NF7-S or A7N8X - Another call for DWdrummer!!!

[krofa]

Dear DWdrummer Allen and DUC users...

I'm a new DUC user and I have been searching throughout the forum for info on Abit NF7-S. I do not own the board yet but I am really itching to do so since I want to OC. By the way I already own an Asus A7V600 and an unlocked 3200+ - lucky me!! -. But I can't wait to see this chip fly higher and reach the 3GHz domain since I started using water cooling.

Allen has written somewhere that Abit was notorious for its weird glitches with PT. Allen, do you know has this continued with the NF7-S? DWdrummer, I was wondering whether you have experienced anything like that. How far could one drive the Asus Nforce board does anyone have any idea? I can only drive the A7V600 to about 2450 since FSB and PCI are coupled.

DWdrummer, obviously you are fond of your setup which you should be it seems. I just didn't want to get that mobo and invest a lot of time and in some future bump into obscure problems where then the scapegoat would be the Abit - it seems DUC users easily jump to conclusions when you don't have an Asus!

DUC people I know this all may sound useless since the 3200+ with the A7V600 is already a lot of performance with PT. But I really want to be getting the most out of this 3200+ for at least another 3 years... And this is the only forum where I can get relevant feedback...

Thanks people,
Krofa.

[albee1952]

I can't speak for the XP3200, but the ASUS A7N8X works fine for OC'ing an Athlon xp2500+. Only changed 1 parameter in the bios setup and ran at 2.2 with no problems. Just make sure your cpu cooler is up to the extra heat as mine went from 41c to 54c till I turned the fan up and got back to 47c.

[krofa]

Thanks Albee...

Actually I have a few questions about the A7N8X board. How far can you set things up with detail in the BIOS? How far can you take the FSB? Can you set all the voltages individually - RAM, AGP, Chipset inc. This is the kind of information that you can't find on a manufacturers website... I'd appreciate if you could tell me anything on these

[RBaker]

I have a regular nf7---the s is almost the same thing (mine has no serial ata or onboard firewire) I had been using it for about a year and then decided to crack down on some problems I was having which I thought were because of the mb, so I too bought an a7v600, and it didn't solve anything---I later found out the reasons for almost everything, and have since gotten responses from other people not liking the a7v600 and recommendations to go back to my nf7. I now have it back in with my athlon 1700 clocked at 2.2 ghz (3200+ish?) Very stable and very fast. With the same cpu clocking my a7v600 was barely able to get 32+3, the nf7 has gotten 32+7 with the meters running pretty well (and we're talking pt 6.4) So thats 4 aux+ snappy meters for the same system speeds, but an older mb.

The only problem I'm still having is the random hit play and no response but it seems to not happen very much and only on 64/128 buffers in sessions with MANY portions of audio ex: when I've just chopped drums. I'm going to mess with my vga card and a differen't hard drive next to see if it's the culprit. BTW this problem was with both the a7v600 and the nf7.

Oh yeah one more thing. I did notice a very "few and far between" irq held off too long buffer problem during normal playback if my onboard lan card is disabled. enabled I don't get it at all which is great because I'd rather enable it anyway.

Anyway I don't care about the plugin count as much as I care about a snappy, quick responsive system with fast redraws--maybe it's psychological but it "feels" much faster.

[Stone Knife]

I also have an A7N8X, running a Barton 2800 at 400MHz, and yes, I do believe the voltages are settable individually, although bumping up the FSB was all I did to match the RAM bus speed.

I'll try to get back to this thread after checking my BIOS- I'm not home now but plan to be in a day or two.

Anyway the A7N8X Deluxe is a great MB combined with Corsair RAM you'll be going nuts.

[krofa]

Thank y'all RBaker and Stone K.

Well I don't know much about mb engineering but it seems to be reasonable to me that two mbs with the same chipset should not vary all that much in terms of stability when you are running them both on the safe side with no tweaks and such. that two mbs with very similar pcb architecture based on the same chipset should result in different stability situations seems weird. of course they may have some performance difference based on the clocking of chips and things that I don't know of. Oh well may be I just don't know enough...

It's just my gut feeling that when talking about quality mfrs like Asus, Gigabyte or Abit, there shouldn't be much difference in terms of stability when all are setup and run carefully... isn't it the same with Win OS and other OS? I mean MacOS is stabler out of the box may be only because they all are manufactured with the exact same parts and are thus more predictable. But I hate to not have access to the inner workings of an OS! What it comes down to is that it is so hard to pin down the tiny issues that may be causing a random problem in any given situation that somthing tells me when there is a widespread belief that xyz part - ASUS in this case - is trustworthy people don't even think that something may be problematic with that part as welll which doesn't happen with other brands...

I hope there are other Abit and other brand mb users which would give some feedback here.

L&P.
krofa.