooting PCs I know this is the area where people always screw up.

Hope this is useful

I completely agree about the power supplies. Some of the best in the industry, with 5 year warranties instead of the usual 3, can be found at PC Power And Cooling (http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com). Their Turbo Cool series are well regarded. Easier to obtain but almost as good is Antec's Performance series power supplies. I'd go with Enermax last - from my experience I've seen voltage fluctuations from Enermax units that made me wary but so far there have been no problems with them too.

When it comes to devices you never use I always make it a habit to disable them in the BIOS, which frees up resources and can speed up boot time as well. I disable on my machines: serial ports (COM), the parallel port (I no longer use any printers that connect to the parallel port), and any unused on-board devices.

Nigel, I don't know what to make of Tyan. I have the Tyan Tiger MP motherboard with dual 1.5GHz Athlon MPs (1800MP) with 2GB of DDR memory. Its been running without any problem for close to 2 years now.

However, even though I really like the motherboard I've seen many documented reports (with pictures) of that particular motherboard's ATX connector melting down! They've been RMA'ing those boards without question because they are familiar with the problem. To me that's unacceptable from a manufacturer.

Otherwise, I hear that many of their other MP boards are rock solid - just look for one with the additional power supply connection. If you're going dual AMD, you might want to wait for the dual Opterons when they come out with one with an AGP slot (there's only one board I know of with that spec but its from Rioworks and I'd rather wait to see more competition)

Thanks for agreeing Chris. I didnt recommend PC Power and Cooling because most people dont want to pay there prices. I love there PSs they are certainly the best in the industry. I use 2 of the redudants in my server. Never had a single power failure yet. they have been running nearly none stop for almost 2 years now.

I will say I like Antec out the more affordable PSs. I just usually always use a Antec case so I get the highend PS with it. As far as cases go there certainly not as pretty as Lian Li but there excellent and there affordable...I would highly recommens using one for your PC Charles...That is if you dont already have a case.

Thanks Scott. I already have a case but I'm buying a new one to go with the new setup I'm building just for editing. Just saw a good power supply for a reasonably good price - 550w. That should be enough - Well it should be.

So Christopher

If you want to print something, what do you do then?

if you want DUAL processor, there's nothing better than a dual AMD cpu mobo because of cost. you can have one for under $1.5k with good planning. a xeon, on th other hand, will run you $2k+ and performance/dollar isn't really worth it. the only thing xeon has on AMD is the memory speed, which the amd 760 chipset is showing its age. i have the tiger mpx (with the fixed usb problem) and it runs flawless. make sure you get a case with good airflow. if you don't you'll suffer. modern CPUs are simply waaaay too hot.

as for sticking with intel there's some right and wrong with it. intel is heavily optimized in multimedia apps such as 3dsmax. therefore it is worth considering xeon if you have the dough and cost is no object =).

http://forums.2cpu.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=13

Hello Charles, when I want to print something I send it to my print server, which is on my network. However, many printers nowadays use the USB port so you can use that too if you don't have a print server.

When it comes to building an editing machine I really do believe the less apps and extraneous devices there are the better. It should only be used for editing. I have another machine where I do my web surfing, writing, printing, etc. Having an NLE already determines a lot of the devices you'll need and I believe you can reduce overhead and problems when the only items you're worrying about have to do with the single purpose at hand. Been very stable this way. Increasing frame rates in a game while dealing with IRQ conflicts because of the capture card is not fun.

As for the power supply its not only about the raw power but also how well it handles voltage fluctuations. Brand name ones are good for this.

I know what you mean about PC Power and Cooling, Scott, they're expensive! But I try to account for that in the budgeting since its so important to the system's health.

After researching which new motherboard to build from I decided to stay away from Asus boards because of poor quality within the last year and no answer from Asus tech support. I also now own a Asus CUSL2-C that has given me problems for a long time. I don't know why you have ruled out intel but maybe you should look again. I am currently (as we speak) building a new P4 using the new D865PERL Rock Lake board. P4 2.4c Ghz 800fsb 2gigs DDR400 ram etc. This board has built in IEEE 1394a firewire, USB 2.0 backward compatible, 8x / 4x AGP, serial ATA and more. I decided after building 4 computers over the last six years I wanted a stable motherboard. So I went Intel. I know you didn't think about Intel but maybe it would at least be worth the time of considering it. Chip $ 172 M/B $ 127 Ram $ 380. After months of research weighing the cost vs stability, board options, and speed, Intel was the only logical motherboard with all the options I was looking for.

Absolutly Chris, a NLE PC should be a single use machine. I dont even allow mine to connect to the internet (I do all communications through the server) I dont even use my NLE PC for audio. I have a seperate PC that is dedicated to Cubase SX and WaveLab. Infact I dont even allow my special purpose Pcs to administrate themselves. All defraging and Virus scaning is done through my scheduler thats running on my server. I know this sounds extreme but having all of these machines with there own special purpose gives me the ultimate realiability.I havent seen a crash in months..No lock ups no BSODs nothing. Its like a PC utopia in my studio. Just the wonderful sound of 4 PCs and one server humming away.The only problem is the heat. I have a 20000 Btu window unit in the studio because the central air just cant handle the heat!

