nForce2 or KT400

[disleksik]

I can't decide what motherboard to pick up for my new athlon 2000+ :
Epox 8RDA+ or Gigabyte GA-7VAX
There's a pretty big price difference.. howmuch quality difference? anyone tested any of those?

<font color=red> text </font color=red>THIS VOILENCE IN THE NAME OF LOVE

 

[jlanka]

nforce2 no doubt

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[disleksik]

Why the nForce2?
and is the epox the best value card?
Also, what's better on the nForce2 DDR333 or DDR400?
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<font color=red> text </font color=red>THIS VOILENCE IN THE NAME OF LOVE<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by disleksik on 12/10/02 05:48 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Quetzacoatl]

The Nforce2 is faster, more featured, and generally costs the same as the Kt400 boards. The Epox motherboard has good features, and great overclocking for a bargain price. Nforce2 performs best on DC Ddr333

Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[disleksik]

Umm.. I don't know about the states.. But in Israel the difference between the ga-vax and the epox is about 50USD..
I'm wondering howmuch I need those features..

<font color=red> text </font color=red>THIS VOILENCE IN THE NAME OF LOVE

 

[jlanka]

just read through some other posts in this forum. nForce2 is not VIA. nuff said.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[ad_rach]

read anandtech's opinion of the ep-8rda+ in its recent six-way review and then buy it.oc options are great on it amongst other things.not only is it an nforce 2 board, it is a very good nforce 2 board.

no matter how hard you try, you can't polish a turd. :]

 

[Quetzacoatl]

shame though, it lacks ide raid or even extre serial ata ports

Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[halkebul]

It's not been confirmed whether the 8RDA+ locks the PCI bus at 33MHz. That's the only thing keeping me from recommending it.

<i>It's your world kid!!!</i>

 

[Raptorz_Wrath]

On the Nforce2 you said that DDR333 is better? I believe in the benchmarks from this own web site you'll notice that yes DDR333 wins a lot however when it does so only by 1/2-1% while when DDR400 wins its by a much larger margin. As time goes on I believe DDR400 will become more and more well useful. The reason for it's lacking to dominate now is simple mobo driver support/bios. I think if you get DDR400 and just keep BIOS and drivers updated you'll be better in the long run. Or u could save a few bucks now get DDR333 and then once DDR-II comes out you could get DDR400 cuz the price will really drop.

http://www.intelhate.com

 

[Makaveli]

I don't agree with you there. The reason for better peformance on with DDR333, is when used with a 333FSB athlon there is less latency. Performance is always better with a synchronous FSB and Memory Speed! In those benchmarks when the DDR400 came within 1%-2% the applications were more bandwidth dependant. But in general a synchronous bus will always be faster.

DDR400 will truly begin to shine if AMD releases a 400FSB Barton. And if you buying DDR400 now you can always drop it to to 333 speeds to keep latency down. So in the long run it is a better buy. But for Performance reasons with current Athlons DDR333 is better!