On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:20:43 -0500, Felix Miata wrote:

>inkleput{at}isp.com wrote:
>
>> What on earth is Mercury?  Have a peek at this bundle.
> 
>>
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1552516&CatId=1126
>
>It has a VIA chipset I would never consider purchasing. I actually tried
>OS/2 on a board with that chipset once upon a time, and insurmountable
>difficulties are the reason why that opinion. Besides that, it comes
>from a period when VIA chipsets generally were anything but commendable,
>or recommendable. I've only bought Intel chipset boards for several
>years now, partially due to what I learned from that experience.

Since Intel doesn't make chipsets for AMD-based systems, it's safe to
say I've not used one in the last several years, save the D865PERL
motherboard I have here on this P4 3.0GHz system (yes, running Windows
XP).  This board has been replaced twice for sub-component failures...
SATA port, LAN port...  nice that it has a 3-year warranty -
not-so-nice that I've had to replace it twice already, costing me hours
and hours of time.

nVidia and VIA chipsets are quite solid and work well - they're
consistently among the top performers in any benchmarks, and take home
awards all the time.

For US$60 for a motherboard and CPU and not having to buy a video card
(since the integrated graphics run just fine with SNAP), it's a perfect
solution for someone looking to build an eCS box on the cheap...  not
everyone needs Athlon64 4800+ dual-core 2.4GHz power...  which, of
course, has now been superceded by the FX-60 2.6GHz dual-core
Athlon64...  a mere US$1119 for the CPU alone, on one website I saw. 
Nice markup!

Face it - if you still ran yesterday's software, yesterday's hardware
would still work as fast.

Hell, I still have clients running Duron 800 CPU's as daily-use
machines, but I just got off the phone with them, and we're jumping
them into the 21st century with Athlon64 3200+ units, all running on
ATI chipsets.

As with all things... "your mileage may vary".

I've never heard of "Mercury" for a brand name, but if were looking to
build a box for a student or someone on a tight budget, I'd be willing
to risk US$60 on a CPU/mobo bundle.  They didn't make the chipset, of
course, and probably have the board assembled by a third-party company
from a standard reference design...  I read somewhere that Acer makes 9
of the top 10 laptops on the market today - wouldn't surprise me in the
least to find that a "big name" was making these motherboards to fill a
low-cost niche market.  Putting together something like a motherboard
fab isn't a cheap endeavour, so there would be the idea of "getting it
right" - especially with the way word gets around on the internet.

-Derek





Derek W. Keoughan,
Finnegan Software, Inc.,  Brampton, Ontario, Canada  http://www.finnsoft.com
416-410-4774 phone - 800-258-0033 toll free - 905-846-5516 fax

Consulting, Networking, Cabling, Internet, Hardware, Software, Tech Support
eComStation, OS/2 Warp/Server, WinXP/2000/NT/Me/9x, Linux
Customized PURRformance PC's & Servers, OnSite Services, Installations
and Upgrades

= Celebrating 10 years of "happily purring" computing - Founded
1995-02-02 =

FinnSoft "CyberCat" logo clothing and more -
http://www.cafepress.com/finnsoft




 
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