Question about nforce mobos

[Poncherelli]

Which seems to be the prefered nforce board? I'm looking to use one of the non-integrated video in a semi budget computer i'm building with a GTS-V video card. I'm looking at the Asus A7N266-C NVIDIA nFORCE 415-D and the MSI K7N415 PRO nForce 415. I like the Asus because it seems to have better overclocking options, but i'd like some opinions. Also, the Asus board has the LAN listed as optional on the website and i dont see anyhting about it on newegg whereas the MSI seems to have everything on it, does anyone know if the Asus board ships with the ethernet thing or if you have to buy it seperately? Thanks.

 

[Poncherelli]

Also, with nforces, i've heard you're supposed to use 2 sticks of ram to get better performance. Does this hold true for the 415 boards also which dont use onboard video because I'd like to order a stick of the 512mb pc2100 mushkin ram thats on sale for 105 bucks this weekend if the board will operate fine with 1 stick.

 

[Utterman]

Whenever I order anything from newegg, I always check out the pics to see what I'm getting. Looking at the pics for Asus mb shows that it doesn't have the intergrated LAN while the MSI one does. I have the MSI nforce 420-d mb, and it's a really nice motherboard, but some of its drivers didn't work in win 98. Windows XP's drivers worked flawlessly.

As far as memory, I'm not totally sure if you still have to use 2 memory sticks. My guess if that you don't, but hopefully someone knows for sure.

 

[geezman]

I just built my new system with the Asus A7N266-C. So far so good. I put in a Atlhon XP 1900+, an MSI Ti4400 GeForce 4 card, 512 MB Crucial 2100 in a nice shiny Lian-Li PC60 USB case. Sweet!

Anyway, the two sticks of RAM requirement is'nt really necessary for the 415 because you don't have the integrated video sucking up your memory bandwith. However, you still may notice a %3-%5 increase in speed if you do use two sticks of memory. Big Whoop!

The board does not have on board LAN (Why not??? It's in the damn chipset.) I couldn't find the board with on board LAN anywhere. The MSI board does have on board LAN (I just built a system for my Dad using the MSI 420 board. A great board also, by the way.)

I haven't tried overclocking yet, not a huge concern for me anyway. I'm still getting everything set up (and Ghosted) I choose the ASUS board over the MSI board for one main reason: COPS (CPU Overheat Protection) I like knowning that if my heat sink fan fails, my CPU should still be safe!

Hope this helps,
Geezman

 

[arynn]

I forget the actual number, but the dual channel memory solution for the nForce provides more bandwidth than the Athlon needs. If you are not using integrated video (which would take advantage of the extra bandwidth) the extra bandwidth will not be needed.

So, using one DIMM should impact performance much.

I helped a friend build a computer using the MSI K7N420 PRO and it was very easy to set up the computer and my friend has not reported any issues with it.