Don,
While the Intel SpringDale board is nice it is slow compared to the Gigibyte and the Abit this is because these boards have PAT or Hyper Path enabled. This is the memory acces architecture that the Intel 875 "canterwood" Northbridge uses.The feature is also intergrated into the 865 "Springdale" northbridge however it comes shipped from intel with PAT disabled. A few companys have suceeded in enabling PAT with a circuit that is external to the actual northbridge chip (pretty sneaky huh) This allows those 865 boards to perform about the same as a 875 board at a much lower cost. Intel does not have that enabled on there board because they would rather sell the more expensive 875 board. Th actual chip dont cost them anymore ot make so this is a good area for them to genarate more money.
If I were you I would pack that board up RMA it and pick up a Abit Ic7-G...For the money its just as stable and has much better performance

Ps Sorry about the Geek content of that last message

Agreed with you all. Some very valid points guys. Another question. Is there any particular type of memory I should marry together with this particular motherboard- 2700 or 2300 type cruial models?

IC7-G truly is a great board but I am not an overclocker as I like rock hard stability, even though the benchmarks are somewhat better for the IC7-G without overclocking and stability appears fine. I looked at this board but it was at least $ 70 more than the 865. The alternative plain IC7 does not support the DDR 400. It was just a choice I made because the benchmarks were not that much better, I believe the media ( mpeg 4 ) benchmarks were 63.89 for abit and 62.76 for the 865. The numbers were consistantly better for the Abit but not enough for the money.

According to the Abit website, the IC7 does support DDR400.

The difference between the "G" and "non-G" versions is the inclusion of gigabit LAN interface.

http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/mb_latest.jsp

Thats what I meant by "plain IC7". the difference between the G and Non G was fifty bucks but lacked DDR400 support. The D865perl (at about 15 bucks less than the plain IC7) was a well rounded board for the price.

But I don't know what you mean by "lacked DDR400 support" and "The alternative plain IC7 does not support the DDR 400". Both the IC7 and IC7-G support DDR400.

Am I being thick?

Recently built a system based on the IC7G Max. It ROCKS. With a Intel 3.0 and 1 Gig of RAM, I've overclocked to 3.57 gig and it's still stable! Don't usually run it that fast when editing but shows it's a solid board for sure!

just throwing another post of support for smp (dual cpu) system. the response time is truly incredible compard with single proc units. i mean even with adobe premiere 6.5 (uber slow) when i went from single to dual i totally felt the difference. when i click and move a something it really responds well. they don't measure that during 'benchmarks' but in real world the dual cpu system was made for NLE and the like. so my suggestion is if you want to NLE don't do it on p4 single, even with ht enabled, do it on either xeon or athlon mp. if you wait long enough you may even be able to do it on dual opteron or a64 in 64-bit =).

Yes the IC7 and the G both support DDR400. All Intel 845PEs, 7205,865,and 875 support DDR400. There northbridge comes that way from Intel. No Motherboard Supplier disables it. The benchmark you were looking at probably had the PAT disabled. The performance increase is pretty big in realtime performance. PAT affects the memory speed and the bandwidth anything that speeds up the bus or memory is going to translate into real word performance increases.

Charles,
Crucial makes some nice memory but for My money I buy Corsair matched set low latency PC3200 DDR..This ram is specifically designed to provide a fast stable system when used with a Dual Channel DDR Motherboard. ...If thats a little too expensive for you Kingston HyperX ram is pretty nice.....Avoid Geil like the plague...out of about 20 sticks i have seen recently I have RMA'ed 16 for stabiliy issues

You were correct Nigel, I had read it wrong, does not support fsb 400 which is unimportant, sorry.

Thanks Scott. Crucial it is.

So that you can feel even better with your choice, Crucial has some outstanding service and support. A few weeks ago I had to RMA what I thought was a faulty memory stick. It was easy to get ahold of a human, and in a minute, obtain an RMA number.

They give you two options. You can either ship your memory up in which case they'll wait for it before shipping you the replacement, or they can charge your credit card temporarily (as if you were buying it) and send the new memory stick right away. Once they receive the old memory they credit back your card.

I opted for the second choice but soon discovered I had a good piece afterall. Interestingly, I neglected to inform them of this and guess what - they ended up emailing me asking where it was so that they could credit my card! Excellent service - I told them it was okay and they thanked me for letting them know.

Good to know their lifetime warranty is no joke - this was for a memory piece I purchased close to two years ago.

Great to hear Christopher although expensive but that shows you get what you pay for.

for RAM i'm using a generic 1gb ecc registered stick pc2700 for roughly $185 (including shipping) on www.pricewatch.com

generic=not too shabby. i highly recommend it. brand name is one thing but what it comes down to is price. as long as it's ecc, it's proven. make sure you throw a ram sink clip on it.

