I can't help wondering about the A7N8X. It looks to me like a lot of people are having some problems getting it set up by following the forum. I'm not arguing that the board is the fastest by the benches, but I think that it's not as stable, at least setting up as the A7V8X. I sure read a lot more help on the A7N8X here.
I jumped on the A7V8X the minute it came out. I read the A7N8X benches while I was waiting on my new board. I was kind of depressed that I didn't get the A7N8X. Now I'm wondering if the Nvidia boards need to mature some more. I'm glad that I went with the A7V8X.
To me VIA has came a long way. Put the board in the case & components & fired it up. I run totally stable @41 deg., 44 under load. Benched it with SiSoft Sandra & it benched fine right out of the box. I can't tell you the score, because I can't find it. I have the free version & can't find, or don't know how to see the scores.
I have this machine sold & I am ordering the A7N8X to put together so I'll have some more first hand knowledge next week. But as sweet as this machine built, set up & runs, I don't want to get into a chip set mess with Nvidia. I have always been able to run VIA chip sets stable for over 2 1/2 years now.
Just a thought that I've been running around in my mind.
Skinny
Signature, I'm still learning & having fun doing it!!!!!!
I had no problems whatsoever setting up my a7n8x board. Only problem I had/have is a faulty temperture gauge which reads temperatures pretty high, but it runs great.
Well it answers my question. It looks to me like the Nforce has a way to go. Form the posts it looks a lot harder to set up the board to run stable.
I believe that VIA has it down a lot better for now. To set up the A7V8X all you have to do is install the drivers. No jumpers involved, no disabling the the SATA, nothing like that. No Service Pack 1 involved, not to say that's bad. The board already had the latest BIOS on it when I received it & I haven't seen a BIOS update out there yet for the A7V8X. I've had this one going for 3 weeks now.
My first VIA board was the A7V that I still have running with a 1 gig T-bird. It was a bear to get going. After several BIOS updates, it finally came around. It's been stable every since though.
I'm looking forward to comparing the 2 boards, but right now I'd say A7V8X should be looked at as a quality board & easy to set up. I think I'd recommend it to a builder that hasn't built many machines. After all if you can put it together with the components, hit the button, load the OS & drivers, you've built your first machine without any difficulty at all. It seems to me from the posts that with the Nforce, it's not the case. Either that or everybody & their brother is getting the board & having some problems getting it going.
I will post my findings after I get the A7N8X going. But I'll tell you I don't like to hassle with things that may be fast, but have to really be tinkered with & tinkered with to perform. As far as speed, by looking at the benches I'll never see the difference as I'm using it anyway. It's a very fine difference is all. I think that a year form now after the Nforce has matured it will be whale of a board. My $.02
Skinny
Signature, I'm still learning & having fun doing it!!!!!!
