Chipsets and Graphics Cards

[PhoeniX51]

I'm looking into mATX motherboards and there's not that many of them, but if I want to put in a 7800GT graphics card, does the chipset have to be nforce4 or something like that? I'm pretty much lost...

 

[Hairy_Lee]

if you're looking to build something like a shuttle PC then you'll have a very hard time powering a Geforce 7800 with the small form power supplies.

it doesn't matter what chipset you have for the geforce as long as the board has a pci express slot for the 7800 (and as long as the board supports the CPU of course )

 

[PhoeniX51]

OK good to know. I'm thinking with this high end card and other stuff I might want to just get a regular ATX form factor MoBo.

What is the "best" chipset right now?

 

[Hairy_Lee]

i believe the nforce 4 is considered the best at the moment. you might wanna hang around and see what other members have to say first though

 

[Palatzo]

Best is nf4, but you might want to wait for some of the boards with ULI chipsets to come around. I've seen a few reviews on it and it is very impressive, and the flexibility is great. A board with pci-e and agp, or 2 pci-e 16x cards. Neither of which you will need in your case, but it might be worth waiting for, in case the boards are significantly cheaper.

 

[PhoeniX51]

So the only thing different about these ULI boards is the cost? If this is the case, money isn't really an object for me right now. I don't use AGP slots either.

 

[Palatzo]

Well I haven't seen any ULI boards for sale, but I also haven't looked. I read a review on tomshardware somewhere and they are just as good as nforce boards, but much more versatile.
As for cost, I have no idea, but you can get a good nf4 board pretty cheap so I guess it doesn't matter.

 

[Cromewell]

They are big in Asia, I don't think you can buy in in North America

 

[PhoeniX51]

By Asia you probably mean China . I'll do some research on these but as long as they're the same as most other boards I'll switch my old nforce4 out and put this new one in if I feel the need.

 

[Praetor]

You can get them in NorthAmerica but their selection is silly limited (i think only 1 board or so) ... played around with an Uli board after buddy got back from China a week ago ... you can treat them for all intents and purposes as being on par with their nF4 counterparts (the NF4s are better but not by all that much and the ULis are cheap)

 

[Cromewell]

By Asia you probably mean China

China is most of Asia But they are reasonably popular outside of china as well

 

[PhoeniX51]

To get an SLi setup for videocards you need the nforce4 SLi chipset correct?

 

[Hairy_Lee]

not necessarily, all that matters is that the motherboard is stated as being SLI or crossfire (if you're gonna take the ATI route) compatable

 

[Praetor]

but if I want to put in a 7800GT graphics card, does the chipset have to be nforce4 or something like that? I'm pretty much lost...

No. It just needs to be a chipset thats supports PCIE

To get an SLi setup for videocards you need the nforce4 SLi chipset correct?

Yes. Although arguably you could hack the NF4U to a SLI model as well)

not necessarily, all that matters is that the motherboard is stated as being SLI or crossfire (if you're gonna take the ATI route) compatable

SLI and Crossfire are different things (i do know what you mean but its a somewhat important distinction). I believe Via also has a similar idea with their K8T890 chipset but i dunno offhand (unless you mean the NF4U-->SLI hack)