Chipsets, integrated audio, integrated NIC, etc

What do people think about having the same manufacturer providing the
onboard features on an ASUS board? For example, is it better to have
an ASUS board with an Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel audio chip, Intel
onboard NIC, and Intel SATA, or does it really matter? At the moment I
have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (AMD CPU, nVidia chipset, Silicon SATA,
Marvell NIC) which I'm thinking of changing in the New Year, and I'd
like some opinions about this beforehand.
Many thanks,
Gerard

I think that there is general agreement that Intel makes the best
chipsets for Intel processors.

Beyond the chipset, it really doesn't matter. Some of the chipsets have
some of the other functions integrated (audio, network and/or video),
other Intel chipsets do not. Not really a big issue either way.


Gez wrote:
> What do people think about having the same manufacturer providing the
> onboard features on an ASUS board? For example, is it better to have an
> ASUS board with an Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel audio chip, Intel
> onboard NIC, and Intel SATA, or does it really matter? At the moment I
> have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (AMD CPU, nVidia chipset, Silicon SATA,
> Marvell NIC) which I'm thinking of changing in the New Year, and I'd
> like some opinions about this beforehand.
> Many thanks,
> Gerard
>
>

"Gez" <> wrote in message news: o...
> What do people think about having the same manufacturer providing the
> onboard features on an ASUS board? For example, is it better to have
> an ASUS board with an Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel audio chip, Intel
> onboard NIC, and Intel SATA, or does it really matter? At the moment I
> have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (AMD CPU, nVidia chipset, Silicon SATA,
> Marvell NIC) which I'm thinking of changing in the New Year, and I'd
> like some opinions about this beforehand.
> Many thanks,
> Gerard

These days standards are so standard it really doesn't matter.
There have been notable and rather nasty exceptions, such as
with Nvidia chipsets, VIA etc. but in general it's all good.

"Gez" <> wrote in message
news: o...
| What do people think about having the same manufacturer providing
the
| onboard features on an ASUS board? For example, is it better to
have
| an ASUS board with an Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel audio chip,
Intel
| onboard NIC, and Intel SATA, or does it really matter? At the moment
I
| have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (AMD CPU, nVidia chipset, Silicon SATA,
| Marvell NIC) which I'm thinking of changing in the New Year, and I'd
| like some opinions about this beforehand.
| Many thanks,
| Gerard
|
|

Don't expect the new onboard sound chip to be as capable as your
Nvidia soundstorm chip. However, if you're not using a Dolby 5.1
setup, 2 channel sound is good for every day use with about every
onboard setup I've worked with in the past few years, though
specsmanship will reveal lower signal/noise ratios with onboard sound,
and sometimes, weird things like non-linear DACs or ADCs. I tried
using an onboard sound system (Nvidia MCP setup/non-soundstorm) with a
Biostar mobo and found it did not digitize the audio from a receiver
stereo line out with proper symmetry, IOW, the upper half of the
waveform looked compressed compared to the lower half. Out came the
good old SBLive 5.1, and sure enough, the digitized signal looked as
it should with the SBLive. Good quality DACs, ADCs and Caps really
make a difference sometimes with sound cards, and onboard setups use
less caps and cheaper components.

As for onboard NICs, heck, they all work pretty darn good any more
with the differences being rather subtle and most times driver
dependent. Just a couple of days ago, I tried to get an onboard 3com
NIC with my A7N8X-DLX to work in a Ghost networking setup, and after a
couple hours of fiddling, I gave up, the packet driver simply would
not work. Fortunately, the Nvidia NIC NDIS2 DOS driver did work, once
I found the doggone driver on the CD.

Memory bandwidth is quite good with most newer chips, so it's all a
matter of what you do with your system. If you're editing video, I'd
want the fastest memory and HD system available. With office type
programs, such speed is simply not needed.

Just my 2 cents worth.
--
Best regards,
Kyle

Barry Watzman was thinking very hard :
> I think that there is general agreement that Intel makes the best chipsets
> for Intel processors.

> Beyond the chipset, it really doesn't matter. Some of the chipsets have some
> of the other functions integrated (audio, network and/or video), other Intel
> chipsets do not. Not really a big issue either way.

Thanks

> Gez wrote:
>> What do people think about having the same manufacturer providing the
>> onboard features on an ASUS board? For example, is it better to have an
>> ASUS board with an Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel audio chip, Intel
>> onboard NIC, and Intel SATA, or does it really matter? At the moment I have
>> an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (AMD CPU, nVidia chipset, Silicon SATA, Marvell NIC)
>> which I'm thinking of changing in the New Year, and I'd like some opinions
>> about this beforehand.

It happens that formulated :
> "Gez" <> wrote in message
> news: o...
>> What do people think about having the same manufacturer providing the
>> onboard features on an ASUS board? For example, is it better to have
>> an ASUS board with an Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel audio chip, Intel
>> onboard NIC, and Intel SATA, or does it really matter? At the moment I
>> have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (AMD CPU, nVidia chipset, Silicon SATA,
>> Marvell NIC) which I'm thinking of changing in the New Year, and I'd
>> like some opinions about this beforehand.
>> Many thanks,
>> Gerard

> These days standards are so standard it really doesn't matter.
> There have been notable and rather nasty exceptions, such as
> with Nvidia chipsets, VIA etc. but in general it's all good.

As it stands I have the nVidia nForce 2 chipset and the Marvell onboard
NIC controller -- both of which i understand have given trouble.
That's why I began to think about an all-round uniform solution, and at
the moment only Intel can provide that, as far as i know. Perhaps with
AMD taking over ATI that will change.
Thanks anyway