Another N-Force 250 disappointment - Epox

[joe2004]

http://the-inquirer.net/?article=15566

 

[exar333]

Yeah, the much "touted" nforce 250 seems to be marginally better than the nforce 150....the one nice thing is the features that do come with the board...in the future, those features should make for a pretty good budget type board, since thats where AMD is going with the socket 754 anyway...

 

[Soulkeeper]

yeah VIA put a lot of R&D into that chipset they are comparing it to
they pretty much gave up on socket A r&d and updates and focused hardcore on the new sockets early last year

I wouldn't worry tho
because if you get good memory and a good cpu and know how to use the bios the difference is hardly noticeable
i like hypertransport in the 250, put that board in any server or raid environment

Both nice chipsets if you ask me tho

 

[mechBgon]

What's disappointing about it? RAID across any combination of SATA and/or PATA drives, network throughput that will tear the doors off a PCI-X 64-bit/100MHz server NIC on a dual-Xeon board... you're disappointed 'cause you're lookin' in the wrong places for the improvements. And if you didn't notice, Wesley got his A64 to run three memory modules at DDR400 on that MSI nF3 250 board he tested just the other day. Show me a VIA board that can pull that stunt in real life.

*keeps saving pennies & watching for Asus K8N-E Deluxe to appear on the market*

 

[Megatomic]

I'm with mechBgon, you guys are not seeing the whole picture. How much more performance can NF3-250 offer over the NF3-150 when the memory controller is on the CPU??? Wait for NF3-250Gb Ultra which will be socket 939. You'll get dual channel DDR then. That's what I'm saving for.

 

[Soulkeeper]

the chipsets can't be compared performance-wise in the same ways anymore beings the mem controllers in integrated

we gotta start looking at all the other goodies
both chipsets are nice
i think the nf3 gets the nudge tho if you want the best of the best and the via solution (although roughly as fast) would make a better budget solution

 

[IczarOne]

Not to totally butt in. But I'd like to say that i almost got that nforce 3 since i have the 2 and its 3d marks are high. But i went with the msi master2 and the fx 53. this combined with the asus a9800 256ddr and a couple of aquired fire gl drivers ensured that i wouldn't have to worry about that lagging board. And since all my work in Maya 6. I couldn't do the nforce... sadly with all of the failures im afraid this once nvidia fan has traded in the green for keeps...

I know sad isn't it. )

 

[Zap]

I figured the overall performance would be the same. What's different, besides stuff already mentioned like SATA, is the AGP/PCI lock that was broken in most/all 150 boards. That alone should make it chipset of choice for overclockers.

 

[wicktron]

Gigabyte's NF3-250