Does NF4ultra worth the $$?

[TheArchon]

I couldn't get a clear idea form the reviews i read' whether i should invest the extra 80$ to buy an NF4 ultra MB, the reviews refer mostky to comparsion between differnt NF4 MB, what about the VIA MB or the NF4 or NF3 ultra MB??
Should i invest the extra 80$? (i cant see any reason why i should buy SLI MB)

 

[TheArchon]

The DFI cost 40$ more then the MSI NEO4 platinium that got an editor choice award from Tomshardware... and DFI nF4-DAGF cost 80$ less then the lanPraty NF4 ultra.
I'm not a heavy gamer, i only play RPG and Strategy games, the almost never requeir the most advanced SYS, not since Ultima series has died.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TheArchon on 06/04/05 04:50 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[specialed]

I totally disagree with your assesment of Via and Asus.
In the past Via did have some issues with thier past chipsets, but their new k8 series have been perfoming well. True that they don't support Raid0+1, but then again as a home user who is on a budget can run the raid 0 and still back it up with just a purchase of external HD rather then shell out for one more SATA HD. I bring that point up because in some reviews like the XBIT review of the new Asus AV8-E Deluxe MB which uses the VIA K8T890 chipset, they knock it for those reasons. I really don't have the money to be buying 4hdS, so people like me are satisfied with the features they offer. True the NF4 ultra chipsets do perform a little faster, not much I may add, unless you sit there and run all kinds of benchmarks, but again people like me are pretty much satisfied with the perfomance.

Now about Asus, Never had any problems with any of thier products. They have been around for awhile, and continue to manufacture good products. I purchased a new 939 socket mb myself, A8V-E Deluxe and must say I am a satisfied costumer.
No problems as of yet. Thier SLI boards I hear are pretty good too.

I had to get that off my chest, I understand people like to OC and bend and benchmark thier systems to get that little extra out of the system. I do too, to some extant. But people slam other products for some silly reasons. If a product performs well and is reasonably priced, and has alot of features, why knock it?

 

[pat]

Here in THGC we omit anything related to VIA for various good reason.

<A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/20050603042038.html" target="_new">VIA Says K8T890 Incompatible with AMD Athlon 64 X2</A>

Could that be one reason?


<font color=red>Sig space for rent. make your offer.</font color=red>

 

[specialed]

Again, I really don't know how you have all those problems when I have numerous friends and myself, never had any major problems with Asus. It baffles me to say the least. There is one thought comes to mind, since I deal with CNC machines, the machine only does what the operator tells it to do.

Also that is very interesting article from XBITS aka.. NFORCE, that they don't support dual core. I looked high and low on the website and everywhere else for that matter and seen nothing to back that article up. Asus right now has a bios update for the A8V-E Deluxe with Rev E support.

Look, I got nothing against NF4 boards, they are really good boards from DFI, MSI and the like. But I don't go nitpicking them to death. All of them has flaws. You be kidding yourself to say they don't. All I know is five years from now that same board I have will be ready for a upgrade. Because all Asus boards I dealt with lasted it's full life and then some. Can't say the same for others. If it works and rocks why knock it?

 

[pat]

Hey! I have nothing against VIA. I did use them in the past. But I think that nforce chipset is one step ahead in term of feature and overall performance. The kt890 is not a match for the nforce4 in term of feature.

As for nforce4 not supporting dual core, if it is the same thing that I read, it was that nforce would support it, but motherboard manufacturer did not design their board in a way to support them. So this is not chipset fault. As in this quote:

"Both NVIDIA Corp. and AMD said that there were no issues on the chipset side, but several mainboard makers did not design their products according to AMD guidelines, which caused general incompatibility."

<font color=red>Sig space for rent. make your offer.</font color=red>

 

[dunklegend]

If you like via and had good experience with via mobos just say so. This is a very useful forum, because you get to hear a lot of different point of views. I had an ASUS via mobo myself, and you're right it works very well since my mobo was S754 and I wanted to upgrade so S939. I came to this forum set on buying an ASUS SLI board, but wusy and others gave me other choices and I ended buying the EPOX nforce 4 ultra mobo and it only was 5 bucks more than what I paid for my ASUS S754 VIA chipset mobo.

Conclusion: IMHO ASUS is good and VIA chipsets work fine.
DFI and EPOX are as good or better than ASUS and nForce Ultra chipsets work much better.


Nothing is as easy as it looks

 

[dunklegend]

What's your budget for the mobo?

Nothing is as easy as it looks

 

[RichPLS]

JMO, but, you rarely hear someone say they regret getting one of the better motherboards for $xx more, but more often hear user complaining that for $xx more could have gotten better board.
Just a thought. Get quality parts and save yourself regret, heartache and tech trouble.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[specialed]

I seen the Xbits article, however it seems to conflict with this earlier article.....
http://www.via.com.tw/en/resources/pressroom/2005_archive/pr050421_amd-dualcore.jsp

If it doesn't, fine with me. They are a little expensive. By the time prices drop on them, it might be time to upgrade...say SLI! I respect everybody's opinion here, this is a very good site to get info and news. Yeah, the NForces are screaming, no doubt. But I feel comfortable with Asus which is the reason why I got the A8V-E Deluxe, more features than the Asus A8NE ( I think that's the one) and less expensive than SLI. But if I had a bigger budget, I would probrably get the NF4 ultra boards.......