Low-Cost / High Performance NF4 MB

TheRod · Jan 30, 2005

- No bells and whistles
- No SLI
- PCI-EXPRESS 16x
- nForce4 performance

<A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/Products_GA-K8NF-9.htm" target="_new">http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/Products_GA-K8NF-9.htm</A>

Review from <A HREF="http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gbnf44x&page=1" target="_new">GamePC</A>

It is now the number one on my wishlist, in Montreal the street price of this motherboard is 155$CA (125$US). Amazing!!!

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A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

Rugger · Jan 31, 2005

According to the GamePC article, the Gigabyte wasn't OC'd all three boards were running at 201Mhz...

Not arguing anything else.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

Rugger · Feb 1, 2005

Although I don't OC much right now, I want the higher performance at stock speed without the mfr OCing the part AND a high OC potential.

Yes. I do want my cake and be able to eat it, too.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

TheRod · Feb 1, 2005

Actually, I mentioned High Performance to make sure everyone understand that this board is not a "crippled down" nForce4. I mean the nForce4 4x chipset is on par with the ULTRA and SLI in terms of performances.

And for a user like me who don't need all the bells and whistles nor SLI, this board is a perfect fit!

I personnaly think that SLI is good only for people who can afford 2 HIGH-END GPU right now. Because, I don't think the benefits of SLI would be there for upgraders...

Let's say you buy a 250$ card today and buy the same card in the future at 150$ to put it in SLI... You spent a total of 400$ and for this money, you get a damn good card today. And by the time the actual card price will drop, next gen video card will be sold around 250$ for better performance... You understand my point!

I'm not an avid gamer, so a single GeForce 6600GT or Radeon X800XL will be more than enough for quite sometime. Look at my signature I still use a moderatly overclocked Radeon 8500 and I'm satisfied with it, since I don't play Doom3 and I wait my next system upgrade to play Half-Life 2 (and I don't care to play this game a year after everyone else).

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A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

TheRod · Feb 1, 2005

-Higher performance at stock speed
or
-Higher OCing potential

I think both is important. But in most situation we don't overclock to the EXTREME. It's my case! I always overclock, but never to a point I need extreme cooling or very expensive memory. These spending annilihate the advantage of overclocking in my opinion. If you spend too much for overclocking the performance vs price get worst! If you spend 200$-300$ more in stuff to push a system to the limit, you might ended up with the same performance with a faster GPU/CPU/MEM that would have cost more considering you would overclock these parts to less extent... The exception is the Mobile Athlon XP, which is the best overclocker part ever made!

So the best bet in overclocking is to get decent everything and push it to their limit without investing much! I understood this when I bought a Volcano 7+ HSF for my Athlon XP 1800+, for 25$US, I only managed to get 83MHz out of this heatsink and the cpu temperature dropped by 10 Celsius... But the noise level ramped up!

So I don't think this was a very investment...
+83MHz
-10 Celsius
+Noise
-25$US

It's a draw!

-
A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

endyen · Feb 2, 2005

It's beginning to look like 90 nano parts will be the next xp-m.
As far as good nforce4 boards go, abit has 4 coming out.

TheRod · Feb 2, 2005

Yup the 90nm A64 seems to be very good part for overclocking! I wish the next revision with SSE3 and strained silicon will be available in 3000+ rating for socket 939. This will probably beat the actual S939 3000+ in overcloking potential.

But something I can't wait to see is if all the apps. that support SSE3 will work the AMD SSE3 implementation, I hope the SSE3 detection routine is not linked to Intel in most apps. If good programmers worked on these apps. SSE3 should work with AMD... But, I have to wait and see actual SSE3 enhanced to work with AMD! I'm always a bit septical with this kind of stuff!

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A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

endyen · Feb 2, 2005

Have you got any good links to SSE3 info?
From what I've seen, all it does is patch flaws in SSE2. A lot of them seem to be to do with HT.
I dont know how much benefit SSE3 will give.

