Best $100 nForce2 mobo?

[WW2Planes1]

Two questions

1) Is now a good time to abandon a broken Asus A7M (AMD 760) and a sometime troublesome MSI KT266 Pro (VIA KT266 non-A) and geta new mobo and...

2) If so, which of the following mobos would you reccommend?

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe ($99, newegg sale)
Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 (also $99)
Abit NF7-S ($95)
Abit AN7 ($103)

or something else, preferrably in the $100 or less range

I'm looking for something that'll replace my rather aged and abused motherboard in my XP1800 system. I want something thats reliable, fast and upgradeable. I don't overclock now, but I'd rather not eliminate that option. I'm leaning toward the gigabyte right now because of the 4 memory slots and the 4 IDE channels (cheaper to buy two additional sticks of 256 MB rather than two new sticks of 512MB;and I've already got 6 IDE devices in my system, so having all of that on the mobo rather than on PCI cards would be nice.)

On the other hand, the Asus has dual lan (and the $145 for the GA-7NNXP is a bit much) and Wi-Fi. I had an Asus before and I loved it, and admittedly, I'm a bit of an Asus fanboy (plus i like the tan/gold color more than purple too).

I'm open to other alternatives too.

 

[Mem]

or something else, preferrably in the $100 or less range

I would go,infact I did with the DFI NF2 Infinity Ultra 400 motherboard, has soundstorm and SATA RAID etc,also designed for the overclocker so a good allround board with excellent stability..

Review here .

 

[high]

DFI Infinity HANDS DOWN.

 

[ronss]

http://www.isquaredinc.com/GIG7N400PROinfo.html

this is the one i would suggest- great board- have had 3 nforce 2 boards- abit -gig -asus

 

[Odeen]

It's a solid board, except that 1) it doesn't have bolt-through heatsink mounting holes and 2) the PATA RAID chip that Gigabyte (and no one else) uses is horribly slow, both in RAID and straight ATA modes.

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: high
DFI Infinity HANDS DOWN.

 

[Shimmishim]

another vote for the dfi infinity

followed in close second by the abit nf7-s

and for the budget consumer...

the epox 8rda+ ... i loved that thing before i killed it...

ugh...

 

[WW2Planes1]

odeen - thanks for the heads up on the gigabyte. i was looking at that board primarily for the PATA RAID on it, but if its really slow, that won't do. Has anyone else noticed that about those boards?

I'll also give the DFI a look, I had only looked at their LanParty series before, and that one is a little bit expensive still.

 

[ronss]

on the gig ga-7n400 pro, the giga-raid is slow, but i use the silcon image raid-raid 0 on 2 ibm drives-its fast. love this board. my opinion about the abit nf7-s, don,t like it as much, its just not as stable running serial raid. even thinking of selling the abit board

 

[Gamingphreek]

The Asus. Im runnin it... its rock solid and OC's very well. Next choice is DFI then Abit NF7-S then AN7
-Kevin