The Epox is fanless and the Abit uses a fan. I think the Epox might overclock <i> slightly</i> better. You can raise the voltage to the chipset on both of these boards [EDIT]I <i>think</i> you can raise the voltage to the chipset on the 8RDA+, can anyone vouch for this?[EDIT], and I'd say you should be able to get at least a 215MHz FSB from either of them.
As for issues, there's a very slight annoyance with my NF7-S. If I have the Standby set to "S3" mode, it won't resume unless the CAS# for my memory is 2.5 or higher. Other than that it's great. I haven't noticed any dust problems yet either.
Also, I needed the extra outputs for my 4.1 speaker setup because I have a tv-tuner that plugs into the line-in. I also use the SATA on my PATA hard drive with the serial ata adapter that came with the board. I wanted this so I could put more crap on the IDE channels. I plan on using the SPDIF output in near future as well.
But I bought the NF7-S for my specific needs. If you don't need those extra features, then I'd save some money with the 8RDA+
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by markgun on 07/18/03 02:05 AM.</EM></FONT></P>