motherboard ?'s

Hey all, I'm new to pc hardware and having trouble with finding a socket 754 and 939 that supports ddr2 ram. Do they make ones that support it; or is it when you buy a motherboard it already comes with ram installed, and you just upgrade from there?

 

to my knowledge, DDR2 is only supported on Intel chipets for Socket T (LGA-775) Pentium 4's. In any case, DDR2 is not an advantage currently as it runs more slowly than evenly matched DDR RAM. (it uses less voltage... but thats not extrememly beneficial just yet)

RAM does not come with the motherboard unless you order a 'barebone' bundle from a company who provide various other components in a 'package deal'.

your best bet (and for best performance) is to go with a socket 939 AMD 64 motherboard, depending on your price range: nForce 4 SLI PCI-Express chipset for best performance/highest price, or nForce 3 chipset for AGP 8x support and high performance/more reasonable price.

 

Make sure to price the video cards, too. It might be worth it to pay a little more for nforce4 with pci-express if you are going to save that much in buying a pci-express over an AGP 8x. Pci-express cards are considerably less expensive than AGP 8x cards and they seem to perform slightly better (though I'm still an AGP man myself).

 

this is only true for low and mid range cards (such as the 6600GT). for high end cards, PCI-Express cards are quite a bit more pricey than their AGP8X counterparts. so again, its a question of price and what you want performance wise