nyjets12 Posted April 12, 2006 Share Posted April 12, 2006 Hi Neebie here! Racking my brain looking at all these threads... building a new PC to install osx86 on, may dual-boot but will bring that up after. Here are the two motherboards I have been leaning towards: Asus P5LD2-VM and Intel D945GNTLKR The problem I am seeing is three-fold (at least what I know of) 1) Number of IDE connectors, Asus has two, but can only use one ?? Supposedly you can't use the ITE IDE connector (Red in color) 2) Sound: What will give me less problems the Asus' Realtek ALC 882 or Intel's SigmaTel STAC9220 3) The 3rd item is Firewire, the Intel board has built-in Firewire.. should that be a deciding factor (I would like Firewire) The part that is confusing is I read these threads and there are tons of conflicting info on both topics. Is there another motherboard with the same core features that a) installs osx86 with little or no install problems and has two working IDE controllers (support for 4 IDE devices) and. (firewire is a plus) Also, what is the deal with the TPM on the Intel mobo, is that good/bad or won't get in the way for install? Last point, if I do plan on dual-booting with XP, what should I do first.. install XP and leave enough unpartitioned space of osx86? Will I have to use a Linux dist to create the osx86 volume or will the osx86 handle the partitioning for it without any issues? Whew! Any help will be appreciated! I am getting a headache looking at this stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c0nfused Posted April 12, 2006 Share Posted April 12, 2006 I bought that ASUS initally, but the non-working IDE and the general board layout pissed me off, so I returned it. It lacks PCI slots because it is Micro ATX. See this thread about the Intel mobo: http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=7393 I would install Windows XP first and leave enough unpartitioned space. That way, you can use Windows diskpart to setup the appropriate OSX partition. And Myzar's 10.4.5 install CD will pick up your Windows installation and add it to the list of startup options when starting OSX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AldousHxlE Posted April 12, 2006 Share Posted April 12, 2006 I went with the D945GNTLKR just last week, and I would definitely recommend this board. Is there any reason why you want 2 IDE channels? OSx86 10.4.4/10.4.5/10.4.6 all fully support SATA with this board. The only bad thing is I did not get onboard sound working, but with the Creative Labs Soundblaster USB board I picked up, that wasn't such a big deal. I've heard of other members getting it to work, so I'm sure with some research you can get SigmaTel sound working on it. Other than that, LAN, USB, FireWire, and GMA950 all work out of the box, including QE/CI & OpenGL support. TPM does not get in the way of installation, and BIOS actually has it set to disabled by default. Finally, if your budget allows, I prefer setting my dual-boot system with two physical hard drives. Install each separately and edit boot.ini within Windows XP to add osx86 to your boot menu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
declan Posted April 12, 2006 Share Posted April 12, 2006 Well, see sig, i would recommend this motherboard whole heartily, works like a champ, yes the the second high speed ide channel isn't picked up by os x but you have sata, and if you dual boot, and have a second hard drive, that can go on the second channel. Its been problem free for me. And OS x loves it.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nyjets12 Posted April 12, 2006 Author Share Posted April 12, 2006 I went with the D945GNTLKR just last week, and I would definitely recommend this board. Is there any reason why you want 2 IDE channels? OSx86 10.4.4/10.4.5/10.4.6 all fully support SATA with this board. The only bad thing is I did not get onboard sound working, but with the Creative Labs Soundblaster USB board I picked up, that wasn't such a big deal. I've heard of other members getting it to work, so I'm sure with some research you can get SigmaTel sound working on it. Other than that, LAN, USB, FireWire, and GMA950 all work out of the box, including QE/CI & OpenGL support. TPM does not get in the way of installation, and BIOS actually has it set to disabled by default. Finally, if your budget allows, I prefer setting my dual-boot system with two physical hard drives. Install each separately and edit boot.ini within Windows XP to add osx86 to your boot menu. I have no problem with SATA, but, on a tight budget and have a 120GB IDE available.. I would prefer to try SATA.. maybe later. Thanks for your reply, of course I got two replies.. one for the Intel and one for the Asus.. back to square one! Well, see sig, i would recommend this motherboard whole heartily, works like a champ, yes the the second high speed ide channel isn't picked up by os x but you have sata, and if you dual boot, and have a second hard drive, that can go on the second channel.Its been problem free for me. And OS x loves it.. Thanks for the reply.. so far 2 against the Asus and 1 for it.. they both are good boards, that is why I thought someone might chime in with "Go with MSI.. or go with xxxx" I will wait a couple days and then order one of them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Discostu2120 Posted April 12, 2006 Share Posted April 12, 2006 If your budget is tight check out the ecs 945g-m3. Don't be scared by the fact that its an ecs, its an excellent board. In my experience the only downsides are: a)only 2 ram slots b)only one ide channel . If you're using this in an matx system like me these aren't really a big deal. I don't need more than 2 gigs of ram or more than 2 ide devices, so it works great for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thrunner Posted April 13, 2006 Share Posted April 13, 2006 I think out of the three mobos, only the Asus could reliably do any overclocking. Unless Discostu2120 has other experiences with the ECS. Intel boards are not overclockable for obvious reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AldousHxlE Posted April 13, 2006 Share Posted April 13, 2006 I agree with the overclocking issue concerning the D945GNTLKR, or any Intel board for that matter. Personally, I never OC my systems, so its not a concern to me. I probably would've gone ahead and bought the ASUS board initially for the price if it wasn't for the simple fact of how limited you are when it comes to expansion. Only two PCI slots? I personally need at least 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Discostu2120 Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 The ECS board is a surprisingly good overclocker. The highest FSB I've reached is 250. That put my Pentium D 820 at 3.5ghz. However it wasn't entirely stable at these speeds and would freeze up after about 5 minutes of prime95. This board doesn't have a pci lock unfortunately, so for normal use, I keep it at 229 fsb 3.2 ghz cpu to be safe. This board would be absolutely perfect for my use if it had a pci lock and 4 ram slots. I'm still think its an excellent board despite these shortcomings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thanhdai Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 I successfully installed MAC 10.4.5 Myzar on Intel D945GNTLKR board, set bios default setting. It run like a rock, except sound, but I download file for the sound and now my sound is perfect. I install Final Cut Pro Studio and let my friend try to run it( he had a Power Mac G5 dual 2.7Ghz) and he said it run as fast as his power G5. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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