Based on GuildBoss's requirements, AMD and Intel are equally recommendable. So it boils down to personal preference - AMD or Intel. Maybe you could help him by recommending a good Intel board. It's a tough decision.:confused: I'm leaning towards the AMD choice because Epox 8RDA+ at $98 (MWave)...
The AMD retail heatsink is indeed not as good as intel's but one could get a cooler master HAC-V81 heatsink+Fan for as little as $12 - great for overclocking.
And if he enjoys quality audio in games, he'll probably have to get a sound card for the intel setup.
Depending on the BIOS and such, some nforce2 boards have problems booting with PC3500 memory and Corsair "Low Latency" memory out-of-box. I would choose the XMS PC3200 CAS2.
- Make sure there's no metal-to-metal contact between the bottom of the motherboard and the metal of the case.
- Double-check for proper heatsink installation.
- If ya get two 256MB sticks now and upgrade to 1GB in the future by buying a 512MB stick, you'll still have 1GB in dual ddr. No reason to sacrafice dual ddr now or in the future.
- For the cpu fan, check what others are using.
In short, they were looking for something to knock them off of their chairs in terms of overclocking and they recieved results that came up short of that. Great results nonetheless. :) And they were not using the latest BIOS (1.6). To really see what the board can do, a *true* overclocker would...
Nforce2 boards from other manus, besides abit, are subject to BIOS corruption also. Whichever board ya use, DO NOT POWER OFF while the BIOS is saving your settings! NF7-S Rev 1.2 displays a message with respect to this when you save your bios settings.
I believe there may be a way to software mod a 9700 pro to a high end Ati 3d workstation graphics card. For info, check Guru3D. Think the mod is called softFireGL.
If ya have two 256MB memory modules in the two memory slots that seem to be close together and one 512MB memory module in the memory slot that stands alone, you'll have 1GB in full Dual DDR.
For all nforce2 boards, if you have two memory modules, put one memory module in the memory slot that seems to stand alone and the other in either of the two remaining slots for Dual DDR.
ExcaliberPC offers a combo deal where the BIOS survival kit ends up costing $8 extra.
I would try testing the affects of enabling/disabling "APIC function" in the BIOS before OS install before giving up on it.
I would choose Abit NF7-S Revision 1.2 if I were building a computer today.;)
Judging from your current specs, graphics card would be the most influential upgrade. System is already impressive but a 9500/9700 would allow ya to enjoy AA+AF in games.
- NF7-M Rev 1.2 Specs. It doesn't include nVidia APU, firewire or SATA.
- NF7 Rev 1.2 and NF7-S Rev 1.2 both overclock the same. I can only guess that NF7-M Rev 1.2 would overclock the same as the other two because i'm unsure how having the IGP affects overclocking.
- NF7 Rev 1.2 is indeed a...
Yeah, you want to make sure things are working properly first. Then do the BIOS flash. Though it's not always necessary to flash to the latest BIOS. I just included it because you mentioned it in your original post.
1. Clean install of OS
2. Latest service Pack (Service pack 1 for windows xp)
3. Latest nVidia Drivers (say no to SW IDE driver of version 2.03)
4. Latest DirectX
5. Latest Catalyst drivers/Control Panel
6. Latest BIOS and related items
*If you are running Windows 95/98, disable "APIC...
bgeh's graphs reveal 0.75 to 3.21 cpu utilization. And 3.21 only with DirectSound 3D and 32 voices. And the results don't increase exponentially as the amount of voices increase. And yeah, I agree, it would in fact be better to listen to the differences between the nvidia audio and the audigy...
Depends on the motherboard. For example, with the Abit NF7-S motherboard, you can specify the "CPU FSB/DRAM ratio" as a 1 to 1 ratio. That is, FSB and DRAM Frequency in sync.
It's not that NF7-S has bios corruption problems but rather it had difficulty recovering from BIOS corruption. That is, it needed the BIOS reset jumper. Revision 1.2 of the NF7-S has that jumper.:)
Even if a module is rated to run at DDR400, it can run at DDR333 speed. You'd just have to make the appropriate adjustments in the BIOS - not difficult.
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