Best Nforce Ultra 400 ? Giga-byte, Asus, Abit, or MSI + why?

I went through this same decision a few months ago. After reading a lot of
reviews, the nod went to the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. Some of the deciding factors
we Top performance compared with other NF2 boards, stability, inclusion
of mounting holes for aftermarket HSFs (Asus is the only one out of the ones
mentioned that still does), no northbridge fan to make noise or fail, SATA
RAID (even if it is still PCI based), decent price.

The only con I can see - and this is subjective - is the rather mundane gold
color. MSI and Gigabyte have more flash if that's important.

I would choose the NF2 board over the VIA.

Hope this helps.

Stuart

"Alan" wrote in message
news
I am looking to buy another Nforce board and looking for input from
current
owners.
My deciding factors a

1. Stability
2. Performance
3. Price

I use a computer for rendering drawings, dual screen with XP 2500, OCZ
3500
ram.

As I peruse the boards, many Nforce owners are having similar problems,
regardless of manufacuter, with the new VIA KT 600 coming out, what do you
think?

If you wouldn't mind taking the time to respond.


Alan

The NF7-S certainly has the mounting holes too (at least as of rev1.1 on
above) I've got a Thermalright SLK900U mounted using the holes right now (a
heatsink that wont fit the Asus by the way)...it also has the SATA RAID,
plus it's cheaper than the A7N8X-Deluxe (and it's a better overclocker).
Overall they are both good boards though.
The Gigabyte is good too but you need to decide if you need to pay the extra
for all those features you may never use.

I went for the NF7-S rev 2.0 and if I had to make the decision again
tomorrow I'd do the same.

Stay clear of Via unless price is your main driver.

"C. Stuart McKendrick, III" wrote in
message .. .
I went through this same decision a few months ago. After reading a lot of
reviews, the nod went to the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. Some of the deciding
factors
we Top performance compared with other NF2 boards, stability, inclusion
of mounting holes for aftermarket HSFs (Asus is the only one out of the
ones
mentioned that still does), no northbridge fan to make noise or fail, SATA
RAID (even if it is still PCI based), decent price.

The only con I can see - and this is subjective - is the rather mundane
gold
color. MSI and Gigabyte have more flash if that's important.

I would choose the NF2 board over the VIA.

Hope this helps.

Stuart

"Alan" wrote in message
news
I am looking to buy another Nforce board and looking for input from
current
owners.
My deciding factors a

1. Stability
2. Performance
3. Price

I use a computer for rendering drawings, dual screen with XP 2500, OCZ
3500
ram.

As I peruse the boards, many Nforce owners are having similar problems,
regardless of manufacuter, with the new VIA KT 600 coming out, what do
you
think?

If you wouldn't mind taking the time to respond.


Alan

when you will go for stability and performance. the best decision is to go
for intel - p4p800


regards
martin

"Alan" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news
I am looking to buy another Nforce board and looking for input from
current
owners.
My deciding factors a

1. Stability
2. Performance
3. Price

I use a computer for rendering drawings, dual screen with XP 2500, OCZ
3500
ram.

As I peruse the boards, many Nforce owners are having similar problems,
regardless of manufacuter, with the new VIA KT 600 coming out, what do you
think?

If you wouldn't mind taking the time to respond.


Alan

when you will go for stability and performance. the best decision is to go
for intel - p4p800

I've used both nforce2 and 865PE motherboards, and if you can't get
stability and performance with an nforce2, then you must not know how to set
it up.

--
LiveWire

I went through this same decision a few months ago. After reading a lot of
reviews, the nod went to the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. Some of the deciding
factors
we Top performance compared with other NF2 boards, stability, inclusion
of mounting holes for aftermarket HSFs (Asus is the only one out of the
ones
mentioned that still does), no northbridge fan to make noise or fail, SATA
RAID (even if it is still PCI based), decent price.

Bingo. You hit this one dead-on. Not only does Asus still include the HSF
mounting holes, but they *plate* them, just like the chassis mounting holes,
and they actually leave some room around them. Most other manufacturers, if
they even *have* the holes anymore, crowd them with traces and SMDs,
rendering them all but useless.

The lack of a fan on the Northbridge is also a *good* thing. The heatsink
on the Northbridge barely gets warm, so a fan is not necessary. In fact, I
have this board with an XP2800 Barton, and it's the coolest-running PC I've
had in five years.

I've also *never* had an Asus board that didn't work perfectly.

I guess you can call that a ringing endorsement for Asus.

when you will go for stability and performance. the best decision is to go
for intel - p4p800

No thanks. My last experience with a Pee4 made me think I was working with
an old Pentium 233. *Performance*? SLOW.

And I've *never* had any stability problems with any AMD-based board, and
I've used Gigabyte, EPoX, Asus, and even one SuperMicro board (P5MMA98/K6
266) with AMD CPUs with *no* trouble.

Stability is an age-old Intel buzzword that means nothing now. Please take
the evangelical sermon somewhere else.

Thank you everyone, a great deal of very good points. I admit, I was
somewhat tainted against the Asus board, primarily from the scratch issue,
plus the numerous times that it was difficult to recover from overclocking
and freeze-ups.

There is a great deal of performance and issues with this chipset, the Abit
appeared to have less of its share. I decided on the Abit N7F-S, primarily
because of its ability to tweak more out of the processor. It also has some
features that I wanted to try that were not available on the Asus board.
The Gigabyte rates very well (Tom's Hardware), and appears to be stable,
perhaps the P4 12v plug has something to do with this as it is on both the
Gigabyte and Abit, not the Asus, overall I felt the Abit had better value.

If anyone is interested, I will post my findings as I am replacing my
defunct A7N8X with this board, exactly the same components and case.

Thanks to all for taking the time to contribute to this thread.

Regards,

Alan


"Alan" wrote in message
news
I am looking to buy another Nforce board and looking for input from
current
owners.
My deciding factors a

1. Stability
2. Performance
3. Price

I use a computer for rendering drawings, dual screen with XP 2500, OCZ
3500
ram.

As I peruse the boards, many Nforce owners are having similar problems,
regardless of manufacuter, with the new VIA KT 600 coming out, what do you
think?

If you wouldn't mind taking the time to respond.


Alan