Athlon XP mobo?

[Davegod]

Thinking of getting a new mobo to replace this KT266a (a GA-7VTXH), keep me going for a while. Mostly been looking at Asus A7N8X-D and -E, and Abit NF7-S. I think I've ruled out the DFI Ultra Infinity as not being as good as these two, and the LANParty version is way more expensive.

Main considerations here is the A7N8X's have this QFan and a passively cooled NB, whereas NF7-S seems to be the better choice for overclockers.

I'd appreciate less noise and Asus's QFan sounds like an elegant solution, that is, provided it actually works well? I like the idea of the fans going slow when CPU is cool while browsing etc, and dont mind the noise of faster fans when gaming - I'd have headphones on anyway. Various site's roundups also seem to put the A7N8X marginally in front of the NF7-S for performance, but only by a hair, and the layout does look a lot better.

The NF7-S, well the only real thing in it's favour is I hear it's better for overclocking? I'm a little unsure on this because my 2400+ has refused to budge one FSB mhz on this KT266a without going all BSoD, I'm guessing that is thanks to the Crucial PC2100, so I'm thinking I'll probably only be able to oc by multiplier, unless/until I get some new RAM.

Which board would you reccomend? Which is better of the A7N8X-D and -E, considering gigabit lan and wifi is no use to me? Any other boards? Worth waiting for KT880 to go onsale, to see if the nforce2 price drops any?

Not too fussed about onboard features, as long as there's an Eithernet, USB2.0, PS2 and SATA.

 

[Bleep]

You are in the wrong forum, go to the motherboards forum you will have better luck and will get no flames there.

Bleep

 

[Davegod]

get no replies either. mobo forum is dead for responses.

 

[mrweirdo]

then i guess we all need to head over there and start replying

 

[John]

Originally posted by: Davegod
get no replies either. mobo forum is dead for responses.

That's because everyone with your mentality posts their crap in this forum. Maybe we should ask Anand to consolidate all of the other forums into this one.

 

[Davegod]

Originally posted by: John

Originally posted by: Davegod
get no replies either. mobo forum is dead for responses.

That's because everyone with your mentality posts their crap in this forum. Maybe we should ask Anand to consolidate all of the other forums into this one.

there's plenty of new threads, just hardly any useful responses to them. What is the point of posting questions where there will be no answer? Me posting there isnt going to change everybody else also having the same mentality.

Obviously here there are no better, but at least there are these completely pointless spam comments made by anal nerds to make fun of.

 

[EeyoreX]

I have a few friends with the A7N8X, in several versions. All have said they are great boards, so I guess that's my opinion. My friends like the board, so it must be okay.

\Dan

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

that Asus E doesn't come with WLAN,it only comes with the capability to use Asus's WLAN card. I got the Asus E, i just sent it back in the mail today. strongly suggest not getting it.

i currenly have the DFI lanparty now, you pay extra but you get tons of little extras as well as features. however if you want a decent board at a good price the Abit seems to be the best way to go.

 

[Mean MrMustard]

Abit NF7-S

[/thread]

 

[Davegod]

AWhackWhiteBoy, why do you strongly suggest against it? the lack of WiFi alone is really no concern to me at all, and I can find it cheaper (by like £1 though) than the A7N8X-D.

the LANParty does look great all round, but its like 50% more than the other two boards in UK :Q

I do like the NF7-S, but the layout and NB fan are a big turnoff. I can replace the NB fan but I dot want to viod the warranty too quickly

 

[Ionizer86]

You can ask to see if unplugging the fan is safe. The northbridge doesn't get astoundingly hot on my 8RDA+, though the heatsink is pretty big. The southbridge does get a tad toasty though, even though I have a HS on it.

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

Originally posted by: Davegod
AWhackWhiteBoy, why do you strongly suggest against it? the lack of WiFi alone is really no concern to me at all, and I can find it cheaper (by like £1 though) than the A7N8X-D.

the LANParty does look great all round, but its like 50% more than the other two boards in UK :Q

I do like the NF7-S, but the layout and NB fan are a big turnoff. I can replace the NB fan but I dot want to viod the warranty too quickly

everyone seems to love their Asus, but my E deluxe was a peice of sh*t. i've whined a lot on this board over it, it refused to hit 400fsb, the sound on it doesn't work properly due to PCI latency issues, and it was all around flaky,just the overall feel. If you had it infront of you then you'd know what i mean.

my friend has a non-E flavor and its rock solid with no quirks,but just a fair warning. i'm rather sure the 400fsb issue is common among them all since it was originally made to only do 333.

I don't know if you plan to overclock, but the Asus is NOT an overclockers motherboard.

