*** Official ABIT NF7/S (nForce2) Thread ***

[KidChaos]

Originally posted by: sambao21

Originally posted by: sambao21
Whats so good about nf7 1.2 say over a7n8x? or 8rda+???

Can anyone answer this? i've heard that nf7 1.2 has more overclocking options like a raised vdimm over the 8rda+, any other reasons? Also, is that enquirer post concerning the problem with nf7 1.2 and bios dieing? So is it going to be fixed now?

I don't know about the validity of that article. I do know that among the extreme overclockers, Abit NF7-S Revision 1.2 is looked at as the front-runner. Those extreme overclockers who have the Abit NF7-S Rev 1.2 make many changes to the BIOS and I haven't heard them complain about BIOS corruption. Go figure.

 

[KidChaos]

Also, is that enquirer post concerning the problem with nf7 1.2 and bios dieing? So is it going to be fixed now?

That article is not entirely true. Revision 1.2 of the Abit NF7 (-S) does have the required jumper that the article mentions.

 

[Staples]

I guess this is an ok place to post this although this doesn't seem like a problem report type of thread. Anyway, here is goes. I really need to know if this is normal or if I just have a bad board.

I know a few people around here have this board and I want to know if you are using the serial ATA connector and if so, how did you get it to work. I recieved this board yesterday and I have been screwing with this board ever since trying to get the serial ATA controller to work. I see in the book it says do not use lower that an ATA100 drive because it will not work but as far as I know, the Maxtor D740X drives are ATA133. The drivers installed for the controller so I guess it recognizes it but it does not work. Neither CTRL+S nor F4 will get you into the BIOS (on a PS2 keyboard) and if you plug the hard drive into the SATA port one or two, no hard drive will be detected. I am using it in the IDE controller now and everything works fine.

Is there something I am missing here? I have tried every combination to get it to work and still no banana. I have not touched a jumper on the board nor on the hard drive but as far as I know, it sould work without touching anything. Maybe one of the devises between the hard drive and the controller is broken but that doesn't explain why I can't get into the Serial controller BIOS. Does anyone else have this problem of not being able to even get into the BIOS? Someone please help so I can RMA this board if neccesary. Just this chipset boosted my performace at least 30% over the same CPU on a VIA KT133 board.


My setup
Thunderbird 1200 (12x100 don't ask why I am using this CPU)
Abit NF7-S motherboard (not the v1.2)
Maxtor D740x 60 gig drive
A DVD and CD-RW drive (master and slave on IDE2)
Single stick of PC2700 Corsair memory

 

[TAL0N]

I seem to recall reading in a review that the SATA adapter is a rather loose fit in the HD connector, perhaps just ensuring that it is firmly seated will solve the problem? Hopefully somebody using SATA will be able to shed some light on a potential driver or BIOS issue.

 

[KidChaos]

New NF7 BIOS Release (1.6)

 

[KidChaos]

staples:

- Make sure SATA is enabled.

- Update to the latest BIOS (1.6) . I posted a link to it in the forum. *Follow the instructions carefully*

- Start anew with a fresh install of the OS. If ya can't get it started, test the hard drive with different jumpers settings (stand-alone, cable-select, etc).

- Run windows update

 

[Staples]

Originally posted by: KidChaos
staples:

- Make sure SATA is enabled.

- Update to the latest BIOS (1.6) . I posted a link to it in the forum. *Follow the instructions carefully*

- Start anew with a fresh install of the OS. If ya can't get it started, test the hard drive with different jumpers settings (stand-alone, cable-select, etc).

- Run windows update

Thanks for the advice. I updated the BIOS and nothing. Forget Windows, it doesn't even detect the drive and what is weird is that I could never get into the SATA controller Pheonix BIOS. If I do either of the button presses to get in to it at the second BIOS screen, neither has any response. This is what leads me to believe that something is screwy with it. I used a PS2 keyboard because USB is not active on that section. Now tell me there is someone who can't get into that and I will believe that this board may be ok but whether the drive is detected or no shouldn't keep you from accessing the BIOS of the controller. I have tried every other which way to get it to work but I get nothing. Drive works just fine when I plug it into the IDE channel. The part that is loose is the aparatus you are supposed to place into the IDE ribbon cable portion for the signal to be converted to serial. What I am going to try to do is plug a CD drive into the serial port and we will see if that can be detected since Windows reports that the serial driver detects no problems with the device.

 

[TimeKeeper]

Originally posted by: Staples

Originally posted by: KidChaos
staples:

- Make sure SATA is enabled.

- Update to the latest BIOS (1.6) . I posted a link to it in the forum. *Follow the instructions carefully*

- Start anew with a fresh install of the OS. If ya can't get it started, test the hard drive with different jumpers settings (stand-alone, cable-select, etc).

