socket 754 - out of date?

[MrP]

when the socket 754 was first released for athlons, i was under the impression it was a kind of stop gap and would be phased out pretty quick.

is thi still the case or are AMD keeping it around for a bit longer??

just asking cos i am thinking upgrading my dfi lanparty and xp2200 on the cheap

[Oakey]

If you decide to go the skt 754 route

*cough* http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=53901 *cough*

[MrP]

not enough posts to get into the for sale forum

[Oakey]

Oh, sorry. My Bad. I'll pm you instead.

[Rave]

On the desktop I believe that AMD are only selling Semprons for S754 now. All the Turions and Mobile A64s are still S754 though so you'll be able to get processors for the forseeable future as long as bioses support them. I'm pondering a cheap Semron64 2800/board upgrade myself.

[dodgybob]

I built a cheapish actual A64 2800 socket 754 system for my dad recently. Whilst the socket seems to be heading to the budget region of the amd line up i was impressed by how much faster and more responsive it seemed than my 2500xp barton at stock. Still may well be worth it for a good bump in performance from a 2200xp, particularly if you want to stay with your agp card. Although the more expensive semprons seem to be in the region of the socket 939 3000+ and at that point you might as well go socket 939.

[[DW]Cougho]

it isnt the premium line any longer but it can still play with the big boys.

I have a S754 3400 which on my lanparty can hit 2.7ghz, combined with my X800XTPE (modified pro) you have a very capable machine.

Id say go for it

[MrP]

which would be the motherboard of choice then, it has to have AGP as i have just got a radeon 9800 pro on its way to me

[uchiha_itachi]

The best Socket 754 motherboard is the DFI Lanparty UT nF3 250gb in terms of overclockering. And also at stock.

[geezerone]

Socket 939 seems to be the way ahead but upgradability is only useful in the short term as over a few years the mobo's have a rechange so it is highly likely that you would have to change mobo/cpu completely anyhow.

I have a 9800Pro (AGP) and it is a great card and can be had for just over £50 on ebay (6 months old) which is a bit of a bargain i reckon!

I noticed that overclockers have a couple of reasonably priced 939 mobo / cpu which you could checkout:

Mobo: Gigabyte K8NSC-939 nForce3 250GB
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...ocket_939.html

CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-131-AM)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal..._939_cpus.html

Mobo/CPU cost approx: £155 + CPU fan (£5 to £55 depending on needs) + P&P. Radeon 9800 pro = approx £60 (ebay)

[BUFF]

And also at stock.

The ABIT NF8 will outperform it at stock & it's a decent overclocker too.

[unreal]

I would go with the DFI LanParty boards too myself, got one for my mates Socket 754 system and it's a dream

[uchiha_itachi]

The ABIT NF8 will outperform it at stock & it's a decent overclocker too.

Hmm, wasn't aware of that. I was under the impression that once Oscar Woo left ABIT after the NF7 series motherboards, and joined DFI, things kinda went downhill for ABIT. I had the ABIT NF7-s V2.0, lovely board, and reached 244fsb with 10 multiplier along with my mobile 2500+ Barton and Corsair bh5 ram.

I suppose it was this review from Anandtech which gave the impression that for Socket 754 boards, nothing touches the DFI nF3. But looking back now, I suppose the review title being, "Overclockers Dream" was a slight giveaway.

So, to ammend my original post; If you are going to have non-performance stock ram and cpu then go with the ABIT NF8 board, but if you want a more performance board with room for overclocking go with the DFI UT nF3 board.

[BUFF]

Even my ABIT KV8 Pro outperformed my DFI nF3 at stock.
Just like their nF2 board & indeed their nF4 boards the DFIs are set up very loosely at stock (to let them run higher fsb/HTT) & you have to tweak them quite a bit to get decent performance if you are going to run them at stock speeds.

The problem with the ABIT NF8 is that they brought it out very late (if you remember they had a spat with nVidia) as such it has had very few reviews as everybody was looking at 939s by the time it was available. It's a good board though & will happily keep up with the DFI even overclocking.