Before I Purchase, Opinions Please?

[Brangwen]

Fellow Members:

I have perused the various hardware sites for many days. This is my custom, as it is likely with most of you, when preparing to make a purchase related to your primary system. Frankly, I do not recall being so confused as to which "major" components to make a part of my system. My last three upgrades were made easy for me as I have enjoyed IWill motherboards, and that company put three great (In My Opinion) AMD motherboards onto the market roughly six to eight months apart. Those last three motherboards (KK266; KK266Plus, and my present board, XP 333-R) were the foundations for my last three upgrades. I am upgrading at this time, however IWill has not come through to meet "my" schedule!

Therefore, I have been investigating AMD motherboard brands that I am wholly unfamiliar with. My last board before switching over to AMD was an Abit for a Pentium III Coppermine 600E! So, as you can see it has been awhile since I have had to majorly concern myself with board comparisons.

Here is what I have come up with:

Asus A7N8xe-DX Motherboard (Features in a Nutshell):

> CPU Type/speed: AMD Athlon XP to 3200+
> Chipset: NVidia2 NForce2
> PCI Slots: 5
> AGP Type: 4x/8x ONLY
> Memory usage: DDR 2100-3200

Onboard Miscellany: Sound, 10/100 Network, Dual 10/100 Network connectors, Firewire, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, SATA-RAID, WIFI

I especially like the chipset, 5 PCI slots, Firewire interface potential, and integrated 2.0 USB.

The first big question: Imagine for a moment that money is not necessarily an issue. Which would "you" choose: the Barton XP 2500 512K or the XP 3200 400FSB 512K?

Finally, what do you all think of Apacer/Samsung DDR PC 3200?

This computer (as is always the case with my "primary" system) will be used for "general" small office work, word processing, burning CDs and DVDs, perhaps working with some video, editing and printing "home" digital photos taken on Cape Cod Bay, utilizing speech recognition software (as I am now!) Etc. I intend to continue using Win2000Pro. I have already purchased a Pioneer DVR-106D DVD+/-RW.

I am presently utilizing a 400/435W PSU. The case I am presently using (Inwin FullSize Tower) has seen me through all of my IWill boards (including my present setup: XP 333-R, Maxtor ATA133 40GB HDD, XP 1900 +, 1GB PC 2700 CL 2.5 Crucial Memory, Parhelia vidcard, Plextor, etc.). It is running six Panaflo Whisper fans (4 x120 mm and 2 x 80 mm): I believe I have enough wattage for the upgrade ...

Well ... that's it.

I would appreciate any comments, pro or con, regarding this particular board!

Brangwen

[Starfury_2260]

well obviously get the 3200+ unless you just like overclocking, since money is not an issue.

you might wanna check out the Abit nforce 2 boards. i've got the nf7-s; it runs great and it's got all the same features of the A7N8XE Deluxe (for less) except the wireless stuff. theres a new board called the AN7 but i dont know anything about it.

[slinky]

1) The Barton 2500 will suffice (don't worry about it being locked because you can still OC it). IMHO, the 3200 is overpriced for its performance.

2) That memory will work.

[Xtreeme]

"IMHO, the 3200 is overpriced for its performance"

Yep.

"> CPU Type/speed: AMD Athlon XP to 3200+
> Chipset: NVidia2 NForce2
> PCI Slots: 5
> AGP Type: 4x/8x ONLY
> Memory usage: DDR 2100-3200

Onboard Miscellany: Sound, 10/100 Network, Dual 10/100 Network connectors, Firewire, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, SATA-RAID, WIFI"

Welp. The Asus A7N8X deluxe has ALL of that but the wifi. You can add that no biggy. Note though that all Nforce2 boards are picky about mem-the only hinderence they have. But if you check the mobo makers compat sheet on their specs and go with supported mem. Its rock solid and zippy. I went with Buffalo that had samsung chips dd400 and its passed several hours of memtest looped. No buggey mem error messages either like before. (its still passed mem test then but was compat issue). The deluxe is a very feature rich board which is what youa re seeking. Its fast also and oclocks if you want it too. So Id recomend that. No coincidence but I happen to have that board with ddr400 and 2500+. ITs very fast and not very $. Slap a 9800 in that rig like I did with a fast hdd and its frag fest time. LOL.

[Brangwen]

Fellow Members:

Thank you for helping me get through this "morass" of motherboards and (unfamiliar to me) chipsets!

Choosing components continues to be the toughest part of a build. At some point you've got to hit the "Order" button and be done with it.

I think I'm on the right track and hopefully my new motherboard, CPU & chipset will run as smoothly as my XP333-R does. I will be passing that great mobo combo to my wife in all likelihood. Wish me luck ... the bird has flown the coop!

Again, thx!

Brangwen

[someone16]

AN7 is the new NF7-S. They were supposed to have integrated SATA on the AN7, but it didn't happen. So the two are about the same. The AN7 has micro guru, an overclocking tool.