Motherboard/CPU recommendations?

[Julius]

Hi everybody. I have roughly $200-$250 to spend on a computer upgrade. I would like my upgrade to be able to run a patched version of MAC OS 10.4.4 just fine.

 

My requirements aren't that much. My current system is an AMD Athlon XP 2000 with 512 333MHz DDR, four hard drives (which are all PATA) and an ATI Radeon VE dual display card (which I believe is a 7000 series). It has 32MB's. An older card.

 

I would like to upgrade to something that is at least 2.8GHz and still be able to use my existing RAM, hard drives and video card. I don't care if it's AMD or Intel, but I'd prefer if it's not a Celeron or Sempron.

 

I would like the new motherboard to support

PATA (four of these would be nice)

SATA

On board sound card

USB 2.0

 

Do you have any recommendations?

It all needs to work great under both WinXp and OS 10.4.4 patched

 

Thank you

[thrunner]

I would like to upgrade to something that is at least 2.8GHz and still be able to use my existing RAM, hard drives and video card. I don't care if it's AMD or Intel, but I'd prefer if it's not a Celeron or Sempron.

If you really are going with your old DDR RAM (edited: not worth it IMHO) then your best bet is with 915G/L chipset mobo ($70 to $100): http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....ATTR24=&ATTR25=

(edited) Pair that with any sub $150 Pentium 4s and you should be set.

 

If you can go to DDR2 then you may want the 945G chipset (GMA950) for around $100. Pair that with the new Pentium D 805 dual core ($150).

 

You will need to do more research to find if the network and sound are compatible (try the Wiki)

[marliwahoo]

Intel 915gux $112 - everything works, on-board graphics fully funtional in osx, gigabit lan, sound ,usb & firewire all working. You can add a $22 ADD2 card for a fully working 2nd display. Core graphics and Quartz Extreme working.

 

Pentium 4 519 $136 (3.06 gz) (it's a 775 socket - check for compatability) . Both on pricewatch

 

Memory is a problem.

[R. Bear Helms]

I actually regret building a PC to conform to OS X. First off, sound should have worked and didn't - does in Windows, indicated as "no volume control exists for this device" in OS X. Tried about a dozen different combinations of kernel extensions, kext editing attempts, Darwin and 10.4.3 kext files... ended up just buying a USB sound dongle.

 

Later, when 10.4.5 seemed to be running well, iLife '06 just decided to quit on me after about 6 hours of work not yet saved. When a program crashes, it tells you it did and gives you an option to restart, cancel, or bug report to Apple. This didn't do that, which makes me believe a TPM check came later on and failed.

 

I don't know what resources Maxxuss has to find when and where TPM checks are done and whether he's circumvented all of them, but his site seems to warn that 10.4.5 software (and I assume any Intel software Apple supplies) has an amount of CPU architecture, hardware environment, etc., checks in it BESIDE the TPM check. So this OS post 10.4.3 is always going to be suspiciously functional on a PC.

 

I can almost assure anyone who attempts to spend a full day working on most any project or playing most any game to find themselves wondering why it's not working so well - and we'll have to suspect it's Apple's tertiary level of copy protection at fault.

 

10.4.3 is real nice and compatible - I been restoring gigs worth of backup data all day here - but parts of it are really broken, like Mail. As soon as I get my data all on FAT32 volumes, OSx86 is history - erased from all partitions I got.

 

Windows doesn't goose your software because it feels it's not been authenticated. It will give you 30 days before it insists on authentication... OS X shuts down instantly the moment it finds something wrong (mostly TPM wise, but who's to tell?).

[{ Roger }]

I think we have a basic problem: Apple already started to remove drivers in 10.4.4 and removed support for non-core processors in 10.4.5 kernel.

 

But since Apple already released the iMac Intel, MacBook and Mac mini Intel, they will have to support their hardware in all subsequent releases of Mac OS, at least for some years!

 

Thus our goal should be, to find hardware exactly matching the Apple-hardware. Maxxuss can patch the Kernel to run on pre-core processors and the TPM-stuff, but he can't patch all 10.4.3 drivers to make them still run in a future 10.5!

 

What we need is a mainboard with the same Northbridge, Southbridge, Ethernet and Sound chipsets as any combination of iMac Intel, MacBook and Mac mini Intel. Can anybody of you list all these chipsets on all three platforms (with exact numbers, since we know that not every BCM57xx runs well)?

[learning_bird]

If you are going with your old DDR RAM then your best bet is with 915G/L chipset mobo ($70 to $100): http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....ATTR24=&ATTR25=

Pair that with the new Pentium D 805 dual core ($150).

 

If you can go to DDR2 then you may want the 945G chipset (GMA950) for around $100. You will need to do more research to find if the network and sound are compatible (try the Wiki)

Be careful because the 915G chipset doesn't support the Dual Core Pentiums ( the D 800 and 900 series ); it supports the 500 and 600 Pentium series and Celeron D's ( I'm running a 915G board with a Celeron D 331 ). The 945G chipset supports everything.

[Julius]

Well I guess building one is not a good idea then. I don't really need a mac. My goal was really to play around and use iLife and stuff. But all my productivity is in Windows. I just figured that since I need a hardware upgrade anyway (for fast video editing) then I could buy hardware that was compatible with OSX as well. But if that hardware may not even be useable inthe next upgrade then it's probably not worth the trouble to make sure my new hardware wil work for that. Instead I should just concentrate on getting the best hardware for the buck that I can to run windows.

 

Thank you for your insight everyone.