is nforce4 worth it?

[qwilliam]

hi guys. i'm debating about between getting two boards. one of the boards is a nforce3 ultra and the other is a nforce4 4x. so far, i'm leaning towards the nforce3 because it's cheaper pricewise. but, since nforce3 only has agp (for amd platforms), the vid card is going to cost me. i plan on getting a 6600 or above. but, if i get the nforce4, the board is going to cost me. so my question is, should i just get the nforce4 with a pci-e vid card? or should i save some money and go with the nforce3 (but shell out some serious cash for the agp card)? i'm sorta in a hurry to get my comp done by the end of january. thanks for any opinions.

p.s. does anyone have any info on the nforce4 4x? is that the stripped down version of the nforce4 or something? until yesterday, i only thought there were 2 types of nforce4 boards: the sli and non-sli ultra. thanks for any info.

[LegendKiller]

Personally I'd get the NF4. The NF4 4X is HyperTransport limited to 1600mhz whereas the Ultra and SLI are 2000mhz HT.


LK

[bachviet]

Get the NF4 4X and a GF 6600GT. :D

[zippyjuan]

One feature comparison chart: http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20041020/nforce4-03.html

nForce4 is much better than nForce3.

[Sparkpug]

The Nforce 4 is going to be really nice in the future. I say future because the boards are only trinkling out now, and many are expensive. I was planning on upgrading to an Nforce 4 SLI chipset and a single GT level card ASAP, but I've decided to live with my current system until early quarter 2 of 2005. If I was going into a new setup where I'd need a board and a GPU, I'd probably go for the Nforce 4 and a 6600GT PCI-E card if possible. Most tests on various webbies show the 6600GT is on par with a basic no frills 6800 in a lot of scenarios. Coupled with a good AMD64 CPU, performance would be pretty good. Later on down the line you could easily buy a new SLI-able board and another 6600GT for SLI if wanted, because by then, the boards would be relatively cheap. Another feature of the Nforce 4 is the addition of SATA 2, with features NCQ (Native Command Queing). The 300gb Maxtor hdd I am going to buy soon has this feature. I'm not exactly sure what it does (I haven't read a lot of the available material), but since lots of drives are appearing andthey have it, it surely has some signifigance.

I'm sure there's more than 2 flavors of the Nforce 4 chipsets. The top end would be the SLI, but they will also make a basic version with no extras besides the Ultras and higher end products. The only differences between the boards are usually features and extras, or in the case of the cheaper boards, less extras.

[qwilliam]

thanks for all the input guys. so, legendkiller, the only major difference between the ultra and 4x is the ht speed?

[clutchy]

there's a couple other differences as well, but i can't remember... i know the ultra is worth your money over the 4x especially if you're getting a high end athlon 64.

[LegendKiller]

thanks for all the input guys. so, legendkiller, the only major difference between the ultra and 4x is the ht speed?


Pretty much