nForce2 - lack of motherboard choices?

[Mac]

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the lack of choices for nForce2 mobos? Couple the performance with the features, this is a very compelling chipset, yet the selection is comparatively limited with several major board makers not even providing product. With the release of even the lowly Via KT133 and each succeeding chipset, there was a plethora of mobo's brought to market quickly, even the AMD 760. Each mobo manufacturer would generally bring out 2 or 3 boards, ranging from bare bones to fully featured mobos. Yet there is only a relative trickle of nForce2 boards out.

Furthermore, is there a reason within the nForce2 architecture which precludes onboard IDE RAID? I'm unaware of a single nForce2 motherboard which has this feature. That seems very strange.

As a casual observer, it seems as if industry is waiting on something...ie., there is some major product shift imminent which will make the nForce2 an interim solution that is preventing board makers from rolling out more product.

Am I missing something?

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Mac
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the lack of choices for nForce2 mobos? Couple the performance with the features, this is a very compelling chipset, yet the selection is comparatively limited with several major board makers not even providing product. With the release of even the lowly Via KT133 and each succeeding chipset, there was a plethora of mobo's brought to market quickly, even the AMD 760. Each mobo manufacturer would generally bring out 2 or 3 boards, ranging from bare bones to fully featured mobos. Yet there is only a relative trickle of nForce2 boards out.

Furthermore, is there a reason within the nForce2 architecture which precludes onboard IDE RAID? I'm unaware of a single nForce2 motherboard which has this feature. That seems very strange.

As a casual observer, it seems as if industry is waiting on something...ie., there is some major product shift imminent which will make the nForce2 an interim solution that is preventing board makers from rolling out more product.

Am I missing something?

Right on Mac. I have been wondering about this stuff myself and it does really seem like the NF2 is not being marketed very widely or integrated with a diverse selection of options. I wonder why?

 

[chizow]

Hmmm, I've been pretty pleased from the selection; I think the overall representation from makers that cater to the enthusiast/performance market is excellent for the SPP platforms. I think you will see more variety with the IGP chipsets, but of course, this depends on the cost of the boards and how viable they are pricewise to similar integrated graphics chipsets like Sis (Xabre).

Chiz

 

[SemperFi]

I have been looking around at them. RAID is one thing that is disappointing. My current board has onboard raid and I would like my next one to have it also.

 

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by: SeekingTao

Originally posted by: Mac
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the lack of choices for nForce2 mobos? Couple the performance with the features, this is a very compelling chipset, yet the selection is comparatively limited with several major board makers not even providing product. With the release of even the lowly Via KT133 and each succeeding chipset, there was a plethora of mobo's brought to market quickly, even the AMD 760. Each mobo manufacturer would generally bring out 2 or 3 boards, ranging from bare bones to fully featured mobos. Yet there is only a relative trickle of nForce2 boards out.

Furthermore, is there a reason within the nForce2 architecture which precludes onboard IDE RAID? I'm unaware of a single nForce2 motherboard which has this feature. That seems very strange.

As a casual observer, it seems as if industry is waiting on something...ie., there is some major product shift imminent which will make the nForce2 an interim solution that is preventing board makers from rolling out more product.

Am I missing something?

What type of options. The A7N8x comes with nearly everything under the sun, except RAID on IDE. Granted, theres not as many options, but to me the options that are out there are pretty solid, so we dont need that many. Why have 50 choices and most be crap, when we can have 5 choices and all are solid?
Thats my take, for what its worth.

Right on Mac. I have been wondering about this stuff myself and it does really seem like the NF2 is not being marketed very widely or integrated with a diverse selection of options. I wonder why?

 

[mechBgon]

Actually, to nitpick a little, Serial ATA RAID is IDE RAID, it's just not parallel IDE. I agree that it's before its time... no SATA drives available yet. My guess is that they had to make a choice of how they were going to lay out the PCB for the motherboard and there just wasn't room for an either-or design. Now if they could just make some sort of modular socket or slot so you could plug in whichever RAID design you prefer, that would be cool...















(PCI slot, anyone?)

 

[XCrodo]

IDE RAID is the only feature missing. Get a PCI IDE controller if that's a problem to you, it's not very expensive and it will probably be your only PCI card since everything else is integrated. (unless you have a 56k modem)

 

[Mac]

What type of options. The A7N8x comes with nearly everything under the sun, except RAID on IDE. Granted, theres not as many options, but to me the options that are out there are pretty solid, so we dont need that many. Why have 50 choices and most be crap, when we can have 5 choices and all are solid?

