NF7-S, A7N8X, or 7NJS....

[Ray5150Ray]

I've read the reviews, now I want to hear from the users. Tell me the pros and cons of the motherboard that you use(of the three listed). Please don't use this as a slam session of a board you do not own. I want to hear about your board as I am trying to decide which will be my next. I will pair it with either a 2600 or 2700. Thanks...

 

[KingofFah]

Why a 2400?
I believe that any of those boards will be able to change the multiplier on the 2400 to 2600 or 2700.

 

[Ray5150Ray]

Do you not think I understand that? I have the money and will opt for one of the two I have listed. Thanks for the info anyway...

 

[CraigRT]

have you read any reviews?

Reviewers say the Asus is awesome (always)
they say the EPoX is fast, overclocks good, but is plane jane with no RAID or anything.
they say the NF7-S is also good, and has good features too. all are very stable and fast.

the NForce2 platform from the major manufacturers all sound pretty good right about now.
I was going 8RDA+ but when i found out it was on backorder 10 days after I ordered it, I cancelled the order in hopes of maybe getting the NF7-S

if you get any one of those boards, you should be happy.

 

[nick1985]

i have an a7n8x, and you know what?? it hasnt crashed or locked up or had a single hiccup in the entire 1 month that it has been running non-stop. i dont know of to many mobos that can do that. get the asus

 

[Hottie]

I got the NF7-S, I got it only because it is cheap and I don't need those SATA, firewire...stuff. I pair it with TB 1700+. It is stable as rock under 150mhz. It have been stable since day 1. The only thing missing will be the you can't adjust the multipler, hope it will included in the next bios update.

 

[Nardman]

well dude, I have an a7n8x deluxe and gotta say that it is all I wanted in a mobo and more. The update from my old platform (a rock-solid BH-6...I loved that thing<sniffle>) was smooth as can be. The performance of the board and processor is great (I have a 2100). The lack of a fan on the chipset cooler is very helpful for a quiet system as well. The system is very stable, I've only had it crash a couple of times and I blame that mainly on mozilla (of course mo isn't any worse than IE in that respect and the browsing features are superior, but I'm getting off subject). The onboard NIC and 5.1 sound is wonderful if you want that stuff. The overall board layout is very nice; you can change RAM without removing your graphics card, cables are easily routed away from hot components, and there's a ton of room around the socket.
Overall, I'd highly recommend this board, but I do have a couple of complaints. I don't really care for the ASUS proprietary BIOS styling, it seems kinda clunky compared to the standard award style. I also am not a fan of having to change jumpers to adjust settings, but I guess I'm just spoiled from my old ABIT. I don't like where the power header is on the board, it's smacked right next to the fdd and ide headers on the right side of the board and just about wedge themselves underneath my hard drive caddy (my case is a mid-tower, but is on the smaller side of them). I also wish that the included supplemental USB ports had a bit longer of a cable so I could route them to the front of my case. Other than that stuff (and I was pretty much nit-picking), this motherboard is perfect, I'd highly recommend it, ymmv however.

peace

 

[NovaTone]

Originally posted by: Hottie
I got the NF7-S, I got it only because it is cheap and I don't need those SATA, firewire...stuff. I pair it with TB 1700+. It is stable as rock under 150mhz. It have been stable since day 1. The only thing missing will be the you can't adjust the multipler, hope it will included in the next bios update.

I also got the nf7-s, and as it turns out, nf7-s does come with SATA and firewire
Great board for a decent price!

 

[chizow]

Damn Yield, still no good prices in Canada? I was about to recommend a few excellent vendors at awesome prices, as I almost bought this board. Only thing that stopped me was the lack of 4 mounting holes for my Alpha 8045.

I have the Asus and my only complaints are about the BIOS. The shipping BIOS is miserable, if you aren't a pretty experienced troubleshooter or system builder, you will definitely want to read up prior to installation. Also, the BIOS releases to date are NOT as good as some other boards, particularly the 8KHA+. Of course, this is only really a consideration if you want to overclock. It will be even less of an issue if you decide to go with the 333mhz parts of those chips you listed. Board layout is good, no issues with a full-sized PCI/AGP card being obstructed. IDE sockets are too close but there's plenty of room around the socket for any type of cooler you wish. It has the most robust I/O plate of any of the Nforce2 boards I've seen to date (4 USB, sp/dif coax out, full 3 mini-plugs for 5.1, mic, line-in, 2 LAN, 2 PS/2, serial, and parallel). 2 more USB headers, a game port and firewire are available using 2 slot plates. You get SATA RAID which is pretty useless unless you have SATA drives; using your IDE drives will cost you $60 in adapters. Front control pins are a bit jumbled up. Manual is excellent and detailed with schematics, and you get both a quick reference card as well as an adhesive mobo layout diagram. Comes with all cables including 2 SATA. Bundled software is nothing too exciting, although AsusUpdate and AsusProbe are very nice. 3deep is a decent proggy to have as well, I haven't seen it since my Voodoo5, but it tweaks color settings nicely. This board features full Sound Storm support, but you're tied to Asus' proprietary version of the Nforce2 UDA's, as they vary somehow from Nvidia's reference.

Again, it all comes down to what you will be using the board for. A7N8X-DLX is an excellent Jack-of-All-Trades board, but if I had to do it over again, I'd probably be running the 8RDA+. I'm sure the Chaintech and NF7-S are also fine choices in-line feature wise with the A7N8X-DLX, so my last consideration would be number of users and availability of user/forum support.

You should probably define your needs better, as well as what components you plan to use with it to refine suggestions.

Chiz

 

[voyager622]

I just got the 7njs! i have had it a week, it has been very stable and is full featured. i love the cbox 2, this board is loaded, i wish my first board came will all this stuff. if i can get this board to run ide raid 0, i will be very happy! the spech sheet indicates that it supports ide raid 0, the manual reads the same, yet i can,t seem to get the raid bios to recognizes 2 drives on the raid ide! i ran raid 0 on my IWILL kk266r and thouht i knew what i was doing. i will be calling support on monday to see if they have an answer for me. if i was wrong about the support for ide raid no big problem, because i am waiting for WD's 10000 rpm serial ata hdd's!

 

[rwalterk]

I have the A7N8X Deluxe. No troubles at all.

 

[Mangler]

vote for NF7-S V1.2

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: Mangler
vote for NF7-S V1.2

 

[Btthr5150]

I'm loking for the same advice on N-Force2 boards and I'll have to admit that I'm leaning toward the Abit board cause I love my BE6-II I'm running now.
Does anyone know of any issues with any of the N-force2 boards and radeon 9700 pro??
And don't any of them offer any RAID 0 capabilities (IDE)??
Thanx
By the way check this place out for the Abit N-force2 REV 1.2 thanks to a fellow forum member.
ABIT REV 1.2

 

[touchmyichi]

I have a A7N8X deluxe. I am very satisfied. You will hate it if you use the default bios. Get one of the 1002 bios's and ur ready to roll. There's a crapload of stuff here i will never use, but hey whatever. One thing I like about this board is how well live update and the onboard flash utility works. Very nice. The sound is also superb too. I have had a problem though. For some reason I cannot write a CD. I have everything set up as on my old config. The CD writer shows up w/ all of these !!!! marks next to it. Anyone want to help lol?