ASUS A7N8X NForce2 - my review. Update 12/02.

[GullyFoyle]

Originally posted by: Buck_Naked
Anyone running an Alpha 8045 HS on this board? Does it have the four mounting holes and is there room?

Dave

I am not personally running this combination (until next week!), but I have seen this question answered in the affirmative.

 

[DanStp]

Thanks for the great review. I sold my Dragon+, PC 2100, and XP1700. I am thinking of going the way you did. Getting a cheaper Throughbred A now then a Barton later. Do you all think I should go with 400 mhz memory now to use later with the Barton?

 

[The Sauce]

I guess that would not be a bad idea. Of course, by the time you're ready to get a Barton (i.e. the performance/price ratio over your T-Bred is reasonable), they will have DDR-2, and you'll need a new mobo for that, and i don't know if the nForce-2 supports 400 FSB...its not listed in the bios as an option. My philosophy is to just buy the highest quality of what I need right now. Trying to spend a little more to defend against the future is usually a futile endeavour, in my experience.

 

[Mrburns2007]

Originally posted by: Dr Smooth
Is there anyone using this motherboard with an Athlon XP2600+ or faster? I am thinking about building using the Asus board with either a 2600+ or 2700+.

Save your money and buy 2400+ and overclock it, you'll get better results.

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: Mrburns2007

Originally posted by: Dr Smooth
Is there anyone using this motherboard with an Athlon XP2600+ or faster? I am thinking about building using the Asus board with either a 2600+ or 2700+.

Save your money and buy 2400+ and overclock it, you'll get better results.

How difficult is to overclock the 2400+?

 

[halkebul]

Originally posted by: Dr Smooth

Originally posted by: Mrburns2007

Originally posted by: Dr Smooth
Is there anyone using this motherboard with an Athlon XP2600+ or faster? I am thinking about building using the Asus board with either a 2600+ or 2700+.

Save your money and buy 2400+ and overclock it, you'll get better results.

How difficult is to overclock the 2400+?

It's as easy as getting into the BIOS and increasing the FSB in increments - very simple. Occasionally you'll have to increase the CPU's vcore in order to achieve higher FSB speeds but I wouldn't go much higher than 1.75V. Set the AGP bus to 66MHz. With the Asus A7N8X motherboard, the PCI bus is already properly dealt with. And have at least DDR333 SDRAM memory. Use two memory modules in order to take advantage of the dual memory controllers.

 

[knutp]

I took some screenshots about the soundstorm utilty software, and can be found here:nforce soundstorm pictures

 

[crisscross]

Thanx for the pics Knutp 🙂

 

[SFang]

I called Alpha earlier today, they confirmed me that Alpha 8045 should work with A7N8X.

I have a stupid but important question, does nForce2 board work with ATI graphic cards? 😱

 

[chansen]

I just built an A7N8X system for a colleague with a Sapphire ATI 9000 Pro. Worked fine. I remember reading one early review where they had issues with an nVidia card but the ATI ran fine. Now that's unexpected.

 

[crisscross]

I plan to pick up the A7N8X in a few days. I was waiting for the Epox as i didn't want to spend $155 for the Asus but since the 8RDA doesnt have the APU I guess i will just go ahead and get the Asus.

 

[Mavrick007]

Snatchface, I take it you didn't get the Asus with RAID and gigabit ethernet, right?

anyway, i can't get to that point anymore. i'm going to look for a window defogger kit and i'll see if i can't unlock it and at least get a 2ghz@166fsb (there doesn't seem to be a way to get 13-14.5x multipliers unfortunately).

From what I heard, you can get the higher multiplyers when you unlock the L3 bridges on the new TBreds. You don't have to unlock the L1's (already unlocked) to get the lower multiplyers so you can increase your fsb really high and use a lower mult on the new KT400 boards. Now I'm not sure if this will work the same way on the Nforce 2, but it just might.

 

[The Sauce]

Yah, no RAID or gigabit on this board.

 

[The Sauce]

Review updated.

 

[The Sauce]

Boo-Yah! CPU up to 2.01@1.725V. Temps running 40C idle. Review updated.