**UNOFFICIAL** Nforce3 250 Thread.

[nick1985]

we need a sticky for the nforce 3 board discussion. i think it would make selecting an nforce3 board much easier. go to forum issues and back me up in my thread there, maybe we can convince the mods for the stick!


Ill start

i have had great experience with the Chaintech Nforce3. its cheap, reliable, and anandtech gave it a great rating. It has slim features, but if you are looking for a no-frills board, i suggest it.

 

[John]

Your sig reminds me of the late Guy Under the Bridge.

 

[JBT]

Yeah that would be cool cause I am in the market for a NF3 250 right now so alot of info in on place would be great. I am considering the Chaintek board nick has mentioned and the Epox board that is 99 on Newegg.

So any one with experienced with either I would love to hear about them.

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: JBT
Yeah that would be cool cause I am in the market for a NF3 250 right now so alot of info in on place would be great. I am considering the Chaintek board nick has mentioned and the Epox board that is 99 on Newegg.

So any one with experienced with either I would love to hear about them.

well the chaintech board i used...

Athlon 64 3000
gig of mushkin basic 3200
9600 non pro (fanless)
antec sonata
TT silentboost.


everything worked great.

 

[nick1985]

^

 

[Shimmishim]

i have the epox 8kda3j

great board...
just need a better chip to do more tests...

 

[imported_nitrus]

asus NF3 250 now out any one have it running yet??

for sale @newegg

 

[JBT]

I've got the same board as Shim and I have some PC4000 being delivered today to test it with over the weekend Hopefully it'll do okay I only have a TT Venus 7+ though so we'll see if I need to upgrade the HSF or not.

 

[alent1234]

i'm leaning towards a lean nf3 board for myself. I have an Intel 1000 NIC at work that I can take home and don't really care about the built in firewall. Just give me a mobo with SATA, USB 2 and IEEE 1394 and that is all i need. My hercules digifire 7.1 sound card can still serve me well.

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: nitrus
asus NF3 250 now out any one have it running yet??

for sale @newegg

hmmm...id like to see a review on this

 

[geoff2k]

I purchased a EPOX EP-8KDA3J this week and have been testing it this weekend with a retail A64 2800+.

First problem was that it would not allow me to override the frequency of memory that has a PC2700 SPD (some versions of Corsair PC3200C2 memory had PC2700 SPD's due to JEDEC spec not being ratified yet). This wasn't a HUGE deal (I have other memory), and may be fixable by EPoX via a future BIOS update.

The second problem has to do with the flakey built-in ethernet that thinks that the cable is becoming unplugged at random moments. I've swapped out the cables, the hub and everything that I can control outside the motherboard, and it still simply announces "cable is unplugged!" at the worst possible times.

I'm unfortunately not the only one that is having issues with the on-board ethernet. :-(

I've called mwave and will be returning the board to them for replacement. Hopefully the next one will be better.

 

[jkresh]

anyone else having problems with 3dmark and an ati card and the 4.24, drivers? On both the msi and asus with the 4.24 3dmark will fail on my 9800, it will run any 1 part but goes to desktop during transition. Using the disk that came with the board works fine. So i am currently running a mixture, boards drivers for gart, nvidias newest for everything else.

 

[darth_beavis]

I am looking for a good 754 socket Mobo and am leaning towards nforce3. I've been looking for nearly a week and can't find all the answers I seek.

I cannot find any comparisons of sound quality on 754 mobos. I want sound that doesn't suck. I don't plan on buying a sound card and plan to use digital out. anyone know which cards are better for this or which ones are flat out junk?

I also understand that "realtek = low quality + CPU hog" so I'd like to avoid them at all cost.

I've read the cool'n'quiet is pretty ... cool ... are there mobos that don't let you use this feature?

I don't care much for overclocking but if it's easy to do then I'd like to keep my options open. I did that with my last CPU and I had to use use a graphite pencil to join pins and unlock it, quite a pain in the butt. Is it easy to overclock AMD 64?

I'd also like firewire and GB ethernet for the future.

Thanks in advance for advice.

Scott.

 

[ross8425]

im using the msi board, with this chip. it works great. the nforce options built in are pretty cool too.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I have the MSI Neo plat and it's working good. Ordered an asus k8n-e but it came DOA. I had a chaintech znf3-150 and it gave me tons of headaches and chaintech wasn't being helpful so I decided to stay clear of chaintech from now on.

 

[PinchyCM]

my vnf3-250 doesn't read temps right, and the beta bios makes my HDs on my PCI ATA card mess up, and hangs windows.

people are claiming it's a fantastic board, it is rock stable, minus the few annoyance.

 

[LocutusX]

BUMP and a question...

whats the best NF3-250gb board with firewire support?

- The cheaper Epox does not appear to have FW
- The Soltek does not have FW
- The MSI supposedly sucks
- The ASUS (which I ordered) has a high chance of also sucking, in slightly different and possibly less serious ways than the MSI
- Chaintech's not avail in Canada (does it even have FW?)
- Abit's not avail in Canada
- Gigabyte's not avail in Canada

 

[shadowshack]

The Iwill DK8N:

Supports dual AMD Opteron Processors
NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250 + AMD 8131
Dual DDR 400 up to 16GB
AGP 8X/Pro
PCI-X 64/133, 64/100, 64/66
Gigabit Ethernet (NVIDIA MAC)
TI IEEE-1394
8x USB 2.0

 

[wicktron]

The upcoming DFI s754 NF3 will own the market.

 

[jkresh]

I have had problems with both the k8n-neo platinum and the asus k8n-e using the 4.24 drivers and my 9800 so i am currently running agp from the drivers on the cd and everything else from the 4.24

 

[stickybytes]

Originally posted by: wicktron
The upcoming DFI s754 NF3 will own the market.

links?? stats?? availabillity when??

 

[LocutusX]

Originally posted by: wicktron
The upcoming DFI s754 NF3 will own the market.

Too bad by the time it comes out we'll already be on socket 989823

 

[althes]

hopefully that dfi board will be worth it, it seems very good from the results we are hearing.