Worth Upgrading to Asus A7N8X-E or X or Abit NF7-S2 ?

[GearCat]

I have been considering upgrading the motherboard on my older computer (soon to be the kid's computer). This computer has the ABIT AT7 using the VIA KT333 chipset. Is is worth upgrading to the Abit NF7-S2 ($65), Asus A7N8X-E ($89), or Asus A7N8X-X ($63) with the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset (1st two boards) or nForce2 400 (3rd board) using my Athlon XP 1900+ and DDR333 memory? How will I benefit?

 

[GearCat]

I have been considering upgrading the motherboard on my older computer (soon to be the kid's computer). This computer has the ABIT AT7 using the VIA KT333 chipset. Is is worth upgrading to the Abit NF7-S2 ($65), Asus A7N8X-E ($89), or Asus A7N8X-X ($63) with the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset (1st two boards) or nForce2 400 (3rd board) using my Athlon XP 1900+ and DDR333 memory? How will I benefit?

BTW, I'll be using the Abit Siluro GF4 Ti 4200 or 4400 (w/ 128MB DDR) with this new board.

Also considering Abit NF7-S ($83) motherboard.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

(Added this in Edit later: I hadn't realized that you were doubling up with two similar message threads in the same forum, or I would have referred you from here back to the older thread.)

Although I am not familiar with any KT-333 motherboards, I do have several NF2's, and a couple of KT-266 - based MB's. Unless you replace the cpu, you probably are only gaining the onboard Sound Storm (on the Asus), if you can use it. Also, there have been two somewhat similar Abit NF2 motherboards. The "S2" and its twin, the "S2G" are both pure crap. Not worth $25, let alone $65!

The NF2 chipset motherboards are more popular in places such as Anand Tech's forums because they are easier to tweak. The AGP and PCI slots aren't affected by changing the FSB for the memory and cpu, for example. Via didn't have that locked AGP feature for the motherboards they made for Socket A.

MSI's Via motherboards are popular with white box system builders because they are less costly, but they aren't necessarily cheaply made. You "might" get some improvement from a faster cpu in the same motherboard, but that would be a more expensive option. If you want to see some seriously improved speed for gaming purposes, add $75 or so and look at this ad from Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130220

That's a one day sale, 6600GT for $155.


:thumbsup:

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Some message forum moderators get bent all out of shape with newbies pulling this doubling thing. It's been so long since I signed the agreements to be a good boy here that I can't be sure whether they named your transgression in their rules against stuff in those agreements. I'd bet that they included it, though.