Good NF 2 board with four mounting holes?

[circut16]

I am looking to upgrade my abit KR7A (KT266A) to something with an NF -2 with MCP - T, and most importantly support for heatsinks with 4 mounting bolts, and suggestions are appreciated

 

[mechBgon]

Asus A7N8X Deluxe and Abit NF7-S revision 2 are a couple of popular ones. Asus recently released the A7N8X-E Deluxe and it has the four holes too, judging by the newegg photos. All three of those have the MCP-T, and here's a more comprehensive reference: nVidia's mobo chart, listing mobos & chipset details

Maxtor Atlas 10k IV, eh? You'll like the high PCI efficiency of nForce2 for your SCSI card to run free on. Personally, my feelings on SCSI can be summed up like this: :camera: = 1000 words

 

[circut16]

The other big question is will my Alpha 8045 fit on any of those?
"high PCI efficiency of nForce2 for your SCSI card to run free on"
didn't know of that?
I think i need an ultra 160 interface too. but that will have to wait

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: circut16
The other big question is will my Alpha 8045 fit on any of those?
"high PCI efficiency of nForce2 for your SCSI card to run free on"
didn't know of that?
I think i need an ultra 160 interface too. but that will have to wait

Proof that the 8045 works great on the A7N8X Deluxe and here is the Alpha Novatech 8045 fit list. I presume the A7N8X-E uses the same layout as my older A7N8X Deluxe rev. 2 does.

 

[mechBgon]

Oh, and I can recommend this LSI Logic U160 card: link, look at the price! It's 64-bit ready but runs fine on a standard 32-bit PCI bus too. You've got an LVD Ultra2/Ultra160 cable & terminator already, right?

 

[circut16]

the rounded scsi cables are a nice touch
think the onboard lan is any better than 3com 3c905c?

 

[circut16]

wholy SH** how can that be 40 bucks for that?
the feeling i get is it does not perform as well as an adaptec.

I already have cable and term but it only has space for 2 drives

 

[mechBgon]

The A7N8X Deluxe has a 3Com NIC onboard as well as the nVidia one. I've used both as heavily as one can use a 100Mbit NIC, and they both seem to be ...well, they both seem to be normal 100Mbit NICs, which is to say they could stand to be faster!

That's one of the features of the A7N8X-E Deluxe, it has the onboard nVidia 100Mbit NIC (not PCI-based, but native to the MCP-T southbridge), but the second NIC is a gigabit-Ethernet NIC that's based off the PCI bus.

Regarding the PCI bus, I had a KT333-based board which proved to have nasty PCI performance. The PCI bus seemed to be topping out at 70MB/second even with as much PCI stuff disabled as possible (that motherboard had some extraneous stuff hung off the PCI bus, like USB 2.0). By contrast, even the original nForce was busting the door down with 120MB/sec sustained throughput, and nForce2 is the same. Bye-bye KT333...

With two Ultra160 cards riding that bus, I'm not gonna put up with half-baked PCI performance.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: circut16
wholy SH** how can that be 40 bucks for that?
the feeling i get is it does not perform as well as an adaptec.

I already have cable and term but it only has space for 2 drives

It performs as well as, or better than, the Adaptec 19160 that you see below it in my photo. I have two 15000rpm Cheetahs in there and I put the faster one on the LSI Logic.

The 19160's claim to fame is that it has a SCSI-2 secondary bus for legacy devices. The internal 50-pin SCSI-2 plug would run a SCSI CD-ROM or SCSI-2 tape drive, for example, and the external HD50 fitting for scanners or external tape drives or whatnot. The LSI Logic has one LVD U160 bus, and its external fitting is simply the other end of the internal bus. But if all you've got is Ultra2, Ultra160 or Ultra320 drives, why pay for that 19160?