NewEgg NF7-S
Anyone purchase an N7F-S from NewEgg recently?
Which version did you get?
If the odds are good I'll get a 2.0 then I might RMA this pile of trash Epox 8RDA+ I got for the NF7-S, otherwise I think I might get a refund and buy the NF7-S from Excaliber.
Word of warning to anyone ever thinking of purchasing an Epox: I had three (3) Epox motherboards go bad on me w/in one (1) week's time about 3 years ago. Left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, but I decided I would give them one more chance, so I purchased the 8RDA+. PILE OF CRAP! Epox really sucks! I seriously doubt I'll ever purchase another Epox motherboard again, being as 4 out of 4 Epox motherboards I've ever seen were garbage. I had a bad Abit, but RMA'd it and now it's fine . . . every other mobo I've ever used has been fine. Abit, Gigabyte, Shuttle, etc.
Which version did you get?
If the odds are good I'll get a 2.0 then I might RMA this pile of trash Epox 8RDA+ I got for the NF7-S, otherwise I think I might get a refund and buy the NF7-S from Excaliber.
Word of warning to anyone ever thinking of purchasing an Epox: I had three (3) Epox motherboards go bad on me w/in one (1) week's time about 3 years ago. Left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, but I decided I would give them one more chance, so I purchased the 8RDA+. PILE OF CRAP! Epox really sucks! I seriously doubt I'll ever purchase another Epox motherboard again, being as 4 out of 4 Epox motherboards I've ever seen were garbage. I had a bad Abit, but RMA'd it and now it's fine . . . every other mobo I've ever used has been fine. Abit, Gigabyte, Shuttle, etc.
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Being as they have been out of stock a few times since the 2.0 release, I'd say it's a guarantee you'll get a rev. 2.0 board.
Tried an 8rda+ almost two years later, looked like a great board. It died spontaneously too.
My 2 abit boards? Flawless victories.
I am also not too fond of Asus, but in their case I should be fair and say that I've only owned two. One was great (A7V), but the A7V133 has made up for it by being a real stinker to get anything installed on. So far I have battled through W98se, W2K, and now WinXPpro. The XPpro was the easiest of the bunch, but that was after I had flashed it to a hacked bios from some guy called "Crazy Ape".
You know you're getting desperate when you risk the whole board to someone with a monicker like that.:p
(The hacked bios works fine, and allows me to use the raid controller as a plain ATA-133 controller - Asus' bios allows raid-only).
My Abit boards have been fine, though I cut them a little slack due to the Via chipset limitations. (I don't blame Abit for that).
My current favorite, MSI, is not considered a super performer, but in the last 10 months I have put them in new computers for my dad, my daughter, and one of my nieces. Since I'm their sole tech support department (they live 100 to 160 miles away) I really appreciate their stability and ease of setup. With XPhome (dad & daughter) the install required no additional fritzing around after Windows was loaded. This is nice, since if they conk out I am confident that a System Restore or complete re-install could most likely be done with me helping over the phone, and without me having to schlepp 320 miles round-trip.
Prof
Point
1) a2jfreak: "I had three (3) Epox motherboards go bad on me w/in one (1) week's time about 3 years ago....so I purchased the 8RDA+. PILE OF CRAP! Epox really sucks! "
2) Thrax: "I owned an 8KHA+, great board. Died suddenly one day...Tried an 8rda+ almost two years later, looked like a great board. It died spontaneously too."
3) profdlp: "Had one Epox board. It was a Super Socket 7 board for my daughters computer about 4 years ago. It remains the only board I've ever had that completely died on me."
Counter Point
In the Last 2 yrs I've purchased an Epox 8KHA+(KT266A), 8K3A+ (KT333) (2), 8K5A2+ (KT333), 8K9A2+ (KT400), 8RDA+ (NF2), 8K9A3+ (KT400). I still have the two KT400 boards, the others I have since resold. The only problem I've had was that the 8K5A2+ was finicky about Tbred CPUs. My only RMA was when I stabbed my 8K5A2+ with a screwdriver (changing a heatsink) and it stopped working. It was my fault & I also killed an MSI K7D that way.