You are correct regarding the A7N8X being very feature rich, but aside from an oddball board from Chaintech and an also ran from Abit, there aren't any other power user boards. And again, none of these have onboard RAID which even lowly ECS has started to include. Furthermore, MSI and Epox have not delivered boards with this feature, yet which has generally become a standard feature on power user mobos using Via and Intel chipsets.

Where are the boards from Soyo, Shuttle,Gigabyte, Aopen, ECS, Iwill...just to name a few.

Back to my original point, with as good a chipset as the nForce2 appears to be, why aren't there more boards? It doesn't make any sense. Why, Newegg can't even keep a lot of the nForce2 boards in stock except for the very low end. This doesn't add up unless there are some very good reasons for not introducing more nForce2 boards.

 

[mechBgon]

If it had onboard Ultra160 or Ultra320 SCSI, that's what I'd call a "power-user" board There's been just one single-CPU AMD board to feature onboard U160, that I know of... a Microstar model that I think they called the K7 Master. nVidia, you listening...?

There may be a shortage of the chipset itself too. If that were the case, maybe only companies that committed to an initial buy-in were able to get enough for a production run so far. Guess we'll see...




(maybe Dell bought them all! )

 

[RideFree]

If it had onboard Ultra160 or Ultra320 SCSI, that's what I'd call a "power-user" board There's been just one single-CPU AMD board to feature onboard U160, that I know of... a Microstar model that I think they called the K7 Master

Correct in all aspects, especially if you want "real Raid" or want a decent backup speed.

There have been reports of trouble with this MSI board but I believe them to be end-user issues with understanding termination or cabling & ID. There is/was a pretty good deal on newegg for a refurb.

 

[magomago]

I gotta agree...avhing something like 6 choices made comparisions a lot easier and all of them are great

 

[arynn]

I think a lot of the manufacturers were waiting for the IGP chipsets which were released after the SPP chipsets. I expect at least a few OEMs will be looking for boards based off of the IGP chipsets whereas many of them have less of a need for the SPP based boards. We'll probably see at least a few more IGP boards coming out soon. There are also board coming from Soltek. There may be fewer manufacturers supporting the nForce chipsets due to loyalty to Via - similar to what happens with Sis chipsets. So far, most of the nForce2 boards have been made by the more established manufacturers.

 

[Shockwave]

Perhaps licensing issue? Like the limited supply that was mentioned earlier...
But it is a interesting thing when you think about it, theres not alot of choices for a really strong chipset....

Maybe its a conspiracy......Or aliens......

 

[RideFree]

may be fewer manufacturers supporting the nForce chipsets due to loyalty to Via - similar to what happens with Sis chipsets

Yeah, but SIS didn't get a brand new set of 38Ds like nVidia and those sure are attracting a lot of attention. I doubt if any one of them is loyal to anything but the Almighty $...you know, in God we trust?:Q

 

[RideFree]

mechBgon (& others ATMA), Did you see this!?
I had no clue that this was extant.
Connecting cheap IDE drives to SCSI and getting an increase in performance over SCSI?????:Q Ay Carumba!

 

[Mac]

Ridefree, very interesting article. Not sure what the practical application would be for the typical user, though. The cost of the adaptor card + the SCSI controller is pretty steep.

Although, if you wanted to add a bunch of disks into a system, use a single PCI slot and, more importantly, only spare a single IRQ, it has some application. I already have an old Tekram ultra-SCSI LVD card 390U2W, I think it is, which I don't even use anymore. Largest SCSI drive I ever owned was a 36GB U2W-LVD which is sitting on a rack now (half height drive, at that)...with high capacity IDE drives dirt cheap, it is tough to give up the real estate for anything less than an 80GB drive. However, if these adaptor cards were, say, in the $20 range, then it would become more interesting. At $60-70 a throw, though, it makes just as much sense to buy an additional IDE controller. Would probably find a market again for SCSI cables with 8 or more connectors

 

[hacken]

can someone suggest a Nforce2 board to me? i just burn my epox 8HKA+ cuz PS connector overheat

I want a board that has good features but ROCK STABLE, so i'm no longer interest in epox board altho they're fast but troublesome with many hardwares. I dont plan to OC alot, so any board that has good stability with decent price will work..

thx alot

 

[slpaulson]

Originally posted by: hacken
can someone suggest a Nforce2 board to me? i just burn my epox 8HKA+ cuz PS connector overheat

I want a board that has good features but ROCK STABLE, so i'm no longer interest in epox board altho they're fast but troublesome with many hardwares. I dont plan to OC alot, so any board that has good stability with decent price will work..

thx alot

My A7N8X Deluxe has been bulletproof...

