Looking for advice on motherboard upgrade??

[ddrawley]

I was running the GB-PVR on my Gigabyte NForce2 for some time. No lockups or issues.
I had an Asus Via KT333 chipset board for several years. It was nothing but grief. It would occasionally drop to PIO hard drive access and I would have to force it back to DMA. The USB ports were cranky and intermittent. The VIA 4-in-1 drivers are critical to address the problems with IRQ routing in their chipsets.
My current rig runs without issue on an Intel i815 chipset and PIII 1.0 gig. I display all my content on an MVP.
PVR-150-MCE
I have always run AGP video whenever possible. I do not see an issue if you use an MVP to do the display. Onboard video is usally fairly whimpy, with the exception of NVidia.

[gEd]

gED looking at this you should have a pretty similair setup to mine, do you still find there are things you cant do or does that rig run everything smoothly?

it seems run everything just fine - i can record 2 shows at the same time whilst watching a third without any problem. the transcoding from mpeg to xvid is rather slow (~1GB of mpg per hour) but that is the xp chip for you.

I run speedfan (google) to control the fsb, dropping down from 159 (stable limit of the mobo) which equates to 1.7ghz to 140 odd when the cpu load is low. Speedfan also regulates the speed of the cpu fan.

my biggest challenge has been to (sucessfully) make the pc quiet enough that the wife doesn;t notice if it is left on at night.

hth

[stu8080]

Yeah the Aria PSU isnt as quiet as they make out. Speedfan might be quite handy, their website say they support an ATX board that uses the same chipset as mine so im hoping i get support, so my almost quiet pc should get that bit quieter... i gave up total silence cos you have to use something very expensive like a hush system or fanless PSU's

[nitrogen_widget]

The only problem I’ve had with an Nvidia chipset was that it insisted on using the same memory address as my older AGP card. So I got a new card & no problems.
I also had a MB with the SIS chipset & on-board HD performance was fast. However, every other month it would loose it’s bios settings.
I had problems with the KT-133 via chipsets when it came to compatibility & that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Older via chipsets on older motherboards never really gave me problems.
I have no experience with Intel chipsets.
I myself prefer the nvidia chipset. I don’t recall having too many issues with the 2 PCs I have running them now.

[gEd]

Yeah the Aria PSU isnt as quiet as they make out. Speedfan might be quite handy, their website say they support an ATX board that uses the same chipset as mine so im hoping i get support, so my almost quiet pc should get that bit quieter... i gave up total silence cos you have to use something very expensive like a hush system or fanless PSU's

I actually did manage to make the aria psu quieter by replacing the fan with an antec amber fan - not something for the faint hearted due to the real risk of killing yourself if you get a dose of mains power still lingering inside,

definately helped tho.

The Nforce2 chipset is generally regarded by overclockers as THE best chipset for the Athlon chip, in terms of performance, overclocking capabilities, features, soundchip and stability.

My main rig uses the Abit NF7-S (full size mobo) which was one of the best for the xp chip and I have been delighted with it. currently runs at 2.4Ghz from a mobile 2500 at 1.7v.

anyway, drifting off topic here...:-)

[stu8080]

ive not been too worried about overclocking, in fact my Duron was under clocked and the voltages reduced to allow it to run with a very slow fan, it was even stable with the fan off and just a zalman 'flower' type cooler cooling passively. Didnt trust it though and thought ShowAnalyser would probably crash it after a few days.

I thought about sanding the blades of the PSU fan to get a cleaner edge but didnt fancy dismantling my Aria completely!

[PMF]

Hi stu8080, please see my update regarding mobo problems.
MSI seems to work well.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=11488

[stu8080]

Just so you know its taken me three days to get windows installed using the SiS 741 mobo!!!!!

everytime the install would either give BSOD with IRQ_NOT_EQUAL etc or MEMORY_MANAGEMENT errors, or woul simply be unable to write files to HD to install.

I updated BIOS, used different RAM, different Processor (my old Duron) different HD and cable, different DVD drive and different WIN XP disk as mine might be a bit scratched... nothing worked dramatically apart from the RAM change which eventually allowed me to get through the instal and everything seems ok so far....

Its not left me confident to say the least! unless its perfectly stable for the next few days i might send it back!

Anyone know what might have caused this out of interest?

[Torque]

I'd say your memory wasn't compatible or the memory timings were too aggressive in the BIOS. I had this issue with the Corsair Value Select memory I put in my PVR. I had to update the bios and manually set the timings rather than let the board use the SPD on the memory.

[ddrawley]

SiS 741 mobo!!!!!

You stated the problem right there.
Sis is made to be cheap, not good. Sis chipsets have given me grief on several occasions. I avoid them whenever possible. The money saved on the motherboard is quickly consumed by the labor hours and instability.