My experience with Epox has been very positive and I've owned as many Epox mobos as the above 3 combined. I've also owned 7 Abit mobos and 2 MSI. I've had two of my Abits Fail (one was modified) and I killed one of my MSIs.
I recommend all three brands but my First choice is usually an Epox!
*note* One of the above mentioned failed Epox 8RDA+ was vmodded.....(maybe it contributed to the failure, maybe it was a bad board..)
Nuff Said
Never had an issue with 3 x EPoX boards. Had issues with ABIT, ASUS and Gigabyte however.
8K3A+ - Flawless
8K5A3+ - Flawless bar the TBred 'A' but no biggie
8RDA+ - Was nice, had some quirks which were never resolved. The board is now in my work desktop a...
Never had an issue with 3 x EPoX boards. Had issues with ABIT, ASUS and Gigabyte however.
8K3A+ - Flawless
8K5A3+ - Flawless bar the TBred 'A' but no biggie
8RDA+ - Was nice, had some quirks which were never resolved. The board is now in my work desktop and stable as a rock. Changed Corsair memory for TwinMOS, issues resolved.
ASUS - A7V266-E - Absolutely horrible board.
Gigabyte - Too many to mention
ABIT - KR7A - Niggly
///EDIT///Edited to reflect 8RDA+ history///EndEDIT///
Since NewEgg's listing still only shows 333MHz FSB and not 400, I guess it is still a bit of a gamble, but if you got a 2.0 I might risk it.
I put together a P4 system a little less than a year ago and it was based on an MSI board! Smooth board! MSI is high on my list.
Just got a bad NF7-S for a system I would building for my mother . . . RMA'd it and now all works. Like Thrax said, sometimes stuff just happens. Only gripe I have with Abit is their tech support. I called it when I got the NF7-S hoping tech support could help me. Nah! The "tech" could barely mumble English and policy of being polite must have gone over his head.
I'm not a huge fan of IWill, but that's mainly because the BIOS that originally came with my board was horrible and I didn't flash it until earlier this year or late last year, so I lived with sub-par performance for quite a while, and then once I got decent performance my PSU went south and took my mobo and my CDRW with it. Haven't tried the old CPU yet, but I'm guessing it's probably toast too, along w/ the RAM.
I also got bad Corsair XMS PC3200C2 RAM. I was able to test the system with some Corsair XMS PC3200C2 that I *knew* was good and the board still failed, so I knew it was the board. I tested my RAM in the NF7-S system I built for my mother and the board failed, so that's the RAM. I tell ya, that batch from NewEgg really sucked. I think if that had been my first NewEgg purchase I might not go back, but since it wasn't I'll just chalk the Corsair up to "everyone makes a bad one sometime" but Epox has burned me 4 out of 4 times thus far so I can't keep chalking it up to "everyone makes a bad one sometime" because I feel it's "Epox makes a bad one everytime."
In the last month I've had 2 bad mobos and 2 bad sticks of RAM . . . oh well, I guess it was bound to happen. Grrrr.
// Edit: Well, it appears possibly only 1 of the DIMMS is bad . . . I'll do some more testing to make sure.
I am in no way trying to invalidate your experiences. If you have an EPOX curse, then by all means buy another brand. I was just pointing out another side that's all.
Abit is a great choice. In fact the only issue I have with Abit is their boards tend to be expensive (compared to Epox) and I hate the CPU Socket orientation. (I just put together two Abit mobo sytems, you effectively have to remove the PSU to change processors... :banghead: )
Also I was prejudiced against ECS until Tex recommended the ECS K7S5A Pro motheboard. I built two systems with that little mobo and it's a wonderful budget board. Currently $47 shipped @ Newegg
What about that huge thread on icrontic in regards to your 8RDA+ acting up lik it really shouldn't?
The DLT3C 0310XPMW I got for my mom's system does 2.3GHz @ 200MHz FSB stable @ 1.65v so I'm pretty sure that's a safe bet, but would the 512K make a decent difference (especially in folding?) and how decent is the Barton likely to overclock? 2.3GHz? 2.2? 2.4 maybe?
