Which Mb?

PCTech · #1 21st Mar 04, 11:12 PM

Alrighty,

As I have posted in the past month or so, I bought a DFI NFII Ultra Infinity! Stay AWAY FROM IT!!! It has software on its driver disk called Radarsync, if your lucky enough to get it to post after you install and run that then flash the bios and make sure you have 1 stick of ram in or it will not flash right! Or atleast thats what happened to me! So After RMAing the SAME board 2 times to newegg.com and still couldn't get one to work right, one didn't post the other I ran that stupid program on it that came with it, and it broke it. So Which mother board should I get?

Asus which one?
Abit Which one?
Gigabyte ???

Which other board brands are good gamers boards and do overclock? I'm tired of reading reviews from newegg.com as most of them are very misleading so I am asking you guys, my family what I should do! I have a shuttle ak31 with the latest bios, but it doesn't cut it when it comes to processor support.

Needing Advice,
~PCTech

User Needs · #2 22nd Mar 04, 02:01 AM

All I can say is, I've a Gigabyte now. But if I could do it again I'd go with a ASUS.
Had a asus and loved it. But got a Gigabyte after a friend told me that it was the only one he'd get. (have usb2.0 problems) And now I'm not in a position to get another!

adams · #3 22nd Mar 04, 02:15 AM

well i don't know about a good for gaming since i don't do much of it, but i had a biostar and couldn't get the 4.1 sound working (only 2 speakers would work). i emailed the tech at biostar and they quit answering my emails. so i would definitely stay away from them.

now i have a chaintech and so far it has been great except for the lock on the agp slot broke.

DoG · #4 22nd Mar 04, 03:20 AM

I'm leaning a lot toward Asus now-a-days, i have a basic P48SX-X in this rig ATM and have found it runs a lot smoother than the MSI 845E MAX2 BLR. Gigabyte are my next choice- i never EVER had a problem with a Gigabyte board- plug 'em in and set the BIOS, thats all you need to do

As for socket A, i have fitted quite a few Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe's- nice and easy to set up and the sound is pretty good quality. Another good choice is the Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, totally feature packed with dual BIOS in case of flashing problems :P

roadworker · #5 22nd Mar 04, 04:23 AM

I have an Abit NF7-S v2 and am very pleased with it....It has it's own overclocking menu without the need to play around with jumpers or soldering....

jebus · #6 22nd Mar 04, 07:19 AM

Asus and Gigabyte have NEVER caused me grief. Not one RMA... well except once when I had one too many and hooked up usb wrong

My last Gigabyte machine mainnboard:

Quote:

GA-7N400 Pro2 is the supreme platform for latest AMD Athlon XP 400MHz FSB processor. Powered by the revolutionary NVIDIA nForce?2 Ultra 400 platform processors and industry cutting edge technology, this platform delivers new levels of performance and functionality for today¡¦s most demanded tasks. The nForce?2 platform processors not only carries the new generation architecture consisting of dual channel DDR controller and AGP8X graphics interface, but also integrates the innovative Dynamic adaptive speculative pre-processor (DASP) and Hyper-Transport Technology to boost the overall system performance. This platform provides full communication suite of Gigabit LAN connection, IEEE 1394, and USB2.0 interface for full range of connectivity. In addition, Serial ATA and IDE RAID provide superior input/output performance and data protection to the system. GA-7N400 Pro2 delivers an ideal platform with outstanding performance for home and office environment.

And a steal at $133 CAD

PCTech · #7 22nd Mar 04, 11:20 PM

Ok, so i've narrowed it down to 3 boards, and I am thinking of getting the gigabyte one.

Asus -- A7N8X-E-Deluxe
Abit -- NF7-S ver 2.0 (any AMD board newer thats not 64bit??)
Gigabyte -- GA-7n400

Out of those 3 which overclocks and games better? pound for pound i think the gigabyte has more potiential, but Asus has the proven stability and rock solid proformance that I depend on. Abit I've never used, but I know they are as good as the asus boards if not better. I'm confused as to which to go with? Is there a comparision between the 3 boards somewhere else??

Thanks for all the advice so far!

~PCTech

roadworker · #8 23rd Mar 04, 12:14 AM

Review of the Abit NF7-S v2 :

/http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/motherboards/ABIT_NF7_v2.0_1.html

Later revisions of the board support FSB of 400MHZ...not mentioned in the specifications of the review..

rikytik · #9 23rd Mar 04, 12:55 AM

Not a gamer here, but I have two ASUS mobo's. By far he most dependable is the A7V8X (AMD)

I also have a P4C800-E. It's good, but I've had various issues with it. I can define the issues, but they seem to revolve around the SATA drive ( I have just one and use it as a boot drive-no RAID).

I like ASUS. I had an MSI KT 400, but had issues with that and gave it to a needy buddy.

The short of it is that I have this feeling that AMD boards are better than Intel cpu boards. I have nothing more than a "feeling" to support this, ahhhhh, feeling.

DoG · #10 23rd Mar 04, 01:18 AM

If i was still using AMD CPU's i would go for the Gigabyte every time- the Asus is rock solid and dependable but the features of the Gigabyte would sway it for me. The Dual BIOS can be a life saver, especially if you are looking at hacked BIOS images to unlock the full potential of the onboard raid. From what i can remember the onboard raid software is a "Lite" version of the promise raid software.