Looking for a decent mobo. NF2?

[loic2003]

Hello, I'm on the lookout for a decent motherboard for an Athlon. I've been looking around at what's available and it seems that the Nforce2 chipset seems pretty sweet, but there's still some issues I need to figure out. Is the dual channel RAM significantly better than the single? The board I have my eyes on at the moment is the Abit NF7-S which I believe is dual channel; is it pretty good? Is PC3200 necessary or will PC2700 run nice and quick too? I'm basically looking for a decent motherbard to plug a Radeon 9700 into so I can play HL2 and Doom3 if it ever comes out....

thanks for your help,

Loïc

 

[Vette73]

You don't have to use the dual Ch memory, but it does help is SOME applications. You can use PC2700 if you already have it, but you do better getting some PC3200 just in case you want to run a 400Mhz CPU or overclock in the future.

I own am using a Abit NF7-S now. I use the sound and ethernet and the board run and overclcks well. Of course I have a 8500 Ati card in it but it is stable.

 

[MDE]

Any nForce2 board should fit the bill. Dual channel's big benefit with Athlon systems is when integrated graphics are used, so I wouldn't worry about it. PC2700 should be fine unless you start overclocking.

 

[loic2003]

so a single channel of 512Mb of PC3200 would be sound then, and if I find some other money lying around I could pick up another stick of the stuff in the future and use the dual channel option...

thanks for the help!

-Loïc