I think the reason why there aren't that many nforce2 boards out there is because manufacturers pretty much have to choose nvidia or ATI. Obviously I could be wrong.

 

[przero]

I've got the ABIT NF7-S. It's fast and OC's well, but man it's quirky. I believe it's the NForce2 chipset as the ASUS has a lot of problems too. But it flies past my KT266A.

 

[OatMan]

I've got the ABIT NF7-S. It's fast and OC's well, but man it's quirky. I believe it's the NForce2 chipset as the ASUS has a lot of problems too. But it flies past my KT266A.

I'm actually scouring info on this board. Its between this and the ePOX for me.

Rev 1 is out and takes care of the ZIF holes so I can use the Alpha - rev 2 is due soon and apparently adds more voltage options - which don't sound necessary if the OC results I keep reading are true.

My problem is that (as others have stated) AT seems to be ePOX country and I am not seeing much ABIT love. ASUS seems to be big everywhere so no trouble with info on that. anyway i loved my 8k7a, and was disappointed in a KG7 - but this is a big tangent.


On topic, I wanted to ask about SATA RAID. Is the lack of SATA drives really an issue? The Abit board comes with an adapter, so for $20 get another adapter and BINGO! nFROCE2 that performs with RAID for ~ $150 - AM I MISSING SOMETHING???

BTW I really want to get the abit board, as it has the 3 faze power dist. with the P4 socket in addition to the normal 12 pin. But my experience with the 8k7a versus the kg7 + all the ePOX love here is making this really hard.

PRZERO - how do you mean quirky???

any abit nf7-s users - please lend your advice/experience!
-wow this is some serious rambling...

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: RideFree
mechBgon (& others ATMA), Did you see this!?
I had no clue that this was extant.
Connecting cheap IDE drives to SCSI and getting an increase in performance over SCSI?????:Q Ay Carumba!

The results there show that the access time is over 13ms, about half as quick as a good 15000rpm SCSI drive. Track-to-track seeks on IDE drives are up to ~5x slower too. If they had bothered to test a Cheetah 15k.3 next to the IDE drive, you would have something to Aye Carumba about for sure StorageReview recently tested an IDE RAID0 using two of the best currently-available IDE drives and the scores are lower than a single 15k.3 in everything but sequential transfer rate, and the inner STR was almost the same anyway.

I know, I know... everyone wants to download vast quantities of MP3's, video, pr0n or some mixture of that, and they cry momma at the price of the high-capacity SCSI drives compared to IDE. I use my X15-36LP for work, I need only about 10Gb of space, and no IDE drive comes close to it for real-world performance, particularly when the daily virus scan kicks off at 12:10 while I'm trying to get some work done.

 

[Mem]

Furthermore, is there a reason within the nForce2 architecture which precludes onboard IDE RAID? I'm unaware of a single nForce2 motherboard which has this feature. That seems very strange.

The Soltek board model SL-75FRN-R has RAID,

1 x PCI Bus Master UATA 133/RAID IDE port by Promise Serial ATA RAID controller
(SL-75FRN-R only)
2 x SATA RAID Interface by Promise Serial ATA controller
(SL-75FRN-R only)

So does the MSI K7N2G-ILSR

Serial ATA Interface
? Support 2 serial ATA plus 1 ATA133
- RAID O or 1 are supported
- RAID function works w/ATA133+SATA H/D or 2 SATA H/D
? Connect up to 2 Serial ATA devices and 1 ATA133 device

 

[Mac]

Mem,
Perhaps I wasn't explicit enought ... but I think you need to reread the thread. There is not a single nForce2 that offers a parallel RAID set up where you can attach 4 additional drives. The only RIAD available is by the SATA RAID route and that is only for two additional drives. Yeah, SATA may be the fututre but I don't see a lot of SATA drives available now. And, BTW, I sure would like to use the current parallel drives that I have invested in.

 

[Mem]

Mac sorry my mistake,that`ll teach me for drinking too much beer down my local pub here in the UK .