Ok, with green on my gills here's my issue

I understand a majority wants to overclock and thats great but I do rely on Toms Hardware Guide to show me what is the best of motherboards that you can buy, take out the box, slap it to the case and have it run better than most of the other motherboards ouyt there without tweaking a bunch of stuff. Maybe I'm behind the times, but thats my preference.

Anyways I looked onto THG about the testing and benchmarks on Athlon Hit Parade: 10 mobos with the nForce2 Ultra400 Updated on August 6th (Yes I know its November).

The test was based on these 11 boards:

Abit NF7-S
AOpen AK79D-400Max
Asus A7N8X 2.0 Deluxe
DFI LanParty NFII Ultra
Epox EP-8RDA3+
Gigabyte GA-7NNXP
Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro 2
MSI K7N2 Delta (Updated)
Shuttle Spacewalker AN35N-Ultra
Shuttle Spacewalker XPC-SN45G
Soltek SL75-FRN2 (Updated)

After all the tests I was not convinced of THG assumption that:

"Conclusion: DFI and Gigabyte Are the All-Around Winners"

especially after the first sentence after that title:

"It is extremely difficult to choose one winner from nine motherboards. Most of the boards in the test met the requirements extremely well, as not one of them displayed any significant weaknesses. "

So I decided to take it upon myself to use THG data and rank each one accordingly then total the rankings please note that if there was a tie, they recieved the same ranking and then the next was placed the next number as opposed to the next number (in other words 1rst 1rst 2nd 3rd as opposed to 1rst 1rst 3rd 4th).


Thus my results were as follows:

AOpen 38
Shuttle XPC 50
Gigabyte 50
Asus 62
Shuttle AN 71
DFI 85
Abit 86
MSI 91
EPoX 105
SolTek 111
LeadTek 123

As you can see, if DFI is considered one of the best, it wasnt because of performance.

I was thrilled to see that AOpen was the obvious leader in this and that only the DX9 3DMark 2003 was below a rank of 5 (was 7, 8 was lowest rank)

And Shuttles XPC lowest rank was 6 out of 11 on Quake 3

I was finally shocked to read the following:

"AOpen is the only manufacturer that would not quite stick to the rules: 2230 MHz for our Athlon XP 3200+ is definitely too high, which explains the slightly higher benchmark results. In fact, it has no effect on system stability, but it does impact the benchmark results. At 2205 MHz, all the competitors are still above AMD's designated 2200 MHz, but within a tight tolerance band."

and then in the Features Table:
AOpen
Clock (CPU/Bus) 2230 / 202.73
All others
Clock (CPU/Bus) 2204.99-2205.0 / 400.5

So needless to say... I'm very confused as to what to take as the best of the bunch...

Gigabyte ranked third and seems nice enough and I'm sure everyone ran out and bought an Asus when they came out.. so if anyone can help out with one thing...

Which one(s) are the good ones to get?

Thanks

FYI, I'm looking to run about 1GB of memory but will most likely be PC2700 since the FBS of the athlon will be 333 either a 2500 barton or a 2700 and I'm assuming that the statement of the FSB and memory if different can actually slow things than improve (cajt remember where i read this)

plus if anyone can recommend the minimum wattage my case needs to be id appreciate it!

Thanks!

I just picked up the GA-7nnxp and all I can say is wow this thing is feature rich. Looks pretty cool too if your into that window in your case thing. The only problem is I'm haveing trouble getting that DPS thingy to work I'll get the DPS running soon i'm sure.

Get pc3200 ram minimum this way if you upgrade cpu down the road to a 3200 or better you will not have to upgrade the ram. I know your not into overclocking butttt, all those boards and the barton 2500 will do a 200fsb easy. Its the easyest safest overclock you could ever do. In the bios just set the fsb to 200 instead of 166. Multiplers are now locked on most barton 2500 cpu's but uping the fsb to 200 and using pc3200 will give you barton 3200 performance, cpu will be @ 2200MHz as opposed to 1826MHz. It should all run rock solid and stable @ those speeds if not just lower the fsb back to 166.

I cannot stress this enough get a good power supply 430 460 name brand like enermax.

If I glanced at a spilt box of tooth picks on the floor, could I tell you how many are in the pile. Not a chance, But then again I don't have to buy my underware at Kmart.

My ABIT NF7 v2.0 is simply great.

