ASUS P5N32-E Memory issues?

[williamsc47]

Hey all,

Ok i'm new here so say Hi everyone :) ..lol, yeah ok anyway.

I am about to purchase a PC, either buy having it built for me (quite possibly by ARIA) or by buying the components and building myself. I know a bit about what I am doing and what to look for but I am certainly no expert so help is appreciated :)

First of all, what does everybody think of the ASUS P5N32-E motherboard? I am keen to go with a \"Quad core ready\" board and this one looks pretty good to me, but are there any known problems with this board? I have heard that there is an issue when you go over 2GB of ram, how concerned should I be about this? Basically any thoughts and opinions would be appreciated :)

Also, if anyone could suggest some graphics cards (an area I know next to nothing about) I would be grateful. I have never been much of a PC gamer so I don't want a monster card, but something descent which will generally perform well for a price of around £100 or less would be cool.

Finally, any thoughts on having a PC build by ARIA, any experiences? Also I am assuming that a PSU and cabling is included in the price as they are not down as critical item when you go through the builder?

Cheers, Craig

PS: So far I am leaning towards intel...until now I have always been an AMD user and have always been happy with it, but it appears that intel have the upper hand at present....anybody think of any reasons (apart from price) to consider AMD?

[djdaface]

I just ordered one of these motherboards so I hope there is no issues

Although i wont be getting more than 2gb of ram untill i go vista as XP doesnt support it anyway.

oh and Intel all the way at present :P

[Aaron]

Yeah, as far as i'm concerned, even price isnt a reason to go with AMD at the moment. AMD chips that are priced similarly to a chip in the Intel range are being trounced hand over foot by Intel at the moment.

Unless you are building a rig on an extreme budget, the best performance, and the best price are with Intel at the moment. Ive always liked AMD, but they just dont have anything that can compare at the moment.

I hope they can change that in the future tho!!

[williamsc47]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies so far...please keep the the thoughts and ideas flooding in :) I am especially interested to hear what people think on the motherboard and any other quad core ready boards for that matter, as well as graphics cards for around the £100 mark.

Looks like I was right about going with intel this time though :)

Cheers

[djdaface]

It toyed between the ASUS one and this one

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=25506

For a good week or so, went for ASUS because i have always liked them in the past (and it was slightly cheaper lol)

[williamsc47]

OK, I am still very tempted on this board but reading various bits of info, I am a little concerned, take a look here:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=210542

I have seen a number of pages like this, any ides anyone?

Cheers, Craig

[mac124]

Why do you feel you need to run more than 2gb of mem?

[djdaface]

If you want 4gbs of ram you will have to have vista


which is still prerelease so they dont even know just how buggy it is yet, so if your getting 4gbs of ram thats the least of your worries id say... you wont have a single driver thats signed more to the point


id say stick with 2gb ram stick with xp and u can always stick another 2 in when theres a firmware update for the board

I'm glad i went with the asus board I read alot yesterday that you need a floppy drive for drivers etc on the evga board, who the hell uses a floppy drive these days how stupid is that

[williamsc47]

Oh yeah I totally agree, I have no interest in anything more than 2GB of RAM at the moment no point at all, and I can't afford it for that matter...lol...but just concerned for future support.

If I knew for certain that it was a problem that WILL be solved by an update from ASUS I wouldnt even have asked the question, but how sure are we that this problem will be solved in the near future?

[mac124]

Fair enough :lol: true though no pint atm and probably wont be for some time till the games come out really pushing DX10

[williamsc47]

So what does everyone think then? will this problem be resolved or will it have to be something that keeps annoying me in the back of my mind..lol

Also people seem to be reporting that it's picky with the RAM it supports, im currently looking at some Corsair DDR2 667 PC5300 will that be ok?

Sorry to keep banging on guys but as i'm sure you can appreciate, I really wanna get this right :)

Cheers, Craig

[mac124]

When C2D first came out alot of motherboards were VERY picky about memory though alot of these issues have been resolved with bios updates so it might be worth checking to see how old the posts are that are reporting these issues.

Also could i be so bold as to suggest some quicker ram? DDR2 800 (PC6400) would be far nicer and not that much more expensive and would improve performance too.

[williamsc47]

OK, thanks for the advice :)

Sadly it's too late to add the gaster RAM as I have already ordered :( however i'm not entirely sure I could have found any extra cash to be honest...lol...which RAM would you have suggested?