- Run windows update

Thanks for the advice. I updated the BIOS and nothing. Forget Windows, it doesn't even detect the drive and what is weird is that I could never get into the SATA controller Pheonix BIOS. If I do either of the button presses to get in to it at the second BIOS screen, neither has any response. This is what leads me to believe that something is screwy with it. I used a PS2 keyboard because USB is not active on that section. Now tell me there is someone who can't get into that and I will believe that this board may be ok but whether the drive is detected or no shouldn't keep you from accessing the BIOS of the controller. I have tried every other which way to get it to work but I get nothing. Drive works just fine when I plug it into the IDE channel. The part that is loose is the aparatus you are supposed to place into the IDE ribbon cable portion for the signal to be converted to serial. What I am going to try to do is plug a CD drive into the serial port and we will see if that can be detected since Windows reports that the serial driver detects no problems with the device.

HD jumper on Master.
Make sure power to ATA adopter and Power to HD is firmly secure.

Oh..........can anyone varified the performance of SATA? Test w/ HDtach 2.61
Funny thing is I got 43% CPU utilzation and 15ms out of my Maxtor Plus 9 HD on SATA
and I got 4.5%/ 11ms out of regular IDE.
Did I screw something up? I re-install the WinXP off the SATA NOT from IDE via "SCSI-Style" too.

 

[KidChaos]

Oh..........can anyone varified the performance of SATA? Test w/ HDtach 2.61
Funny thing is I got 43% CPU utilzation and 15ms out of my Maxtor Plus 9 HD on SATA
and I got 4.5%/ 11ms out of regular IDE.
Did I screw something up? I re-install the WinXP off the SATA NOT from IDE via "SCSI-Style" too.

Make sure ya install the SATA drivers per the BIOS 1.6 instructions:

<a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/driver/sil.htm">Driver For Silicon Image Sil3112A chip onboard models: BE7-G / BE7-S / KD7-G / KD7-G / NF7-S

</a>

 

[TimeKeeper]

Originally posted by: KidChaos

Oh..........can anyone varified the performance of SATA? Test w/ HDtach 2.61
Funny thing is I got 43% CPU utilzation and 15ms out of my Maxtor Plus 9 HD on SATA
and I got 4.5%/ 11ms out of regular IDE.
Did I screw something up? I re-install the WinXP off the SATA NOT from IDE via "SCSI-Style" too.

Make sure ya install the SATA drivers per the BIOS 1.6 instructions:

<a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/driver/sil.htm">Driver For Silicon Image Sil3112A chip onboard models: BE7-G / BE7-S / KD7-G / KD7-G / NF7-S

</a>

I did!

 

[BAMAVOO]

I had the rev 1.1. Had to RMA it. I got back a rev 1.0. Thought I was screwed. Gues what though. This monkey screams At the moment I am running my XP2400+ at 11.5x200fsb 2300mhz. I am using Kingston ValueRam 2 sticks of 512 DDR333 in Dual Channel and getting over 3000 on Sandra. I have a Maxtor 80GB ATA 133 8meg Cache FDB running off the Sata with a sata converter. I have ordered my second Maxtor to go to raid. Will update once it arrives early next week. I am using the onboard sound and lan and have also played with both the 1.5 and 1.6 bios back and forth and experienced no problems. I am running the CPU with the retail hs/fan. I am waiting on an SLK 800a to really crank this thing

If raid works there is no doubt this will be the fastest system I have ever had! It rocks now but I just know that raid is gonna sweeten the deal

 

[KidChaos]

Looking good, BAMAVOO! Keep us posted!

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: BAMAVOO
I had the rev 1.1. Had to RMA it. I got back a rev 1.0. Thought I was screwed. Gues what though. This monkey screams At the moment I am running my XP2400+ at 11.5x200fsb 2300mhz. I am using Kingston ValueRam 2 sticks of 512 DDR333 in Dual Channel and getting over 3000 on Sandra. I have a Maxtor 80GB ATA 133 8meg Cache FDB running off the Sata with a sata converter. I have ordered my second Maxtor to go to raid. Will update once it arrives early next week. I am using the onboard sound and lan and have also played with both the 1.5 and 1.6 bios back and forth and experienced no problems. I am running the CPU with the retail hs/fan. I am waiting on an SLK 800a to really crank this thing

If raid works there is no doubt this will be the fastest system I have ever had! It rocks now but I just know that raid is gonna sweeten the deal

Some people have said they had problems using the raid, but works ok as a single drive controller.

So yes keep us updated as to if it works or not.

Thanks

 

[MangoX]

arrrgh!