Another thread in the Folding forum had mixed opinions as to the helpfulness of the Barton cache. The consensus seems to be that raw processor power is the main thing. I haven't had a chance to play around with my dads Barton 2500+ yet, but I've heard nothing but praise for their OC'ability.
For $28 bucks difference I'd get the Barton - you never know what else you might be doing down the road where that cache comes in handy. Plus, it'll run fine with the stock heatsink as opposed to OC'ing a 1700+, which might require $28 worth of cooling apparatus to run stable.
Prof
PS: I think the prices are about the same (checked - $3 difference), so make sure you get the Retail version as opposed to OEM. You get a free heatsink/fan, plus the warranty is 3 years, as opposed to 90 days.
I just want the CPU that will reach the highest GHz, w/in just a few MHz of each other. If I could get a Barton that would do 2.2 and a TBred-B that would do 2.3, then I'd probably get the barton just because the extra cache might be helpful in the future, but a difference of 300-400MHz and I would go w/ the T-BredB.
Barton's and Tbreds OC the same. The Barton's extra 256K L2 cache gives it more ommph it a lot (most) apps. It's larger die size makes it easier to cool. And it's resale value will be higher.
If so, then
If I had that attitude I'd be trying to post this message from my dads old Commodore 64!
Prof
LOL, or even an old system using a Intel 4004 and 32KB of RAM.
I'm just a (below) average OC'er. My Tbreds 1700+ and 2100+ did between 2.0 & 2.2ghz on Air. Currently I'm running one of my Bartons at 2.0ghz @ default volatge on air. Haven't tried any higher because the AC is on the fritz. The Water Cooled one is doing 2.33ghz. (It's a shame I needed a Water system to get highend air results...
Tbred FSB266 2.00ghz = 2400+
Tbred FSB333 2.00ghz = 2500+
Barton FSB333 1.83ghz = 2500+
Barton FSB333 2.00ghz = 2700+
Barton FSB400 2.00ghz = 2800+
IMO the Barton should OC the same as the Tbred. It's larger Die size and similar power consumption should make it easier to cool.
I posted a recent article on a water cooled Barton hitting 2.5-2.6ghz
Ive edited my post. I still had less problems with that board than any other I've owned. Just wondered also, did you read that last post on that thread from me?
I think it was something along the lines of "Funny. Removed the Corsair and replaced with TwinMOS. Works ok now. Any got any clues?"
Thrax:1
Shorty: 0
Shut it. Mr "whoops screwdriver" 65
I've never bought an Epox motherboard for all the aforementioned reasons. At least in the past (KT333) it seemed like a lot more people had bad 'luck' with Epox than good 'luck'. Abit has never let me down, and I had an IWill in there that was also very, very good. I'd consider going with another brand if Abits weren't so fast in the first place.
Im brave or foolhardy. Opinion differs.
If the Bartons are hitting 2.6GHz w/ water and the T-Bred(B)s are hitting 3.0GHz w/ water, I think the T-Bred(B) will be my better choice because it's a few bucks cheaper, is likely to O/C higher w/ the cooling that I currently have.
The larger die size should help cool the Barton, but I guess the yields just aren't high enough yet, and w/ Athlon64 a few months away I don't know if we'll see a core revision of the Barton that will make them more O/C-able.
I also have yet to hear of a Tbreb or Barton above 2.4ghz running F@H 24/7 either. An CPUID pic of a CPU means little if you can't use it.
And don't feel bad about my OC efforts, Other than Thrax's Tbred 2.3 or Seversphere's Tbred 2.4, ( I know they run F@H) I take all reports about Tbred OC's with a CUP of salt.
My Barton 2.33 under water remained stable when the ambient room temp went from 70F to 88F. I have serious doubts that highend air would have kept a system folding the way mine did.
Hear's the advice..
1) Get a Barton 2500+
2) Forget the Athlon 64 until the 90nm versions arrive in 2004
Good luck with whatever you choose to do