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Abit NF7-S... anyone?

K

kadajawi

Senior member
It looks like an interesting board. Alltough I like the A7N8X's DualNet, its price tag is a bit hefty compared to the NF7-S (has all the features the A7N8X Deluxe has (except the second NIC... but then there is a Serial ATA to ATA adapter)... but for much less money). Any comments? Stability? Quality? Tomshardware was quite positive about this board... and hey, I don't mind if I loose 1 fps in some games because its a bit slower than lets say the Asus... And what about overclocking? The XP2100 Throughbred-B seem to be quite ok 🙂
 
In terms of the total package, that board has it all. It lacks in the overclocking department a bit because it has conservative dimm and processor voltages but Abit says they will release Rev 1.2 soon (much better overclocker). Stable. Great tech support. Reasonably priced. Future-proof (SATA, Barton Support with latest BIOS). Only requires ya to buy one more PATA-SATA converter for PATA RAID - includes one PATA-SATA converter. Chipset voltage adjustments. Northbridge is cooled by a fan. Meets all Soundstorm requirements. nVidia APU. Firewire. .......🙂
 
when it says it has spdif out, is that an optical out? that's what it looks like in the pictures and I was thinking about getting this board. can anyone tell me how the sound is on this board?
 
When mine actually boots up, it works fine. About 3 out 5 times it will just hang and not even get past the hdd detection. Will be sending it off for RMA this week. Last trip down the Abit Lane for me. :disgust:
 
such a thing can always happen, with any board I guess. The important thing is: How good/fast does their RMA work and can you send it directly to Abit or do you have to give it to your dealer?
 
I just upgraded to the NF7-S from an Abit KR7A Raid, (which by the way supplied me with perfect reliability and performance for 1 year). I have to say I am extremely impressed and couldn't be happier. I am in the process of upgrading my ram so I can hit the 200 fsb mark. The onboard sound is excellent so I left my SB Live out and the one feature I really like is that the PCI and AGP are locked at 33/66 no matter what fsb you use. The onboard lan works perfectly and is actually a tad faster than my Netgear NIC. I haven't tried the SATA yet but I have read there is not much difference in speed yet, (the big advantage is a lot less CPU usage). My 9700 Pro is running at 8X without issue and I have not had a single problem setting up and running this board. I am kinda upset that Abit decided to revise it one more time with increased voltage settings in the bios but hell, I don't really think I'll need them, (knock on wood).
Can't go wrong with this mainboard but you may want to wait for rev 1.2.

My .02
 
I bought the Abit NF7-S when I fried my Asus A7V-333 rev 1.0 trying to drop a XP +2400 in it. I needed an emergency board, and had been pleased with an old Kt133 Abit I bought awhile back. The board had a good layout, although if you have a GF4 the Dimms are very close to the end of it and quite a few ppl have knocked off chips there. The serial ATA has an adapter for current hard drives. Mine never worked. Yes, it has the optical out. The sound on it is first rate, on output that is. The mic has a serious problem and for me that was a no go. I do a lot of voice comms with the teams that I play with.

I was able to push the fsb up to 175 with PC3000. The ram timings in the bios allow you to get as low as 1-2-2-2 cas 2.0, although I could only get it stable at 4-2-2-2 2.0. The only other problem had to do with the Audigy Gamer card I was running. There was some sort of IRQ problem that would end up making the Audigy "screech" as if it was digitally scratched. This was in several games that I played. I had to have the audigy because the mic input didnt work. So you can imagine the headache that this caused.

Overall, 9 days later I returned the board. I had to exchange so I picked up what I was beginning to read as the most overclockable nForce2 board- the EPoX 8RDA/+. I have this board running at 185 fsb. Its extremely stable. The sound card problems all got worked out. The deal is though, that this board is not certified as a "Soundstorm Sound" version because it lacks the digital out.

This chipset is currently the fastest out for the athlons. The new revisions all allow you to throw in a Barton. Also, its necessary to update your bios no matter which board you get, as there have been a lot of fixes that I have seen for both Abit and EPoX. There are reports of problems with the EPoX board and Corsair XMS PC3200 ram, if the bios is set to SPD, it can lock it up.
 
yep, Tomshardware said that too. The problem is not too big tho IMHO, considering the price and featureset (I won't be using DDR400 RAM anyway 😉 ). Hmm, Mic or Line In is VERY important for me, but I think you just had a defective board. Buy and return if I don't like it isn't possible at my place afaik. The only thing is RMA it if its defective.
Heh, I'm planning to upgrade my system with this board... coming from an Gigabyte BX-C! Yeah, thats right... Celeron 366@458 (d'uh... got a bad 366). So its getting a huge jump, the upgrade 😀
 
LED ...

