For the most part i think most dualie amd boards are pretty much the same. Some of the options vary between vendors and that could be your buying decision. I think more important is matching the board with the right components for stability (these boards do seem to be very picky about hardware). ie. Tyan boards do not like crucial memory, MPX boards in general do not like certain sound blaster cards, etc.. I have an ASUS A7M266-D with dual mp1800, and have found stability with crucial ram, enermax 550w (I admit its a bit overboard but i usually do things that way ) and SB live (only with the most current drivers). Good luck to ya!
Much as I often state with regard to single-processor boards, it is important to buy from a manufacturer with experience. Which, in the case of dual boards rules out MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and for the most part, Abit (although they've been doing them longer than the others in that list). Look at the workstation board specialists, such as Tyan and Supermicro, as they have a great deal more experience. Oh, and forget about overclocking. Dual systems are designed to be reliable, not overclockable, and trying to keep the two CPUs in step is hard enough, without overclocking, so you'll find most boards lack overclocking features to some extent, and the results you'll get with overclocking are more likely to be instability than performance gains.
But Tyan boards are like the twice the price of MSI, Asus or any of the other dual boards out there. Don't really think I can afford it ... On the MSI board, it is possible to take the FSB upto 150 if your other components can stand it. I would like to pay as less as possible and get any little FSB increments I can as well. Or would it just be better to go for a single cpu system with prometeia cooling ? I wanna use it mainly for divx encoding and folding@home
You're actually prepared to pay for a dual-CPU machine just to boost your folding score? Ah well, your money. DivX encoding should be able to take good advantage of dual-CPUs. There's a reason that the tyans cost twice as much.... If you MUST have a board from one of the bigger taiwanese manufacturers, look at abit. They've been producing dual boards much longer than most (who can forget the BP6 and S370 celeron craze?). Otherwise gigabyte, who have produced server boards for many years and have an excellent reputation for stability. Stability is hard enough to come by on dual boards. My landlord's Tyan Tiger couldn't complete installation of windows without ECC memory, even with only a single CPU installed.
the Tyan is probably the best board for your purpose, albeit at a high price. Supermicro tends to be more server biased with onboard U160 SCSI RAID, gigabit ethernet and so forth as standard a lot of the time. Tyan can have these features but also do a very bare board with few of the usual server niceties to cut down the price. The Asus A7M266-D and MSI K7D are supposed to be good boards (indeed I think it'd be hard to find a truly crap dual cpu board, and both companies are experienced and hardly amateur), and have a few basic overclocking options (though as Isaac has said overclocking dual cpus is difficult), and are aimed more at the power user who wants to do video editing or something, rather than the server market, lacking the SCSI and gigabit ethernet etc. Personally I'd go with the basic tyan board if i was going dual cpu, but failing that I think either the Asus or MSI would do the job adequately. Check out http://www.2cpu.com for advice on all things dual-cpu related.
Tyan, is in fact your option for the cheapest board. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Supermicro don't actually make a dual AMD board. I'd say if you want overclocking type features, then you do have an option in the MPX2.
Do you know a model for the Tyan ? Coz i asked at a computer store and they said that the cheapest tyan board they has was £300 whereas I can see the msi and asus boards on komplett and scan for around £180 or so. And any links to good shops would be appreciated. Thanx & supermicro definitely does not make a dual amd mobo. cant afford the xeons either. just gonna mod the athlon xp into mp using the L5 bridge thing.
Yep, that'll be the old Thunder. A seriously hardcore server board. Gone down a little since the release of the newer Thunder K7X. Aria has both and the Tiger MP (the Tiger is the one you'll want). The MPX is newer, but the older MP is still a good board at the lowest price. You can normally turn up a few brand new boards on the cheap on ebay. Amplicon have the MPX2 and it comes in just under 200 notes. A very good price and not very easy to find in the UK. I think scam actually have dual AMD boards on todayonly nearly once a week.
http://www.overclock.co.uk/moreinfo.php?id=313 There's more to the difference between MP and XP than just the bridging. Basically the MPs are the very best, most stable cores. You may have stability issues running XPs in dual, even with the bridge mod. Supermicro was just an example of a long-standing dual board manufacturer. That they don't make AMD dual boards may tell you something...
It says that the fastest chip it can take is the athlon mp 1900+ ... i suppose that will be sorted if I get the latest bios ? Thanx
IMHO, and ive built 6 dually amd rigs, is that the msi board is the best for decent overclocking and stability, the iwill is the best for extreme overclocking but only for experienced builders/tweakers, and the tyan is for those who dont want to tweak anything at all and just want a stable platform myself, im using the asus board and while many have reported problems with this board i have no problems getting up to a 160ish fsb and can still run pc mark and 3dmark
My mind had been pretty much set on the MSI mobo ... just wanted to know what the general opinion of dual mobos was. I think I'll go with that, even though the system is on hold for a while coz I spent the money on a new toshiba p4 1.6ghz lappy. Can I email if I have any more silly questions later ? pls ?
