Upgrade Time SoA>So939

Yup, its that time again, and I'm bored so I'm gonna talk you all thru my upgrade as it happens, jesus I really am that bored ;)

Well, the motherboards just turned up, Abit AV8-3rd Eye.
Now call me fussy but I like the fact that you open the box and theres 2 boxes inside it, now I like this, its attention to detail, makes you think theres a nice quality product inside, its all nice n snugg removing the chances of bits flapping around in transit, and lets face it, theres a lot of transit between here and where ever these baords are made, which, if the stamp on the board isnt lying to me is China..
Anyways, the boxes, imagine how shocked I was when I opened one of them and its got this thing in it called a uGuru Clock, dunno what it is yet as I havent plugged it in or read the fappin manual so we'll come back to that one later :D

The other box has the usual cables in it, IDE, Floppy, 2x SATA, USB/Firewire Back Plate and the Mobo Back Plate..
Now call me fussy but I'd like to see 2x IDE cables in there personally, is that just me being greedy? I dunno, who cares, probably not ABit otherwise I'm sure they'd be putting 2 IDE cables in there... ;)


Board layout is pretty familiar to anyone thats built a PC before.
Not sure why the floppy headers at the top right of the board when the IDE's are on the bottom right as usually your IDE and Floppy drive are pretty close to each other, that is if your still using a floppy drive, which in all honesty is pretty likely, unless of course you believe all this Mac hype about the floppy being dead ;)

1 AGP, 5 PCI, pretty standard these days, I havent gone for a PCI-E board as my 9800Pro has still got some legs in it even if there getting a bit tired with things like HL2 coming out now and my upgrade path is limited by budget so buying new gfx cards wont be on the books until I get my next motherboard.

No Northbridge Fan, hmmm, a new one, especially as this boards meant to be good for overclocking, oh well theres a fan header there if u feel the need, speaking of fan headers theres 5 of them, thats probably enough for most people, if its not, erm, tough I guess...
2 Firewire Headers, good, you can never have enough fired wire, apparently, so I've heard :inquisiti
2 USB Headers, personally this isnt enough, I've got my Card Reader that'll be plugged into one and the front of my case has 4 USB ports on the front, plus theres 1 on the backing plate so I need 4 at least, I cant imagine I'm the only one..
1 uGuru Header, really should read that manual...
PS/2 ports as per usual, neither will be used on my system as I have USB versions.
1x Serial Port, I can see this dying before the Floppy Drive IMHO, but I can see it being useful for people out there that have things like road angels etc that plug into your PC via serial port.
1x Parallel Port, another port that seems to be dying, strange really, only today did I have a friend ring me wanting to know if I had a PCI Parallel card as his board didnt have a port on it..
4x USB, pretty much the norm these days, I'd rather have them on the board personally for reasons mentioned above..
1x Firewire, nice, no use to me, sure if I had an Ipod I'd love this, but I dont, infact its a Mac product, never gonna happen ;)
RJ45, network for u not so technical people out there, its got a built in network card, ideal for plugging into, you guessed it, a network... Sweeet...

what are you upgrading from?? if it's better than an MSI KT3 and an XP2100+ you *might* wanna talk to me about peddling it this way.....

I'm upgrading from an NF7S-2 with XP2500
to
AV8-3rd Eye and A64/3000+

And the old board and chips already going elsewhere chap, otherwise the upgrade wouldnt be happening at all..

Rite, anyone got an XP2500 system thats thinking of upgrading to A64/3000+ and want me to do any comparative tests, my CPU's not due to arrive until 2moro so thats a few test runs, bear in mind that nothing else is the system is being upgraded or changed, everything other than board n chip will be exactly the same, ram gfx everything...

ah well.. it was worth a try anyway :) Never mind...