 

[Bonesdad]

Motherboard questions on this forum every day...don't worry about it...I agree, the mobo forum doesnt get much traffic.

In fact, I look over the posts on the first page of the General Hardware forum and there are several posts about CPU's (no crapping about where THOSE posts belong), video cards (why not in the video card forum), PSU's (Cases and Modding???) and yes motherboards. The fact is, this is a GENERAL HARDWARE forum and since the mobo is a peice of hardware, this question is perfectly legit here. I've been seeing a lot ofsimilar thread crapping going on lately and I'm getting discouraged...dunno why THIS post was singled out from dozens of others every day about the same or similar topics that could fit in as well as if not better on other forums. The GH forum is most visited...I personally have had posts in the Motherboard forum that have gone unanswered for 2-3 days, but GH posts are usually answered in a matter of minutes if not seconds.

Anyway, the NF7-S is a good bet for overclocking, but where did you hear that the Ultra-Infinity is not as good? I have been looking into this mobo and have found nothing but rave reviews.

 

[Ardan]

The Abit NF7-S Rev 2 or the DFI Lan Party mentioned are the best bets for an nForce2 board. If you had time to spare, I would say to wait for the KT880 boards to come out since I am liking the features and I always thought the KT600 was great. Sure, someone might say that maybe you can't overclock on those chipsets to like....2.5Ghz, but who cares? For me, I like the Envy24PT and the higher-end Envy24HT/HT-S and the fact that it is bundled on the board, as well as with native Serial ATA and Gigabit Ethernet is nice.

You can rest assured that the price will be right as well. I am continually annoyed with each and every nForce driver update, so I am thinking of switching as well, since I don't overclock wildly anyways (only from 2500+ to 3200+). The reference board has comparable (+/- 5% versus the NF2 Ultra 400) speed with the boards you listed, and puts out more bandwidth. I saw two reviews where DualStream64 put out about 2950mb/s vs 2800-2900mb/s with the NF2.

Another big point is the KT880, like the KT600, has NATIVE SATA support. For me, that is huge since I use a Deskstar 7K250 and I would love to *not* use the PCI bus for Serial ATA, like the NF2 does. It looks like it is shaping up to be a good chipset. If you don't want to do that, you really truly can't go wrong with the NF7-S Rev 2 or the A7N8X you listed. Take your pick, honestly.

Thats my $1 hope I could help.

 

[Davegod]

Think I'm veering towards the NF7-S, but going to wait for the KT880's - both to see how they perform and at owrst they might cause the nf2 boards to come down a bit (I think theyre still overly pricey considering even the socket is previous generation).

edit: actually even the hardware sites only seem to have got their hands on a reference KT880, so probably these boards wont be out for a while (esp in UK which seems to get mobo's like 4+ weeks later than US).

 

[Davegod]

btw does anyone know if the A7N8X or DFI Ultra Infinity Super Duper Gee Wizz unlock the multiplier? From what I've found so far I'm pretty sure the NF7-S does, with some sneaky trick to open more multipliers than normally available.

 

[Ardan]

Well, I don't know...but I know that my NF7-S *is* great and overclocks MUCH better than my friend's A7N8X. I don't know if his unlocks them though. The only reason i'm switching motherboards is the Silicon Image drivers for linux, Windows, and the fact that it goes over the PCI bus. I thought it wouldn't make a difference, but it does for what i'm doing.

I think you'd be satisfied with an NF7-S board.

 

[JohnPaul]

Originally posted by: Bonesdad
Motherboard questions on this forum every day...don't worry about it...I agree, the mobo forum doesnt get much traffic.

In fact, I look over the posts on the first page of the General Hardware forum and there are several posts about CPU's (no crapping about where THOSE posts belong), video cards (why not in the video card forum), PSU's (Cases and Modding???) and yes motherboards. The fact is, this is a GENERAL HARDWARE forum and since the mobo is a peice of hardware, this question is perfectly legit here. I've been seeing a lot ofsimilar thread crapping going on lately and I'm getting discouraged...dunno why THIS post was singled out from dozens of others every day about the same or similar topics that could fit in as well as if not better on other forums. The GH forum is most visited...I personally have had posts in the Motherboard forum that have gone unanswered for 2-3 days, but GH posts are usually answered in a matter of minutes if not seconds.

Anyway, the NF7-S is a good bet for overclocking, but where did you hear that the Ultra-Infinity is not as good? I have been looking into this mobo and have found nothing but rave reviews.

What are you talking about? I have the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 2.0, and I know several other people with it and I know of nobody that has had any issues with it hitting 200fsb, providing their processor and ram could handle it. I am presently running my 2600+ at 200x11=2200, and it is rock solid. This board has no problem overclocking at all.

 

[nick1985]

i <3 my asus