Looking for input on new system

[[AK]Hylander]

The ASUS a7n8x deluxe is the King of nForce2 motherboards.

[[AK]Squidly]

Bah, AMD. PIV 3.06, baby.

BTW - nobody seems to be answering Hale's question... Lets go you experts...

[[AK]Rocks]

The question has been answered... ASUS A7N8X Dual DDR and 5.1 Sound. You need to look no further, unless you want to give your hard earned money to Intel... Now the post will start moving.

[Hale]

Do all nForce2 Mobo's support dual DDR? I don't see it listed as a feature for the Asus models, but I can see they support it with the different color DIMM slots.

[Pancito]

Hale i can't explain very well in english Dual DDR, but hope this helps. For AMD i also think NForce2 is the way to go.

NForce2 Boards.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboa...111/index.html

Original Publication about the "NEW" NForce2
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboar...716/index.html

[Pancito]

Read the "nForce2 Boards" Link on top, all your questions i think should be answered by that.

The articule it's called Athlon On The Fast Lane: Three Motherboards with nForce2-Chipset and Dual-Channel DDR

[[AK]Bribo]

According to Dan's Data (a great tech geek site):

The nForce and the nForce2 only give you a noticeable benefit from their DualDDR/TwinBank mode when you're using their integrated video. If you're not using integrated video - which you certainly won't be, if you've bought one of the basic-model boards that don't even have it - then the dual channel mode does roughly nothing. Oh, OK, it does give you a five to ten per cent benefit in real world applications that are actually hitting the RAM reasonably hard, thanks to latency reduction, but it's nothing like what you might expect from the numbers on the back of the box.

The reason for this is that the north bridge chip on these boards only has one RAM channel worth of memory access bandwidth. It bottlenecks the CPU's RAM communication speed.

The nForce/nForce2 graphics core has a separate path to memory, and so it can benefit substantially from dual channel mode, but nothing else can. Nvidia's blather about it doubling your this and reducing your that, in the general sense, is just marketing nonsense.

[[AK]Squidly]

Do all nForce2 Mobo's support dual DDR?

Yes or no. Do I need to post a freaking poll?

[[AK]Hylander]

Well I've never heard of Dan's Bargain Basement Data site , but visit reputable hardware sites such as Anandtech, Toms Hardware, Ars Technica, or HardOCP and you will get items similar to this as Anandtech put it:

"One thing is clear however; if you're going to be purchasing an Athlon XP motherboard in today's market, you'd be insane not to choose a motherboard based on NVIDIA's nForce2 platform."

and

"It was a tough call choosing between the Chaintech 7NJS and the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, but eventually we decided to choose the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe for best power user motherboard in the Athlon XP market. Thus the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe won our Editor's Choice Silver Award for best high-end motherboard for the Athlon XP platform. With features like USB 2.0, FireWire, Serial ATA RAID and dual LAN (and all for a very reasonable price), we feel the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe is worthy of this award."

or Tom's Hardware:

"Our benchmarks underlined the fact that nForce2 is currently the best chipset to take. Sure, you will need to get two DIMMs, but the performance gap to KT400 is quite significant. More importantly, it helps the Athlon XP make its level of performance affordable in contrast to the Pentium 4.

Equally important is the fact that all three nForce2 motherboards ran stably - a fact to which we cannot always attest for new chipset generations. Just set the memory timings to "aggressive," and the board will perform very close to the maximum, without any efforts."

"...but no matter which type of memory you want to use, do not accept anything other than CL2 mode DIMMs! The performance gap to CL2.5 is as big as if you exchanged your Athlon XP 2200+ for the 2100+ model!"



And to stop Squidly from squeeling....

The nForce2 Chipset is a DDR Chipset.... it supports DDR200, DDR266, DDR333, and DDR400 memory. Whether EVERY SINGLE MOTHERBOARD MANUFACTURER who is manufacturing these motherboards incorporates it, I don't know... but the chipset itself is a DDR Chipset. So if you are wondering if the motherboard you are buying supports DDR, check the manufacturers site! (Although I don't see why a company would use the nForce2 chipset and not incorporate DDR) And if you can't find their site or the information on their site, then that's the first hint NOT TO BUY IT.

[[AK]Hylander]

Originally posted by [AK]Slaughter
bah, Asus... Abit is the only way for me.

Yeah, Abit's are great... for those failing/leaking capacitors that seem to keep popping up.

The stolen formula was used to create the gooey innards of an aluminum electrolytic capacitor. Capacitors contain three main components: electrodes; a gooey fluid-like substance (called a dielectric) which is used to separate the third component; and reactive plates (the third component). The capacitors in question are of the several thousand uF (microfarad) range and are physically breaking apart, allowing the fluid to leak out (thereby causing a "short" circuit). The reason the capacitors are failing is due to the stolen formula. It was incomplete, and the subsequent fluid created from those faulty formulas is not entirely stable, causing a small quantity of hydrogen gas to be emitted when electric current is applied. Over time it builds up and bursts open the capacitor. The estimated life expectancy of the faulty capacitors is less than 4,000 hours (or roughly 6 months running 24/7). So far the only manufacturers to acknowledge the problem are ABit and IBM. However, it is believed that many more motherboards manufactured in 2002 may contain the faulty capacitors and may soon be failing. One problem in tracking down the originating guilty culprit is that many of the capacitors in question contain no manufacturer markings whatsoever. Quite an interesting development. Read more at IEEE.org.

[Hale]

They question isn't whether they support DDR, but whether they all support DUAL DDR. Is there any easy way to tell??

[Solarwolf]

Ive never had a problem with an Abit board.... rock solid.

[[AK]Squidly]

Originally posted by [AK]Hale
They question isn't whether they support DDR, but whether they all support DUAL DDR. Is there any easy way to tell??

Hehe, Hale, this is getting beyond funny. It's about as frustrating as a war debate, no matter which side you're on.

[[AK]Bribo]

According to the Nvidia site (http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=feature_dualddr)
all the nForce2 chipset mobos support DUAL DDR.

[[AK]Bribo]

Originally posted by [AK]Hylander
Well I've never heard of Dan's Bargain Basement Data site ,

Try it! You'll like it.

Check out his Letters section.