Thanks for the response.

I'm familiar with that board and I also found the AGP+PCIE support
impresive. Anyway, any board based on socket 939, seems to result in a
computer above the budget (Mainly because there are no Semprons for Socket
939).

The other point is that in Israel (my country) it seems that only very few
stores sell the Asrock. I considered the Asrock socket 754 based on the
ULi chip, but decided not to use it due to availability limitations here.

If I decide that due to lack of enough experience around me with the K8U
not to use it, I might go with either GA-K8NS which is slightly more
expensive, or to switch to one of the cheaper boards with internal VGA,
and MicroATX form factor (it seems that with modern boards we do not need
5 PCI slots.

Uzi

On 18 Nov 2005 at 15:25, Atman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Sorry I don't have any experience with that one. Lately for entry level
> systems I've been suggesting ASRock motherboard. It has Socket 939 and will
> accept the dual core CPU's.
>  *ASRock 939Dual-SATA2*
>  http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050916/index.html
>  It has the advantage of being extremely flexible and a bit more 'forward'
> thinking if there is such a thing nowadays. Best of Luck and Have fun with
> it.
>  As always, when searching for a 'store' to purchase from check out
> http://www.resellerratings.com
> for some customer comments
>  David
>  On 11/18/05, Uzi Paz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > I was requested to suggest a relatively low budget computer to a friend.
> > It is not meant for gaming, but more for office apps, and for Internet,
> > and simple audio and movies.
> >
> > I thought of:
> >
> > 1. Sempron: 2500 or 2600 or 2800, box (haven't decided: the differeces
> > are not big, neither in price not in performance). 2. Gigabyte GA-K8U 3.
> > Samsung 512MB RAM (PC3200) 4. Compucase 6A19 case+ psu 5. DVD-RW: LG
> > 4167B or 4165B (still I did not understand what are the differences
> > between them - I might go with the 4165). 7. Albatron based on FX5200
> > display 8. HD: WD800JB
> >
> > There are mainly two questions:
> >
> > 1) I read very good opinions about the ULi chip used by the K8U, on
> > Anandtech and on TomsHardware, but I found not enough opinions on this
> > specific board. On one of the only places where I found opinios, many
> > said that they are happy with it, but some complained about long boot
> > time, and some had problems with it. I wish to know if there is some
> > experience with this mobo here.
> >
> > 2) I know that Kingston, and Twinmos sometimes use chips not made by them
> > in their memory sticks, and I've heard that there are quality differences
> > depending on the brand of the chips themselves. Can anyone elaborate on
> > this? and more specific: on those specific brands?

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