Have you made many orders from eXcaliber.com ?

I look in the vendor listings here at Anand but they arent listed..

Just curious... their prices are lower than Newegg I noticed...

I may pick up more than the NF7-S 1.2

Like a Antec case and PS.
 
Have you made many orders from eXcaliber.com ?
Click to expand...

Those guys are jokers and their website overcharged me ~$550!!!!! their service is a Joke! buyer beware. I canceled my $180 order after the GM smarted off to me. I now have ~$730 tied up on my credit card for nothing Buyer beware go Newegg/Mwave good service is worth a lil more. not to mention their sites seem to work.
 
hmpf... ok, I think it will take a while until I can hold the NF7-S 1.2 in my hands... I have to wait until its save to order it (ran out of stock of the Rev 1.1 🙁 ). Hmm... Or is there a way to exchange it from Abit?
 
Whew !!!

thx EXman
(maybe you should add them as a Vendor here, and post your evaluation before someone else gets caught)

Glad I didn't order. I did like thier prices thou.
But, not if costs me more in grief !

Hope LED lets us know how things turn out.

One thing about NewEgg thou, they won't verify things like MB revision numbers.
 
I have gone through 4 NF7-S 1.1's and not one of them will boot. I got 2 and they were DOA then i replaced them and the replacemnts were bunk.

Yeah I know, "stupid n00b that dosn't know anyting about building a PC". I have been building Abit systems since the BX chip sets. When the 3rd board didn't boot I called a tech in to my house and had him look it over and make sure it wasnt something I was dooing. He told me I had done every thing right but the board was dead. I handed him the 4th board to get working and he installed it and after a few tryes it booted. I paid him his $107 (ouch) and started formating hard drives, the SATA connection had hosed one of them so i took it out. I had one formated drive in the computer but it was still not acting right so i decided to flash the bios. The bios flash was text book perfict, it wrote through all the blocks and prompted me to hit F1 to exit the util. The second I hit F1 the screen went black and it never booted again.

I would say this is like lightning striking 4 times. If you r going to order a NF7-S order it from someplace other then newegg I think they have a bad batch in there stock. I must say that I have no problem with newegg other then a minor shiping delay, they have coverd the overnight fees on all my replacement boards, waved the 15% restocking charage, and coverd return shiping on the RMA's. I have orderd 2 A7N8X-Delux boards and I may never build another Abit system again.
 
Hope LED lets us know how things turn out.
Click to expand...

Well if you are wanting to know my experience with them, so far it has been excellant. They did not overcharge me, responded to my emails within the hour, sent me a tracking # for my order the same day, and I check to make sure it's in transit, which it is.
I can understand EXman being upset but sometimes there are glitches with on line orders and it was he who placed the order 3 times so of course his CC will be charged. It's important and their responsibility to credit him back so if they have or do within his billing cycle then he was not ripped off for anything. I even gave them an email warning and they responded accordingly:

Dear customer,

Don't worry, or you are not just going to get your full money back, include shipping, but also $5 as our penalty.

Trust us, we have never failed in our commitment. If you are a constant visitor to all major forums, then you should be aware that we are so far the only one who dare to promise exact stepping & date code on AMD Tbred B, and we shipped out each and every single piece exactly without any mistake. That is our commitment and we stand behind it.

eXcaliberPC.com

-----Original Message-----
From: LED
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 4:12 PM
To: order@excaliberpc.com
Subject: Re: Order Process


Make sure I receive the Abit NF7-S Rev 1.2 as promised on the website or this will be my 1st and last order...THANKS!!!



So YES I am pleased to date with their service, hell they even email me when I requested them to do so if they got the new Abits in!!!...So far so good and others think so except EXman...ironic huh EX vs eX? :Q

Edit=Spelling
 
excaliburpc is abit's exclusive oem/refurb reseller.

first i picked up the a7n8x dlx with very high hopes, and had nothing but problems with the board...the southbridge got extremely hot, and would have major warm boot issues.

the nf-7 just plain kicks much ass...running 2100 aihub tbred, 1 512 ocz 3700, 225x10 sync'd...if i hd some more voltage (i.e rev 1.2 board) it would go farther...

so basically, my opinion (what ever thats worth!!) is to go with the nf-7s rev 1.2...

 
ok ... maybe I will Email them to let me know when they are back in stock ...

Tell us how the new MB performs! ( LED )
 
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