What New Mobo Should I Get?

[OpTiX]

For motherboards i was thinking of a abit NF7-S or the abit AN7.

 

[DahDee]

Everything you need to know!

$102 at Newegg ($73.50 refurb)

 

[OpTiX]

thanks dahdee, but does this out preform the mobos i listed?

 

[OpTiX]

ummm....n/m IM GETTIN THAT BOARD THX DAHDEE

WHAT no mounting holes what if i want to water cool how am i gonna use my D-Tek White water?

 

[phpdog]

Hi ,

get a LanParty nForce 2 Ultra .... pure quality.

 

[DahDee]

Originally posted by: OpTiX
thanks dahdee, but does this out preform the mobos i listed?

IMHO, yes, but don't take my word for it; read some reviews:

Club Overclocker 9.5/10

Quotes: "Oh yes, We mustn't forget the part that ClubOC is infamous for, blowing stuff up! Overclocking is where the Albatron shines, but then again most of the reviews we've done on Albatron products, they've always been good for overclocking. The funny part about the Albatron is very rarely have I ever seen a board as overclocking friendly and stable as this KX18D Pro II, and that's no joke. Unfortunately, Our EL2700 ram pretty much bugged out before the board could really show its memory benchmarking ability. but we did get a good idea of the KX's capability, and it never once hiccupped. The highest stable overclock the XP 2700 has even seen is right around 2350 stable using a 1.85 vcore, and 2498 using 2.10 vcore and water cooling, but with the Albatron we were able to achieve 2420 MHz at 230FSB!!! Of course with the memory crapping out (its 2700!!) we had to use memory timings of 11-4-3-2.5 at 3v but the Albatron has no problem running 3dmark or any benchmarks at 227 which to me is unheard of unless something is voltage modified."

"I honestly like this board a lot. Very rarely have I ever had a board that is so easy to go fast yet does it with such ease and with no IRQ conflicts, reboots, black screens, etc... I could go on about some of the boards that I've owned and rationalized by blaming AMD, my PSU, memory... whatever... the bottom line is you have got to buy this board if you're into AMD like I am.. With our test bench loaded up and using 250gb+ of every different hard drive configuration, all on-board devices enabled, and being able to get away with a 227 FSB with no voltage mods, is unheard of for a retail board such as this KX 18D Pro II. This board is definitely in the running for the ClubOC AMD Motherboard of the Year!"

PC Stats Editors Choice Award

Quote: "The layout of the KX18D Pro II is excellent, and as you have seen from the benchmarks performance is also super. During testing, the KX18D Pro II often performed on par, or slightly faster than the Epox 8RGA+ which itself is one of the faster nForce2 motherboards on the market.

Enthusiasts will certainly love the motherboard as it has some of the best voltage options we've seen in the last little while. An amazing 2.65V available to the processor is insane, too bad it's almost impossible to mount a water/TEC or phase change cooler on this puppy... okay, okay, enough already .

In any case, the Albatron KX18D Pro II is definitely one of the best K7 boards on the market. If you're looking for a new AthlonXP motherboard for gaming, websurfing, or just fun, the KX18D Pro II delivers!"

Technoyard 98%

Quotes: "This is an area Albatron generally excels in. All products we have reviewed of them in the past have been very impressive overclockers, so lets see how well the KX 18D Pro II performs.

The BIOS allows easy access to all the settings that need to be changed for overclocking. Depending on your level of expertise, the BIOS allow you to change FSB and memory settings as required. Surprisingly, the VCore voltage can be taken as high as 2.65, however from experience I would say that's a very dangerous level to play with. You're more than likely to fry your system, regardless of the cooling system you have.

Getting back to overclocking, we didn't want to be optimistic and directly clock the board at 260 MHz or anything in that range. Short steps at a time is the best way to go, so we started out with 215 MHz. The board accepted this setting with no problems at all, and this was with no voltage modifications either. Being a bit bold, next we overclocked the board to 230MHz increasing the VCore to 1.85v. Memory settings were set to 6-2-2-2.

