ASUS A8N-SLI, MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum or GIGABYTE K8NF-9?

[JJK80]

Hello!

I'm going to upgrade my computer with new Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester processor
and with new NF4 motherboard.

But I have not decided which motherboard would be the best one?

I want motherboard that is reliable.

I'm also want to make some overclocking.

I probably don't need SLI function.


Should I choose:

- ASUS A8N-SLI (or Deluxe)?

- MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum?

- GIGABYTE K8NF-9?


Wich one you would recommend to me?


Right now I have these kind of thoughts:

ASUS A8N-SLI (or Deluxe) [nForce4 SLI]
I have always been big ASUS fan. Their boards are usually been very reliable, fast and also good to overclock.

I have read that this ASUS A8N-SLI mb's ablities to overclock are bad, maximum HTT is only about 240-255
with 1T timing.

Then there is that bad chipset fan (cooler) that is very loudy, 8000RPM's and it's quality is crap,
it does not last very long.

There have also been some problems with Maxtor DiamondMax10 SATA HDD's.


MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum [nForce4 Ultra]
At first when I read some reviews (Anandtech, HardOCP...) I was going to choose MSI because,
MSI was very good overclocker in those tests, maximum HTT was easily over 300MHz and it was
also very good otherwise.

But afterwards I have read that there is Overclocking problem with Winchester processors,
maximum HTT is only 220MHz, it does not boot to Windows with any higher HTT.

I have also read that there have been some problems with USB devices.

There have also been some instabilty problems.


GIGABYTE K8NF-9 [nForce4 4x]
This board is quite cheap. It has also been quite stabile. Overclocking abilities are decent.

This board lacks NVIDIA's ActiveArmor, that would be very nice function.

There isn't double SATA and network controllers, but I don't need those.

I have some doubts considering the quality?



Or do you think that I should wait a month and buy then, when those problems may be already corrected?



PS.
I have dropped DFI out of counts, because I have heard bad from they reliability.
I have also dropped ABIT AN8 out of counts, because there is loud OTES cooling.

 

[DfiDude]

hmm, they are all pretty good, but for me i would either go with the asus, gigabyte im not sure with, msi im also not sure cuz also as u said wouldnt work that well with winchesters, which i am going to get a winnie for my comp. I would go witht he asus

 

[DfiDude]

actually cancel what i said about the asus lol the msi is way better, trust me on this one. If you go to www.hardocp.com, you can see that the msi is better than the asus a8n deluxe and the gig. Go with msi, u will be happy

 

[JJK80]

Could somebody else also give his/her recommendation?

I would appreciate that!

 

[JJK80]

Originally posted by: DfiDude
actually cancel what i said about the asus lol the msi is way better, trust me on this one. If you go to www.hardocp.com, you can see that the msi is better than the asus a8n deluxe and the gig. Go with msi, u will be happy

At fist I thougt that I would take MSI, when I read those AnandTech's and HardOCP's.... reviews.

But I'm not sure anymore because, there seems to be problem with Winchester.

Here is some links considering the problem with K8N Neo4 Series and winchester.
Maximum HTT with Winchester is about 220MHz at boot, but you can get higher through Windows with ClockGen.
Link1
Link2
Link3

PS.
AnandTech and HardOCP used AMD Athlon 64 4000+ ClawHammer 0.13u in their overclocking tests not Winchester 0.09u.