I would recommend ABIT NF7-S/NF7 v2.0

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Abit AN7 would be my first choice! A lot of great nForce2 boards out there though.

I have the Epox board, very fast and extremely cheap!

Thank you all for your responses, any other input would be appreciated

(Yes, I'm trying to bump this back )

GA-7nnxp I to have this board it is a very nice board the only flaw I noticed is that the nforce2 chipset series does not run Command & Conquer Generals or the addition of zero hour the chipset will give you the insert correct cd option no matter what you have to go into device manager and change back to the windows duel ide controller this is all the help you will also get from westwood/ea games tech support it works but is still and issue with this board

LIFE IS LIKE A BOLT OF LIGHTNING...UNLESS YOU MAKE AN IMPACT YOU WON'T BE NOTICED

just gigabyte NNXP or all NF2 ultra chipsets (& the NF2 400 as well???)

I like this game... PS my 1,2,3 is as follows

NNXP
Lanparty2B
Asus Deluxe rev2

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...

Looking for the best of the 11 boards that I posted above

in case no one reads the other post, can someone tell me who is best business to buy motherboards, CPU's, and or memory ONLINE from?

Thanks

Abit AN7 is starting to recieve some bad feedback. I'd go with the NF7-S or DFI LanParty <b>Revision B</b>.

NewEgg

<A HREF="http://www.gamecopyworld.com" target="_new">*Cough*</A>cough.
Bad chest I've got there....

Although having the crack isn't really illegal if you've bought the game. I crack all the games I buy, just so I don't have to root around for the CD.

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<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

Who likes to enter CD every time for playing a game?

Game manufacturers are wasting money after $h¡ts like Safedisc® that can do nothing to stop piracy, but only affect legal consumers

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I completely agree. I've always thought that the best way to decrease piracy is to lower prices. If music CDs were only £7,-£9, less people would buy the £5 pirate copies, for instance.

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Time to retire this old beast and get a new one!
EPoX 8RDA+ v2.1 would be my first choice, those puppies just keeps getting better with each revision!

A7N8X should only be considered as your last option, don;t ask me why but I don't envy that mobo one inch at all.

My next favourite one is NF7-S v2.0

Others are all just the same old same old crap and should pretty much join the ASUS nForce2 piles.

My system spec:
AMD Athlon 2500+ 221X11.5
Silverprop Evolution-S
ATi 9800SE 128-bit (coming soon)
EPoX EP-8RDA+ v1.1
2XTwinMOS DDR400 256MB
2XMaxtor DiamondMax Plus8 40GB in RAID-0

NewEgg, why'o'why do I always have to hear this name all the time?

Change some places please, go look up pricewatch.com for god sake, unless it's ruled my NewEgg as well!

My system spec:
AMD Athlon 2500+ 221X11.5
Silverprop Evolution-S
ATi 9800SE 128-bit (coming soon)
EPoX EP-8RDA+ v1.1
2XTwinMOS DDR400 256MB
2XMaxtor DiamondMax Plus8 40GB in RAID-0

RE: COUGH

hmmm....

You should cough more often...

well, new idea
EP-8RDA3G 2.0
Any good?
can i sticka barton and PC3200 in there AND if I try to clock it to 200 X 11, will I need anything above standard to cool CPU?

if not coprehensible its lack of coffee...

Thanks to those that made sense LOL

was looking at the Gigabyte board
but considering it seems also to be the most expensive I decided to take another look at the EPoX board but in particular,

Epox EP-8RDA3G 2.0

anything I should know about? any better suggestion within price range? This one is currently 75.00 on Newegg asus's delux is 117.00 and the gigabyte was almost 200.00

anywys, any suggestions helpful have to make decision soon

Basically Id like to just install a barton 2500 or 2600 and let er rip although the thought that all I have to do is change the clock speed in the BIOS and not change anything else or buy add soder etc anything else sounds pretty tempting if it'll run as fast as $500.00 processor (3200XP)

If you can do this on the EPoX board and its not rocket science to get there.. I would like to know, if there is an easier board to do this with and not much more expensive, I'd like to know that too

This is probably another post isnt it?


Thanks for all useful answers and assistance!

If you have'nt given up on the abit nf7-s it's on sale now, I read yesterday that somebody had it for $89. Newegg shows it at $99 with free shipping

XP 2000+
MSI KT3 ULTRA-2 KT333
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB PC2700
ABIT G4 Ti4200 OTES 64MB
Win98SE