Now this is pretty impressive folks. The system was completely stable at 230Mhz , as I ran PC Mark 2002 on a continuous loop for 20 minutes or so as well as Sandra Burn-in Wizard. I have never been able to get my CPU to work at this level and be absolutely stable. The KX 18D Pro II is one solid board designed for overclockers.

Next we decided to go slightly higher and clocked the board to 240Mhz. The board booted up, however it wasn't too stable running Folding@home in the background and performing benchmarks. So the next fallback step was 235Mhz, and this time the board worked perfectly with no major problems. Running the benchmarks however showed no performance increase between the 230Mhz setting to 235 and in some cases it reduced the performance as well. So we decided to settle down at 230Mhz. Guess we need to get a better overclocking CPU to try and crack more out of this board. Nevertheless what this board has achieved is very impressive."


"What can I say other than I'm totally impressed with the KX 18D Pro II. Albatron certainly seems to have put in a lot of effort into designing this board and the results are ample proof of this. The board incorporates great features such as SATA, Firewire, Dolby digital sound coupled with all the nForce2 features making it really hard to resist. Coupled to this, the board performs well above average and is rock solid in overclocked conditions. Until VIA comes out with some heavy duty stuff, I believe if you're after raw performance, opting for a nForce 2 Ultra 400 board is the way to go. We would undoubtedly recommend the KX 18D ProII to any overclocking enthusiast who's looking for some solid fun in overclocking."


AthlonXP.com

Quote: "If you looked at all the charts close enough you can tell by the numbers alone that Albatron has built a stellar nForce2 motherboard. It has all the latest available options that you can think of today for the AMD Athlon XP line of processors. Of course with the introduction of the Athlon64 a couple of days ago, this board can now be classified as a budget board. Don't let that fool you though. For the price of this board and the low price of the Athlon XP Barton processors, this board has plenty of power to last you a very long time. I have run a lot of motherboards this past year and the Gigabyte has been one of the best I have used, but Albatron has changed that with the introduction of the KX18D Pro II motherboard. This thing is super speedy and highly stable. After pushing this board hard for the past two weeks, it has not let me down once.

With the help of this board, I have finally beaten my Pentium4 IWill that used Rambus memory to push my Geforce4 Ti4400 higher than ever. Over 14,000 on 3DMark 2001SE for a GF4 is pretty good in my book. The KX18D Pro II ran folding@home 24/7 for two weeks straight with out missing a beat. The only time I turned folding off was to run the benchmarks. My only complaint about this board like all other Albatron boards I have used is they only include one header to plug your CD-ROM's sound cable into. This is really no big deal though. It has been a pleasure to work with this board and if you're in the market for an nForce2 based motherboard, you really don't need to look past this one."

 

[OpTiX]

i still want to see reviews on abits new mother board the AN7

 

[Sunny129]

Originally posted by: OpTiX
i still want to see reviews on abits new mother board the AN7

well you might be waiting a little while longer to see more than just a few reviews on the AN7. from what i hear, the AN7 is just the NF7 w/ microGuru technology. not so sure if its worth the price difference, so you might be better off with the NF7-S.

 

[OpTiX]

Originally posted by: Sunny129

Originally posted by: OpTiX
i still want to see reviews on abits new mother board the AN7

well you might be waiting a little while longer to see more than just a few reviews on the AN7. from what i hear, the AN7 is just the NF7 w/ microGuru technology. not so sure if its worth the price difference, so you might be better off with the NF7-S.

its only $128 USD which is pretty cheap

 

[Sunny129]

Originally posted by: OpTiX

Originally posted by: Sunny129

Originally posted by: OpTiX
i still want to see reviews on abits new mother board the AN7

well you might be waiting a little while longer to see more than just a few reviews on the AN7. from what i hear, the AN7 is just the NF7 w/ microGuru technology. not so sure if its worth the price difference, so you might be better off with the NF7-S.

its only $128 USD which is pretty cheap

that's true...the price of the NF7-S really isn't that much less. i guess what i'm really wondering is if this microGuru software is going to be worth the price premium, even if its a small one. because other than that, the differences between the NF7 and the AN7 are minimal.