Asus A7V8X-X

[Allen]

I'm confused about this board. I've heard it's pretty good for it's price, and as I'm on a tight budget I am looking to purchase one.

However, since I am also looking for a cheap Athlon that can get up to 200MHz FSB I need to know if this board will power it OK. It supports PC3200 RAM so I would guess that it does, however the manual states that it only goes up to 166MHz...

Has anyone got one? Does it overclock Athlon's very well? Can you get a 200MHz FSB from it?

Cheers.

[directhex]

don't get your V and N mixed up

i doubt anyone with sense would recommend an A7V8X series board, at any price (as compared to A7N8X series)

[Stoo]

well, the a7v8x will do the job, but with the nforce2 based chipsets not much more there really isn't any point in using one.

Unless you're like me and got stuck with the a7v8x due to an ebuyer screwup and really couldn't be bothered with all the hassle to change it, but then it did the job and it wasn't for me anyway...

[Allen]

Hmm, OK then... what sort of board should I be looking at then? It seems as though I am going to get this XP1700+ for about £25 inc. so I'm hoping it's unlocked or will run pretty well.

I don't think I can justify spending £70 on a mobo at the moment, considering I'd still have this crappy GFX card to go in it. Damn, forgot about that! Looks like a new GFX card won't be in order till next month!

[Speedo]

you should look at the A7N8X-X if you're on a budget really . Single channel nForce2 loving!

[directhex]

£55 for the a7n8x-x, for reference.

about a tenner more than the inferior a7v8x-x

[blockers]

Do you need RAID? i would say the NF7 (NOT S) www.komplett.co.uk did have them for £50.

Its essentially the same as the NF7-S just doesnt have the RAID, so you cant use serial RAID, or IDE RAID.

[bmh.01]

Rememeber the NF7 dosen't have dual channel ddr memory support or soundstorm.

[Rave]

Rememeber the NF7 dosen't have dual channel ddr memory support or soundstorm.

It does have dual channel. Unfortunately Komplett have put the price back up. There's an NF7s on Aria's bargain basement page for £52.88, not sure how much delivery would be.

http://www.aria.co.uk/BargainBasement.asp

Rich :¬)

[Rod911]

As it has already been mentioned, if you are looking for a budget Asus board, it has to be the A7N8X-X. The A7V8X-X does unlock multipliers (if your CPU is pre-week 39/40) and have a whole heap of overclocking features that you'd normally suspect. However, it does lack vDIMM manipulation if you require it (and which overclocker doesn't ).

[Allen]

LOL! What's vDIMM? If I don't know, then I probably won't need it...

[Stoo]

Exactly, if you're not going to overclock, and want to save the extra £10, then the a7v8x-x will probably do the job, if you can spare the extra £10, then the a7n8x-x will do the job as well, just a little bit better

Edit: vDIMM is the voltage setting for the RAM, like with processors, it enables you to squeeze a bit more speed out of the overclock on the ram side, but if you're not overclocking then you really don't need to worry about it, hell, I'm overclocking and I don't even need to bother with it lol

[malfunction]

How about an Epox 8RDAE? (nForce2 400 single channel and no soundstorm). Komplett have them for £36.43... Or the 8RDA+ (with dual channel and soundstorm) for only £52.88?

[BlackSheep]

Rememeber the NF7 dosen't have dual channel ddr memory support or soundstorm.

it does have dual channel (the abit one), it doesn't have sound storm - hence no "S":

Abit NF7 ver 2.0

You can get them for £49 inc. from overclockers:

Abit NF7 - £49 - overclockers

Probably the best option if you can't afford (or don't need) the soundstorm's superior sound.

[Allen]

Cheers for your help guys. Is the Abit NF7-S worth paying the extra just for the Soundstorm considering I don't have 8million speakers? I only output to an old Pioneer mini-system which has 2 sats and a sub...

Or does the the NF7 have decent enough onboard sound for a non-audiophile geek?

[bmh.01]

Looking at overclockers page the NF7-S has the following extra features :

• Soundstorm
• Firewire
• SATA RAID

There may be other things but I think thats about it.