KT880 or Abit NF7-S2?

[Ardan]

Hello!

I have a KT333 here that I'd like to whip together for a sibling's ancient 700Mhz Athlon upgrade to an 1800+ (that is also around here, heheh) system, but i'd like it to be a little newer.

I have the Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394 in this computer, and it has served its purpose easily. I'm thinking of getting a 9800 Pro in the next few weeks (I hear I may be getting Far Cry or Doom III for my 21st birthday on the 26th), so I was thinking maybe I should get a new motherboard, and then they could take my old one.

I noticed this A7V880 and I like it a lot, but I had an NF7-S Rev 2 for a while, and that was one very nice motherboard so I figured that i'd check out to see if the new southbridges were around. I noticed the Abit NF7-S2 board on Newegg for $69.18 but I can't find much on it.

Does anyone know anything about this new board? I know it has the native SATA that I want, but what about its compatibility, BIOS options, etc. Does anyone HAVE it already? I heard somehting about multiplier problems, and I DO have a multiplier-unlocked XP 2500+ CPU (non mobile, of course) and I would definitely want to bump it up to 3200+ in the future. I know I can easily do this on the A7V880, since reviewers could hit 227FSB with little effort at all, and people told me you could adjust them in the BIOS with it.

Any thoughts on these boards?

P.S.
I'm not buying any current nForce2 Ultra400 boards, because Silicon Image's linux drivers......aren't exactly spectacular.

 

[nonchron]

I'm trying to make a similar decision, a7v880 vs a7n8x-e for my upgrade. The a7v880 is looking pretty nice...

Last time I bought a spanking new board I got kinda screwed - options in the bios got downgraded over a series of firmware updates, and while the board has treated me alright for the last three years, I think that's the last time I'm buying a Soyo.

edit: oh, btw.. I had an abit before that and wasn't particularly pleased with it. It had some screwy behaviors and crashes, but I don't remember the specific model number. I've just never had an ASUS before, so...

 

[Fern]

From what I'm hearing, the NF7-S2 board is not for OC'ers. There has been confusion between it and the regular NF7-S v2, cuz the names are so close. There's a thread around here on it a day or so ago.

From memory, the NF7-S2-
has no multi adj ( I heard tic tac, the bios modder, was working on it though)
limited options for vcore adjutments
no soundstorm
can't do cas 2.0 for ram, only cas 2.5 (and above presumably)

That's all I can remember off the top of my head. Does the abit site not have specs?

 

[Ardan]

Interesting. The abit site has specs, but not for memory timings and stuff (of course). I like the A7V880 too, but what about the rest? Does anyone know of any good NF2 boards with the new southbridge (believe it was MCP-RAID) or some other KT880 boards out there? I'm going to check MSI, DFI and Gigabyte to see what they have.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Ardan
Interesting. The abit site has specs, but not for memory timings and stuff (of course). I like the A7V880 too, but what about the rest? Does anyone know of any good NF2 boards with the new southbridge (believe it was MCP-RAID) or some other KT880 boards out there? I'm going to check MSI, DFI and Gigabyte to see what they have.

You might wanna go check over at nForcersHQ or Abit Forums to check on the new SB thing. Somebody over there will know.

 

[Ardan]

Fern, i've already looked in both places.

I finally found what I was looking for. When I did, I quickly decided on the A7V880. If someone is curious about it, i'm buying it next Monday, so ask me on wednesday what I think of it!

Oh wait one other thing: do you think the 512Mb $79 Kingmax DDR400 is better than the $79 512Mb Mushkin DDR400 on Newegg? Looks like it gets more positive votes than that Mushkin.

 

[Fern]

"Oh wait one other thing: do you think the 512Mb $79 Kingmax DDR400 is better than the $79 512Mb Mushkin DDR400 on Newegg? Looks like it gets more positive votes than that Mushkin. "

Arden, sorry I don't know. When I'm getting a new mobo I'll usually wonder over to a specific forum on them to make sure that the mobo will play nice with whatever ram I'm thinking about.

 

[Ardan]

Well, Fern, I found out that both RAM will play nice with the board. I hoping one would be incompatible so that I could make an easy choice, but now I can't

I don't think I can lose either way though.

I was hoping the NF7-S2 was a good board, but I guess it isn't

 

[Silkwormsgnr]

The MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum (nForce2 Ultra 400Gb) is out now.

 

[Ardan]

Originally posted by: Silkwormsgnr
The MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum (nForce2 Ultra 400Gb) is out now.

I bought the ASUS A7V880 a while ago, actually. Thats why I never said anything until you replied.
I bought 2x256Mb sticks of Corsair Value SelectDDR400 (CAS Latency 2.5) and both are the best choices i've made in a while.

If anyone is wondering, I could hit the top FSB possible on the board's BIOS (227Mhz) easily and the *value select* CL 2.5 ran in sync with it the whole time. So, if anyone is curious...yes it is a VERY good board. It is also very fast and loads my big games like BF1942 and Doom III faster than the NF7-S did in here.

Very good choice.

 

[Tastydirt]

Actually, the new BIOS now lets me use CL2, but only when setting the RAM speed by SPD.