I went out to pick up a rev1.2 board today and they're out of stock at all of the locations at my local mall

So pissed.. will be upgrading from a AT7.. doubt I will get much of a performance boost, But I'll be giving this board away to my pops since his aging Duron 800 w/ K7S5A is slow as hell..

 

[TimeKeeper]

Originally posted by: TimeKeeper
Been playing around the V1.2 from newegg for days now.
I really think this so-call bios issue is mainly rediculous claim!!!!!!

I am chewing my own shoe now.

 

[RandySavage]

Does this board feature SATA raid? And if so, does anyone have any experience with it?

I am looking between this board and the asus.... I am seriously considering this one because of the higher % of people hitting 200fsb.... a risk worth the bios corruption imo.

Basically it is going to boil down to SATA.... I am going to order as soon as the raptors come out... but am trying to get my homework done before hand...

On the abit website I saw no mention of sata raid for the board.... but their website sucks....

 

[KidChaos]

Originally posted by: RandySavage
Does this board feature SATA raid?

Indeed. NF7-S has SATA RAID.

 

[sambao21]

I know that the n7-s has sata, firewire, and soundstorm, and nf7-m has igp, and nf7 doesn't have any of that, but i was wondering does all three overclock the same? i mean is there any other differences seperating the 3 boards other than what i've just said? im looking at the n7 because i don't need sata, firewire, soundstorm, or igp, would that be a good choice?

 

[KidChaos]

Originally posted by: sambao21
I know that the n7-s has sata, firewire, and soundstorm, and nf7-m has igp, and nf7 doesn't have any of that, but i was wondering does all three overclock the same? i mean is there any other differences seperating the 3 boards other than what i've just said? im looking at the n7 because i don't need sata, firewire, soundstorm, or igp, would that be a good choice?

- NF7-M Rev 1.2 Specs. It doesn't include nVidia APU, firewire or SATA.

- NF7 Rev 1.2 and NF7-S Rev 1.2 both overclock the same. I can only guess that NF7-M Rev 1.2 would overclock the same as the other two because i'm unsure how having the IGP affects overclocking.

- NF7 Rev 1.2 is indeed a good choice if onboard sound isn't that important to ya or if ya already have a really good sound card.

 

[Vette73]

A friend of mine just got his NF7-S from newegg.com and it is a 1.2.

Juts to update the people whondering what newegg.com has right now. Works great right out the box. Set thew CPU to 10 X 166 and has the RED pcb 9500 card running perfect.

 

[OatMan]

Only because I didn't see it yet...

HardOCP nf7-s rev1.2 reveiew

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: OatMan
Only because I didn't see it yet...

<a class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDQ3" target=blank>HardOCP nf7-s rev1.2 reveiew</A>

From the review...

"ABIT also chose to include new revisions of both the northbridge SPP and southbridge MCP2-T chips with the new version of the board. As for any differences, we have been made aware of none by ABIT or NVIDIA."


Revisions?? What revisions, this is new to me, what are they??

 

[Noid]

they 'sorta' flamed it cuz of Win XP... knuckleheads...

Guess they dont have any other OS's laying around.

I see tons of users getting 200 out of the box. Seems Wxp has its issues.

 

[Jen]

installed my NF7 rev 1.2 two days ago
this board has the VDD mod and memory mods already in place.
VDD is set to max out at 1.9 volts
Memory starts at 2.75 volts and goes to over 3 volts
Two Kingston Hyper X Pc3500 256 mb is being used

I was told to overclock the motherboard slowly. this means small jumps in fsb that i have done to 205 fsb so far. I will take it further once i am sure everything is stable. This board was tested to do 235 fsb [limitation was the early bios it came with ] for over a week without any problems. I am hopeing it will do the same for me as well.

I'm useing water cooling this includes a northbridge waterblock as i feel it is very important to have better cooling to the northbridge than the stock heatsink that is supplied with the board.


I'm haveing some problems with Serial ATA 150 as well. My Maxtor 160 GB drive does detect but when it gets into windows my computer locks up. This was same problem even at stock fsb so it has nothing to do with overclocking. The drive is set to Master at this time i havent tried any other jumper settings.


If i cant get Serial ATA 150 to work out then i will just install a ATA 133 card i have sitting here as i need more drives in this computer working for me



Jen

 

[Noid]

VDD maxs at 1.9 ???

are you sure its not 1.7 ???

If it's 1.9 ... you have a mystery MB on your hands.

The 1.2's (like mine) were shipped with BIOS 15. VDD maxed at 1.7.

BIOS 16 also maxes at 1.7.

Most of us going over 200fsb need 1.825 VDD to stablize 3d apps.
Thats why a voltage mod is posted at Abits forums right now.

Most of us can run Prime95 at higher FSB but, 3d apps lile 3dMArk benchmark will freeze or crash to desktop.