Nforce2 or Granite Bay?

[dirkpitt1]

I'm upgrading soon from my xp1900 setup to something faster. What are your thoughts on Nforce2 vs. Granite bay? I damn near bought an Asus nforce2 board last night! I'm entertaining thoughts of switching to a p4 instead of sticking with AMD. Any good comparisons between the two boards out yet?

 

[bgeh]

nforce 2 is an AMD chipset
granite bay or E7205 is an intel chipset
it's very hard to do a comparison because both this chipsets serve entirely different processors
but if there was a nforce 2 for p4
i'd say that it would beat granite bay because it has more bandwidth

 

[Vette73]

nForce2 would be my choice

 

[dirkpitt1]

Thanks for such a quick reply! I know one is for the athlon and the other is for the p4, I just havent decided which way I'm going with my next computer. I want the "biggest bang for the buck", and I cant break the bank with this. I'm starting with the case and p/s and working my way up. I dont plan on using raid, just a WD JB 8mb cache drive, WindowsXP, the usual cdrw etc.. Will mostly be a gaming rig, with internest browsing and some OfficeXp usage as well. Keep the thoughts coming! I do plan on dabbling with overclocking as well, and have NO experience doing it with Intel processors, any thoughts on which is a better overclocking processor?

 

[SFang]

Another supporter for nforce2, the sound is just superior.

Nforce2 = Granite Bay + Audigy 2

and cheaper than Granite Bay by more than $50.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: dirkpitt1
Thanks for such a quick reply! I know one is for the athlon and the other is for the p4, I just havent decided which way I'm going with my next computer. I want the "biggest bang for the buck", and I cant break the bank with this. I'm starting with the case and p/s and working my way up. I dont plan on using raid, just a WD JB 8mb cache drive, WindowsXP, the usual cdrw etc.. Will mostly be a gaming rig, with internest browsing and some OfficeXp usage as well. Keep the thoughts coming! I do plan on dabbling with overclocking as well, and have NO experience doing it with Intel processors, any thoughts on which is a better overclocking processor?

for the biggest bang of the buck go for a amd athlon xp+nforce 2 based motherboard

 

[touchmyichi]

I can safely say nforce 2 is the best chipset on the market.

 

[soni]

Also if money is a problem, then get the NForce2 and some quality RAM now, and get the BIG processor (2700+ and up) later
You cant do that with a P4 system...

 

[tuan121]

nforce2 be my choice. soundstorm is supposely as good as audigy 2. WOW!

 

[dirkpitt1]

Sounds like the consensous is go with the Nforce2. I can get the Asus board for $149 locally, sound like a good price? I have thought about just getting the mobo now and using my current xp1900 until I can afford the xp2800, sounds easy enough. I noticed several posters claiming the Soundstorm audio on the Asus board as being equivilent to an Audigy2, do you know of any source for this such as a review, or is this just based on personal experience? I have a Soundblaster live at the moment, but it wouldnt hurt my feelings any to avoid having to buy another sound card! Does anyone know if you can use the dual lan option to hook one computer to a cable modem, and run the other line out to another machine? Basically just making a small in house lan. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks again!

 

[CraigRT]

I think I might go NForce2 soon myself...

Just got a new 845pe board like 2 days ago, and I want to switch to another AMD rig... Heh...

 

[SFang]

Feature-wise, we still love nVidia's integrated audio processing engine. The nVidia SoundStorm audio processing engine delivers top-notch sound quality that rivals Creative's Audigy2, and still is the only chip on the market that can encode into Dolby Digital 5.1 in real-time. Now that the A7N8X Deluxe has integrated six-channel analog and digital outputs right on the motherboard, it completely eliminates the need for a dedicated audio card. Toss in that it has two high-performance 10/100 Ethernet ports onboard, Firewire, and USB 2.0, and you've got an even better value.

Link to GamePC review

 

[ALstonLoong]

i will go for nforce2 , since you already have a fast enough 1900 amd cpu .

 

[SFang]

Exactly.