Recommendation: NF2 w/IGP

wfay

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
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Hi guys, A friend of mine is looking to get rid of his craptastic ECS motherboard that he got in some Fry's combo deal a little while back. He doesn't game much and has an ancient AGP video card in his current machine.

He is looking to move to a new computer as cheaply as possible while keeping most of his components.

Basically I'm looking for a suggestion on:
Nforce2 motherboard
IGP (integrated video)
integrated sound and lan (if possible, soundstorm)
if possible, firewire and sata or raid might be nice

I know it sounds like throwing away $100 on old tech but he does not have the $300+ right now it would cost for a new quality motherboard and cpu, plus new ram etc. I convinced him that those Fry's combos are really not worth his money as the ECS boards they come with are generally garbage. He just needs something to hold him over for 6mos or so until he can afford a real upgrade.

 

wfay

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
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The IGP is believe it or not an upgrade for him. I figure, it costs him $20 or so extra now and he can actually play some recent-ish games vs his current situation. So he gets a stable reliable machine AND a video upgrade for minimal cost. He is lucky to get his ECS box to boot every 3rd time, it just freezes when loading Windows most of the time.
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
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If you can find a used (or new) Shuttle MN31N, that's a microATX board with the nicer southbridge (nVidia audio processors, Firewire). But it vanished off the market a while back :( The MN31L is the downscale version of it with regular AC97 audio and no Firewire, and you can still find those. I would recommend PC2700 on the MN-series boards since they don't have memory-voltage tweaks and thus you cannot raise the memory voltage to what some PC3200 will want for stability.
 

ChineseDemocracyGNR

Senior member
Sep 11, 2004
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wfay

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
912
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Found a great webpage with exactly the info I'm looking for, a list of NF2 motherboards with various features including IGP, MCP-T, etc all on one page. link
 

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
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Originally posted by: wfay
Found a great webpage with exactly the info I'm looking for, a list of NF2 motherboards with various features including IGP, MCP-T, etc all on one page. link

Lol imagine that Nvidias website lol.

This was discontinued to but the K7N2G-ILSR was a high end IGP board along with some of the Leadtek boards.

Nice post Chinese!

-Kevin
 

wfay

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
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Yea yea, I know, I should have checked Nvidia.com first... But for whatever reason, I didn't, and only came across that page via Google. Doh. ;-)
 

wfay

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
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Originally posted by: Alastria
I built a system for my cousin using a Biostar M7NCG and an Athlon 2600. Very nice board, and only $65 at NewEgg. And it could actually do some 3D better than you'd think. For light to medium gaming, it would be more than enough.

Yea I've been reading about the M7NCG models online and it seems great but I'd really prefer the PRO over the -400 model. But it seems like PRO is just not available as it is too old. So I might just get him the -400 and add a Firewire card for another $10 (he requires FW for his older Ipod)...