About Motherboards

[Gav Mortis]

Epox 8K9A2+ (Socket A) Motherboard (MB-015-EP)
Epox's high performance Socket A Motherboard has the VIA KT400 chipset with fanless northbridge, but it's main benefit is the ability to populate all 3 DIMM slots with DDR400 memory such as Corsair XMS3200.

Featuring :
• 3 x 184pin DDR-SDRAM slots
• 5 x PCI slots
• 1 x AGP(8x) slot
• 4 x UDMA133 (upto 8 devices)
• Highpoint 372 RAID controller
• 6 x USB 2.0 ports
• Silicon Image Serial ATA150 controller (2 ports)
• Full voltage adjustment for CPU, RAM and AGP
• On-board LAN
• On-board 6 channel sound

At £96.25

Then there's this:

Epox 8K5A2+ (Socket A) Motherboard (MB-013-EP)
The Epox 8K5A2+ takes the superb performance and reliability offered by the 8K3A+ and goes much further. Featuring an updated VIA southbridge chipset to provide onboard 10/100mbps LAN and greatly improved system bandwidth, and Realtek powered 6-channel surround sound.

Featuring :
» 6 x PCI slots
» 1 x AGP (4x) slot
» 3 x 184pin DDR-SDRAM slots
» onboard 6 channel surround sound
» onboard 10/100mbps LAN
» UDMA133 hard drive support (upto 4 devices)
» 2 channel ATA133 RAID controller (upto 4 devices)
» USB 2.0

At £82.00

Now I've been told that if a motherboard has onboard sound that you cannot install a sound card onto it. If this is true then I will most definately opt for the first of the two as I cannot stand onboard sound, it sounds awful.

Is it true that with onboard sound you cannot have a sound card?

[Jeseth Cloak]

No, that's not true... I have a motherboard which comes with onboard sound, and have a soundcard installed as well. :)

[Gav Mortis]

That's good. Secondly, is it worth paying an extra £44 for Windows XP Pro instead of Home?

[Jeseth Cloak]

Well... I don't know. It depends on how easy it is for you to come across £44. That's about $27, right? I suppose that the tiny bit of extra cash is worth it, but it all depends on if you really want to part with the money. I personally don't pay for most software... but that's just me.

[Morgan Evanar]

LOL. Almost every board comes with built in sound. Just disable it in the bios.

Also, XP home is fine unless you want to upgrade to a dual processor setup anytime soon.

[Gav Mortis]

Originally posted by Jeseth Cloak
Well... I don't know. It depends on how easy it is for you to come across £44. That's about $27, right? I suppose that the tiny bit of extra cash is worth it, but it all depends on if you really want to part with the money. I personally don't pay for most software... but that's just me.

£44 = $69.57

I'd rather buy my operating system although for most software I know what you mean, too much money to worry about especially when you have to buy new hardware.

And as for the whole onboard sound thing, it was Peter aka Garrett who was convinced that you can't use a soundcard if you have onboard sound on you motherboard. I will blame him. :)

I'll probably go for the Home Edition of XP then. Now I can save money to purchase a Raedeon 9700 Pro graphics card over the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 I was hoping for. :)

[Jeseth Cloak]

Features in Pro that aren't in Home:

You can access a Windows XP Remote Desktop from any OS that supports a Terminal Services client (such as Windows 98). XP Home can act as the client in a Remote Desktop session, but only Pro can be a server.

Multi-processor support

Microsoft's new Automated System Recovery

Dynamic Disk Support

Internet Information Services/Personal Web Server

Encrypting File System

File-level access control

Home Edition can't be used to logon to an Active Directory domain. The Domain Wizard is also missing in Home Edition.

IntelliMirror

Multi-language support

Sysprep support

The user interface for IPSecurity (IPSec)

SNMP

Simple TCP/IP services

SAP Agent

Client Service for NetWare

Network Monitor

Multiple Roaming feature

Client-side caching

So basically, if you don't particularly need any of those things, then don't bother to spend the money. :)

[Marcus Telcontar]

In other words, nothng important. Get XP Home Gav.

[Jeseth Cloak]

Yup, pretty much...

[Oriadin]

The only thing I found of benifit for Pro compared with Home was the fact that I like to do ASP programming. Test it on my PC first obviously and Home wont let you do it. There is a work around, and I know it works because ive got it on my laptop but its not exactly supported :)

[Marcus Telcontar]

Use Apache for that. IIS or PWS sucks harder than a vacuum

[Mr. Happy]

The trouble with this generation is that you're all so dependant on technology.

Well not me! I'll make do with my charm, and this abbacus.

[Moltar]

Your Abbacus is connected to a 56k dial up or hooked into a 100 MB Lan, with 1 GB RDRAM and a CPU that makes a P2 look like a pile of stones.

[Mr. Happy]

Oh yes, its very shiny. Mahogany beads and cherry finish, top of the line model!

[Figrin D'an]

Yeah, Gav, go with XP Home, and save the money for your AGP card. The Radeon 9000 series is great. I have the 9000 Pro, 128 mb version, and I love it. From everything that I have read, the 9700 and 9700 Pro just rock the house. You'll be happy with it, I'm sure.

Motherboard-wise, I put the ASUS A7V8X in my new box. It uses the VIA KT400 chipset, and onboard sound and gigabit LAN. I've been very pleased with it, so there is another option if you are interested.

Onboard sound has actually gotten quite a bit better in recent years... it used to be abysmal, but some newer boards have some nice sound specs. But, yeah, it's easy enough to disable if you want to use a PCI card.