Gigabyte GA7N400 Pro/2 Owners

[josedawg]

OK, after much researching, I've narrowed my motherboard choice to this one. For those of you who own this, what the hell is the difference between the Pro and the Pro2? From what I've gathered, the Pro has the Soundstorm but no Gigabit LAN, while the Pro2 has no Soundstorm, but has Gigabit LAN. Is this the only difference? Am I missing something here? Why did Gigabyte choose to get rid of the Soundstorm in their Pro2 version?

Also, how stable is the motherboard with all DIMM slots populated? I've heard that some boards with all slots populated need ECC ram, is this true for this motherboard?

Any other info you think I should know before I go off spending my first paycheck on this
I will be putting a 2500+ in here and OCing to ~3000-3200+ speeds on PC3200 with an SLK947U (does this HSF fit comfortably?)

 

[josedawg]

Just found this thread IF YOU ARE A NEW GIGABYTE MOTHERBOARD OWNER, CHECK HERE FIRST!!. One of the main selling points for me was that this mobo had both SATA RAID as well as IDE RAID. But it seems as though the IDE RAID sucks. I needed to do a RAID 1 on my IDE drives, and then later down the line when I upgraded to Raptor v2 SATA drives in RAID 0, I'd be set. Guess not Anyone else confirm the crappiness of the IDE RAID? I'm looking for reliability in RAID 1, not really performance in RAID 0 from the IDE RAID controller.

 

[estew33]

Hi,
I"m just wrting to inform you , to problems I'm having with Gigabyte period. You may want to take this into consideration when buying your board.
I have a Gigabye board that I bought May 2002. The video went out. Started searching Gigabyte's site for warranty and RMA info. Gigabtye tout's their world class RMA service. To make a long story short, not able to find any place on their site at all to rma.
Ended up calling , had to email to request rma. They sent me an email with two forms to fill out and return to them via email. Email, state's that I'll hear back within 24 hr's or so. I heard nothing for 6 days, then a email saying they didn't receive the two forms, I attached them!!!. I resent, it's been 3 days now since I sent the required info the second time.
Also if they determine the board is out of warranty ( I was not able to get a specific time of warranty out of them for my board, only told me, warranty is for one to three years depends on board ) they charge you 45.00 plus parts.
I happened to be going thru abit's site reading up on some of their boards. Ran across their RMA info. You fill out the forms right on their site and send. If the board is out of warranty they just charge you a flat 25.00 period, thats not bad compared to Gigabyte's 45.00 plus parts. It also looks like abit's boards all have 3 years warranty!!
Ed
Forgot to tell you. board has a via 333 chipset, yet gigabyte's says the board won't handle any 33 bus cpu, ( go figure).

 

[josedawg]

Yeah I just had a talk with a friend who has dealt with a few Gigabyte boards. He told me the GigaRAID (IDE RAID Controller for Gigabyte boards) are actually rebadged Promise controllers, which suck beyond any help. So....I think I'll be looking at an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe or Abit NF7-S board, and later on picking up a Highpoint IDE RAID controller PCI card.

 

[3sixes]

josedawg
Here is my response,
I have the pro, and love it, has never given a bit of problems.
If I were buying today based on my particular needs I would again get the pro.
I dont use raid and never intended on using it so the speed of it does not matter to me,
I got it for the extra ata ide connectors and so far have added a 3rd hd on Ide 3 with no problems.

here is a rip from a post I answerd just recently, hope it give u a better understanding.


It's real simple bud, the pro over the pro2 because:

The pro=6layer pcb
The pro2=4layer pcb

The pro=all cpu, voltage,mem timings,fsb, multi, all done in bios
The pro2= dip switches

The Pro=adjustable cpu voltage up or down
The pro2=overvolted cpu voltage at 1.7v instead of 1.65 unchangeable

The Pro=nvidia apu -aka- soundstorm
The pro2= no soundstrom

We have this wonderful modded bios for the pro, great for those who overclock

Most with the proper ram, proper timings, and good power supply are running 11x200+ for jump street

If you want anymore specific info about the boards, just holla, Im allways in the gigabyte nforcers forums.

Laterz

3sixes -aka- DaFanMan

 

[josedawg]

Thanks for the insight 3sixes, but the main selling point for me on the Gigabyte board was the IDE RAID and SATA RAID. It was the only nForce2 board I found with both. But seeing as its IDE RAID sucks (GigaRAID = crappy Promise IDE controller), I've decided to go with an NF7-S, and pick up an extra Serillel adapter (NF7-S retail comes with one Serillel [PATA-->SATA] adapter), and just do RAID 1 with those, until later on down the line when I upgrade to Raptor v2 drives (once they come down in price, or later next year when more native SATA drives drop), and I'll pick up either a Highpoint ATA controller, or SATA controller (probably the latter and keep using the Serillel adapters).

The Gigabyte Pro's are hard to come by, besides FS/FT forums, but now that I found out its main feature that I wanted, is actually its crappiest component, I'm not going with this board at all. The NF7-S is a popular OC'ing board so I don't see myself going wrong with it.

 

[3sixes]

josedawg,
That's cool, the whole point is to make sure you have as much information as needed to make an informed buying decision.
Different needs, for different usese, ya know.

good luck with your final choice.