Sorry for being dumb but what is a ram sink clip?

ABXforums is the best web site for the motherboards. If you are going single processor, you needs an 800Mhz board.

Those come in two chip lines of chipsets: Springdale (865) and Canterwood (875). Intel supposedly had additional performance features in the 875 but tests have been ambiguous. What the tests found is that the BIOS was more important than the chipset.

Abit and Asus have been at the head of the class. I would choose the Asus P4P800, and 865-chipset board because it doesn't use a fan on the northbridge (part of the chipset). It has been at the head of the class otherwise.

There are two Southbridge’s used. One includes 1394, the other does not. The P4P800 Deluxe has on-board 1394.

All of these boards use dual channel DDR400 memory. Not very expensive if you run it at DDR400.

Now comes the question: are you going to overclock. My older 2.4 runs at 2.875. My FSB is 160. My memory speed is DDR426 dual channel.

The newer processors overclock very well. If you overclock the memory are play with the memory timings you will need to buy quicker memory. DDR400 512mb SIMMS are under $100. DDR466 versions capable of a 2.0 CAS are closer to $200.

At DV Expo Adobe was using dual processor Xeon systems from Dell. Intel just lowered the price for the existing Xeon DP processors. The motherboards are slightly more expensive. ($400-500 vs $100-200). But note that these are all 533FSB not the newer 800FSB. For about $1100 you could have 2 2.8Mhz Xeons for a total of 5.6 Mhz.

The Xeon systems currently only support dual channel DDR266 and have minimal overclocking ability. So memory will be cheap.

David

David, I will be running single processor for the moment but now you got all wired up again. Everyone here was saying that the Abit IS7 -G was the board to go for. I checked the specs and it seems good. Now you're saying that the Asus is a better choice. Decisions Decisions. How can I make this come to choosing one or the other. i'm planning on using my new setup with Premiere pro and Avid.
Another thing I could never understand this 875 or 875E numders that these boards have. What the heck does it tell me?
All I want is a very good board that is stable can havdle alot of ram, fire wire, raid and the ATA's series. I didn't know it was going to be this hard. Phew!!!
You guys have been great so far.

Asus is the largest...support is out of Shanghai. Abit has been known for their overclocking capabilities. But with these Intel chip sets overclocking abilities are about the same.

If you get a non-defective and you don't short it, and 800FSB will probably be ok not overclocked. These all support hyperthreading, allowing captures and renders to go affected while you do something else.

I can also recommend the Antec Sonata case. It is sitting by my knee know. Quieter than a normal case, its 380w PS has one fan, the case has 1 120mm running 1600 rpm. If you aren't careful, the noisest part of your system can be the northbridge fan. It is on mine (Gigabyte motherboard).

Go to the abxforum.com

Before buying any motherboard I would definitely check out the following site:

www.tomshardware.com

I consider it THE authorative source for current motherboard tests and reviews given in a non-biased manner.

I have used Shuttle, Tyan, and ASUS motherboards in the past. I have found the ASUS boards to be the best supported and most stable. You're mileage may vary.

Thanks Carl. I'll check it out.

David. I'm not into over-clocking but will check out the specs and compare them with the board I had intended to get.

Tom's just had a big 24 motherboard comparison article. I refered to that when recommending you a board Charles.

As far as the old Abit vs. Asus thing goes.....There both excellent manufacturers and you probably wont be disappointed with either one of there offerings. I just typically recommend Abit products because I use them primarily and have very few problems with stability. I also have a great Asus board that I like as well. But when it comes to stability Abit has never let me down...Well except when the first Intel 820s came out..But that wasnt there fault, that was Intels...I also just recently had a great RMA experiance with Abit. My BE7 just stopped working I called Abit they sent me a RMA page to print out sent it in and in about 2-3 weeks I was looking at a brand new board. No problems no hastles

Thanks for the tip on the Tomshardware. It was infomative. I just read the 24 motherboard comparison article Scott and it seems they Asus slightly better than the Abit model that you recommeded. It's still a hard decisions. One thing that is different in the specs is that Abit has it all in terms of onboard features. The Asus board lacked the usually one spec over the Asus, in this case it was the raid feature. I wonder if one will really notice the performace difference in the real world. Has I understood these differences are usually minute.

BTW, how important is overclocking especially when concerning editing?

I do not overclock. I would not overclock a board that I used for editing. I am boring and unadventurous...or cautious, depending on which way you look at it.

I ahve used Asus in the past, but when I had an RMA a couple of years ago, the dealer wouldn't honour it citing Asus as not being willing. I don't know how much of that was BS from the dealer. Suffice to say that I've never used that dealer or that mainboard manufacturer since.

I've been very happy with my Abit VP6. I just wish I could get hold of a WI-2P.

RAID was more important when HDDs were 5400rpm. Most, if not all, modern HDDs are 7200rpm, which should be enough for capture. IMO, unless you really really need it, RAID is an unecessary complication.

Others may, and probably will, disagree.