Motherboard Croaked, Need Suggestions...

[Oona Wynterbreeze]

Long story short... (Okay... kinda short) Was playing EQ a few days back, graphics went wild and after a few tries rebooting to still ugly graphics the comp stopped rebooting at all. Symptoms pointed to the power supply and the video card going bye-bye. Got an Antec Truepower 420w ATX12v power supply and an ATI Radeon X700 Pro (AGP) video card and installed them. Still wouldn't boot. When I ran out of things I could check on my own I took it to a local comp store and they were nice enough to pronounce the motherboard DOA. It was an ASUS A7N8X-X. I'm guessing my old power supply took the vid card and motherboard down with it. However, my AMD Athlon XP 1600+ processor managed to survive.

Bottomline: I need a new motherboard, but I have to make one decision before I can narrow it down completely. Do I keep my current processor and get a new motherboard for it (there are still a number of boards out there that will support it) or do I just use this as an excuse to upgrade the processor and get a new motherboard that will support my new video card regardless of the recommended processor? I currently have 4 sticks of 256MB DDR ram (three were in the comp, one was a spare) lying around and I mainly use the computer for EQ. Basically EQ was the most "demanding" thing my comp ever had to deal with. Not worried about trying to hook it up to a TV or anything else fancy. Really just want to get back up and running. Anyone one have any suggestions for a new motherboard and/or and new motherboard and processor. The sky isn't the limit on money (since some of you might remember that I had my hard drive die on me just three weeks ago), but if I could get some suggestions that would give me some baseline specs to look at that I could tweak up or down a little depending on the cost it would be great. Any other info I may have left out that would help just ask.

Thanks in Advance.

[KyrosKrane]

EQ is so heavily CPU dependent it's not funny. Once you have a "decent" video card, you want to focus on your processor usage. (I put "decent" in quotes because it's hard to describe without turning unnecessarily technical or providing a list of chipsets.)

DDR RAM is still widely used, so you can salvage those. I would personally take this as an opportunity to upgrade to a new CPU. Which one you get will depend more on your budget than anything else, but I would suggest getting the fastest one you can afford. (At this point, you're basically buying a new computer.) Athlon 64 processors tend to perform faster and cost less than comparable Intel chips, but Intel's Pentium 4 line is just as good for pretty much any everyday line -- you'll only really spot a difference between a comparable Athlon 64 and a Pentium 4 if you actually run a benchmark program.

For a good idea of what's out there and a ballpark price, check out some of the comparison pricing sites. I use PriceWatch as my first place to price-check because they list darn near every product in existence, though I usually end up buying from Fry's Electronics. People also highly recommend NewEgg, though I haven't shopped there myself.

[Itek]

I use PriceWatch as my first place to price-check because they list darn near every product in existence, though I usually end up buying from Fry's Electronics.

That's almost exactly what I was gonna say.

All you need is a MB that supports your RAM and video card. Set a budget and buy the fastest MB/CPU combo you can get. (Intel vs AMD is a religious debate at this point. I've got friends that use only AMD. I've got a friend that WORKS for Intel. And a brother-in-law who works for Motorola. I buy whatever is cheap and works.)

Budget FIRST if money's a factor. (and rare is the person for whom it's not) Then get as close to that as you can. (Remember shipping and handling. Some places on PriceWatch say free shipping, but ... well you get what you pay for, TANSTAAFL.)

TANSTAAFL = There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

[Oona Wynterbreeze]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, since it's been YEARS since I've even had to do the research on purchasing a new motherboard and processor can anyone give me some minimum specs to look for that I can tweak as my money allows. FSB speeds (do those vary much? have only glanced so far), Bios features, chipset suggestions, oh and I would like to stay with AMD personally for the processor, any other features to look for?

KyrosKane... you made the comment about EQ being so CPU dependent... amazingly enough with that ancient processor and motherboard I had very few issues (guess I got lucky) had all newer models turned on and only *really* lagged if I forgot to turn off all spell effects during a raid or tried to turn on my shadows... hehe. The vid card that died was "decent"... can't remember what it was and I think it's in the trash already.

[KyrosKrane]

In real-life, day-to-day use (such as browsing the Internet or using office-type applications), FSB, BIOS features, and so on have negligible impact on PC performance. Gaming needs will vary wildly from player to player -- someone who plays single-player RPG's will have different priorities from someone who plays first-person shooters over the Internet, and someone who plays EQ2 with all the bells and whistles will want an entirely different beast of a PC from someone who plays EQ with a bit of Solitaire on the side (read: me ).

Based on my personal experience, I've found EQ requires:

1) Lots of memory: 1GB or more is ideal. EQ only uses 400-500MB with everything turned on, but Windows itself uses 100-200MB on top of that, and if you have anything running in the background (and you do -- look at the system tray on the right-hand side of your task bar), that will use up more memory. Since you have 1GB in four sticks, you should be fine.

2) CPU horsepower: From what I can tell, this is the limiting factor for EQ. Getting the fastest CPU you can afford is probably the smartest decision you can make, once you've bumped your memory to 1GB or more. On the AMD side (which you've said you prefer), I wouldn't recommend anything less than an Athlon 64, budget permitting.

3) Video horsepower: EQ simply doesn't come anywhere near stressing the firepower of any video card from the last two years or so. As far as EQ is concerned, anything in the nVidia GeForce 56xx series or higher-numbered, 6xxx series, or ATI Radeon 96xx or 98xx serries, and Radeon X6xx or X8xx series will work just fine for EQ. Later-generation cards will allow you to turn on a few more bells and whistles, but features like shadows will still bring literally any card on the market to its knees if used in a crowd. (One developer explained this by saying that since EQ has to maintain compatibility with some very old cards indeed, they can't enable hardware support for the newest features on video cards, which means the CPU has to do much of the grunt work.) Just be sure you have at least 128MB on your video card; 256MB is the baseline for late-model cards.

As to the motherboard itself, I would suggest something based on Socket 939 for future compatibility -- AMD has said they will be phasing out the older Socket 754 in the near future. Naturally, you want to make sure the CPU you buy fits the socket on the motherboard, so look for a CPU that says Socket 939. If you're not buying a combo (CPU plus motherboard), look for a "boxed" CPU -- it costs a bit more than an "OEM" CPU, but it comes with a warranty and a CPU fan that's well suited to your particular CPU. You also said you have an AGP video card and four memory sticks, so you will want a PC that supports them. If you don't already have a good sound card, look for a motherboard that has built-in sound. It's usually not as good as a real sound card, but it's also a heck of a lot cheaper. Pretty much any motherboard out there today will have a bevy of USB ports and support for most any hard drive and CD-ROM from the last ten years.

If you're into the techy details of what makes a motherboard tick or which one benchmarks faster than the others, I'd suggest a good hardware review site like Anandtech or Tom's Hardware. Anandtech also has some sort of price-check engine built into their site; I imagine Tom's has something similar.

If you want anything more specific than that, I'd need to know more about your budget and needs. Still, I hope I've at least given you a base from which to start looking.