Is GIGABYTE K8NSNXP939 motherboard the best?

[Acoshi]

I was wondering if the GIGABYTE K8NSNXP939 is one of the best motherboards out now for the 939 pin processors. Or is MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM or ASUS A8V DLX.

 

[exdeath]

For nForce3 boards the Neo2 is the top board. For K8T800 the A7V is the top board.

Between the two I think the nForce3 boards fair better in gaming benchmarks and memory bandwidth, so that would make the Neo2 the top board for socket 939 (discounting nForce4 boards like the A8N-SLI of course)

 

[Kovie]

With the gigabytes memory issues, its probably the worst one.

 

[contusion]

I got the K8NSNXP-939 when it first came out. Two thumbs way way down. Avoid Gigabyte like the plague until they come out with something tolerable. Maybe their nForce 4 boards are much better but I really don't care since I have no desire to jump the pcie bandwagon for a while.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

I like the ABIT AV8 and Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 too.

 

[MarkM]

Originally posted by: contusion
I got the K8NSNXP-939 when it first came out. Two thumbs way way down. Avoid Gigabyte like the plague until they come out with something tolerable. Maybe their nForce 4 boards are much better but I really don't care since I have no desire to jump the pcie bandwagon for a while.

If you read posts here & elsewhere over rhe last few weeks, it sound like gigabyte has finally gotten things under control for this line with their F7 bios release, after what sounds like a horrible start out of the gate. For this reason I myself just bought a k8ns ultra-939 (which is almost certainly the exact same board without the DPS & also missing about 40% of the price tag) last night for $112. IMO that is an untouchable bargain for a 939 nF3 ultra board with dual bios, dual lan, firewire, all the other goodies. Even if for some reason it is a less capable overclocker, the $30 I saved over buying the nF3 darling, the neo2 platinum, covered 75% of my cost of upgrading my purchase from a 3000+ to a 3200+, so I wouldn't need to press the FSB as hard anyway (besides, I may not have top notch RAM & would like a semi-silent PC anyway, so extreme OC was never really an overriding issue anyway; indeed a big reason I finally went for 939 over 754 for my upgrade was no "future proofing," but 20%+ less power consumption/heaat generation to allow quiet cooling). Also if I got the Neo2, because of the layout I'd read I'd have to cut pins off the zalman NB HS I also bought as part of my quest for silence, which didn't sound appealing.

Of course I may be singing a different tune when I get this board. Still, I've been doing this long enough that I know how it works with the product cycles, sometimes an otherwise good product is just rushed to market before the bugs are ironed out fully.

 

[contusion]

Yes, the F7 has ironed out many problems; however, I have Corsair XMS 3200XL RAM which the board does not like since it runs at such low latencies and the recommended voltage for it is 2.75 volts. The highest you can raise the voltage to on the board is 2.7 so I did that and then raised it further to 2.8 using easytune 4, but I still have problems. I suppose I'm just being stubborn by keeping the RAM and refusing to go any slower than 2-2-2-5-1T in dual channel mode; although, even resorting to a performance hit by bumping up to 2T did not stabilize gaming sessions.