Asus A7N8X
 

I just got one of the Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboards with the N-froce2 chip set and I love it. The double on board lan is a really cool feature. That freed up 2 of my pci slots. After setting up the bios this thing screamed. I cant say anthing bad about this board. I got an AthlonXP 2600 and two 512's of Kingston PC2700 to go with it.

If any of you guys are looking for a really good Athlon board I highly suggest this one.

i have the a7n8x too, and i LOVE it. its great - 8x AGP, 400mhz bus, dual channel ram up to pc3200, 6 channel BUIT IN audio

I have a Gigabyte with the updated Nforce2 that the Asus doesn't have. I am very happy that I waited.

The Nforce2 really shook VIA's KT400 world!

The KT600 is around the corner.

Who can afford to keep up? Not me. I just wait and see.

The newer Nforce2 is great, as was the version in the Asus,

edit: I can rip and burn a dvd faster with the Nforce2 using the same processsor (2800 Barton), same ram (512 x 2 Corsair XMS 2700), same drives (Maxtor 133 40g x 4 raid 0) than I did with my SOYO KT400.

It's all just fun anyway, isn't it?

I would suggest it as well i have the A7N8X deluxe with a barton 2500 ocd to 200fsb*10.5 multiplier and it went higher just got too hot for my cooling. It is highly recomended by me.

the a7n8x is great...the only upgrade I can suggest to people that helps over the long run is getting your network card changed.

Onboard network is nice, but having a $50 external network card actually gives you a lot of computer/cpu time/resources back. With onboard network cards, the cpu is used to check the packages so if you are sending and recieving lots of packets (online games, downloading, blah blah) you're cpu is actually taking a hit. Well with 3com's, and intel's higher end card (no linksys, dlink, or any realtek based cards) you can tell the os to move all network management too the network card.

I know this sounds extreme guys, but we are talking about 25~30% cpu usuage at peak.

Too get back on topic..The A7N8X only has one thing I didn't like about it, and that's the three ram slots. All four of mine are used on my IC7

I love the on-board sound on mine, it's better than the expensive cards I've bought from Creative Labs in the last few years. (assuming you got the deluxe model).

1) Wasn't it the A7N8X Deluxe that had 2 LANs?
2) Yeah, the thing rocks, but the three dimm sockets suck. However, most nforce 2 mobos have that problem.
3) The newer versions of the A7N8X also sport the Nforce 2 400 chips.
4) Most new motherboards have onboard 5.1 soundcards, so don't go buying this mobo just for that. Also buy it because it's just a great board. :)
5) downside: only the deluxe has Serial ATA, which is getting more and more popular. If possible, get a board that has a SATA option; you'll need it in about a year, when most harddisks will be SATA. (Oh, and the Western Digital Raptor SATA disk is also a good reason to get such a controller...)

A7N8X Deluxe here too. I love this board. With the networking and incredible sound built in, it saved me some money as well as hassles. Not to mention Firewire!!
The only gripe I have is the female voice - turn it off in Bios.

A7N8X Deluxe w/ Athlon 2600+ Corsair TWINX512-3200LLPT 400MHz 512MB DDR - Dual Channel, Gigabyte RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB DDR
Barracuda 7500RPM SATA, Antec Solution Series 3700AMB

I have the A7V8X...it's fine for me.

Spend weeks with what I thought was a software problem. It was actually a bad 3 month old DDR-333 memory chip (Kingmax).

Maybe i missed this but does the on board audio support 6.1 speakers/channels?

I also have an ASUS A7N8X DLX 2.0, with a Barton 2500. Works great. I think the built in sound is at least as good as an Audigy 1.

It has 6 channel audio, which usually mean 5.1. 6.1 is just an extrapolation of that 5.1 sound...

My system has been unstable since I switched from Via to Nvidia. Go figure.

Please give us more details. What are the other components, what do you mean with "unstable". Are you 100% sure it's the motherboard?

Just saying that it's unstable since going for Nvidia suggests that the Nforce chipset is somehow to blame. This may not be the case...

regarding the onboard NIC on NF2 boards specifically, all the packet routing and network handling is run through the NF2 northbridge chipset, taking the load off the cpu.

Yes, it's probably a defective motherboard and not the chipset itself. It randomly reboots or freezes up when playing games. It is not COP, and the only component I changed was the mobo. I reinstalled windows fresh after changing hardware.

I got a A7V8X deluxe with my new system I put together.. "cough" for college..

So far it has been awsome. Completely stable and its been running great.. rest of the system as follows:

A7V8X deluxe mobo
Althon XP 3000+
512 corsair XMS 3200 ram X 2
ATI radeon 9800
Lite on 16x dvd
Lite on 52x24x52 burner
Antec TRUE 480 ps
SB live
80gig WD 8meg cache HD (dunno why I didn't just get 120:rolleyes: )
Coolermaster all aluminum case (Soooo nice)
Coolermaster all aluminum Keyboard (also soo nice)

And since I'll be in a Dorm I added a NEC 17" Multisync LCD1760V
monitor..

I would definately recommend this Mobo.. and if anyone has doubts about it, its the same one that Alienware uses in its AMD systems.. which I think says something.

MINE KICKS A**.
Went from ECS to ASUS and my, my what a damn difference