JustysRule · Feb 2, 2005

Before you buy a motherboard, wait for me to test out my Chaintech VNF4. It is exactly what you wanted. Even some of the nforce 4's dont' have the SATA2. This has everything but firewire and SLI. SATA2, PCI-e, all kinds of overclocking doodads, 4 ram slots, etc., and it costs 120 bucks. Only problem is, they are always out of stock because they are so damn cheap.

I get my 20 to 24 pin adapter thursday, I'll let you guys know how it works out. I also got a winchester core 90nm 3000+. Just hang in there and I'll let you guys know how it works out.

TheRod · Feb 2, 2005

I don't want to save money on MB, I actually always buy good MOBO. But I don't buy features I don't need.

My actual mobo is the Asus A7N8X basic. I didn't bought the DELUXE, because I didn't need SATA, 3D audio nor Firewire. And I never looked back!

I actually bought a FireWire PCI add-on card later, because I bought a MiniDV camera, of course it costs me a bit but I never planned to use or need FireWire at the time I bought my A7N8X.

I'm actually proud to not have bought SATA and SoundStorm, because frankly we are now in 2005 and SATA just start to be affordable and I still use headphone to play games!

It is why, I mostly buy vanilla board for myself, I recommend "deluxe/platinum" version only for people that will actually USE the extra features of these board. And frankly some of these features are quite useless... Like dual Gigabit Ethernet controller! Wow! What a useless feature for 98% of home users! Even power gamer/user don't need this.

-
A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

TheRod · Feb 3, 2005

I agree with that SATA is now affordable, but I will not thrown my 160Gigs HDD in the garbage because SATA is now affordable.

And no, I don't neet SATA & Command Queuing, because, I don't use HDD intensive apps. I play games, surf the web, BitTorrent, a bit of video encoding. All this stuff don't depend on HDD to be effective.

It's like the people that build RAID-0/1 in their home systems. It's not worth the effort since, you don't get much improvment for the cost. It's my opinion, and I know some will tell their system is not a lot fasterwith RAID. But, it's not true. Yes, apps/games might load faster, but FPS or rendering speed can't be faster when the real bottleneck is the CPU/GPU.

For SoundStorm, I personnaly don't care about 3D sound, I have installed the RealTek Audio drivers on my A7N8X and it does a good job for what I need to do! I'm not an audio-freak and not a "no-life" gamer. And I live with my girlfriend an little daughter in a house, I don't want to annoy them with a 5.1 Audio System while I play games like Medal Of Honor, they would become crazy and they would want to kill me!

Everything must be put in perspective. I don't need SATA nor 5.1 audio. So, I don't need highly equipped MOBOs!

-
A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

TheRod · Feb 3, 2005

It's good to know, because the Chaintech VNF3-250 made a very impression in the press and it was actually on my wishlist before I saw that low-cost Gigabyte NF4 MB.

So keep us informed about the Chaintech VNF4! And, sorry, I can't wait for your review since I already ordered my Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9, but it's back-ordered. If the board doesn't show up in a week or two, I will check to change my order if the Chaintech is available, or any other low cost nForce4 solution!

By the way, <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_Spec_GA-K8NF-9.htm" target="_new">the Gigabyte have</A> :
2 FireWire
4 SATA
4 DDR slots
1 16x PCI-EXPRESS
2 1x PCI-EXPRESS
3 PCI

Humm... The Chaintech VNF4 specs looks good either! <A HREF="http://www.chaintech.com.tw/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=13&PISNo=318" target="_new">About the same stuff...</A>

NOTE ABOUT THE CHAINTECH
It seems that the actual BIOS is a bit messed when comes to overclocking... <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/chaintech-nforce4.html" target="_new">Read this review</A>!

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A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!Edited by TheRod on 02/03/05 10:18 AM.

TheRod · Feb 3, 2005

I have read the AnandTech review of the DFI NF4, it looks like a very good MB, but I will never overclock that much! I will be very very pleased to reach 2.4GHz with my 3000+, I don't want to top the 3dMark chart with mysystem, I just want to have a good price/performance ratio. And the money I'll save to not going Ultra/SLI will be well spend on a future CPU and/or GPU upgrade of my rig in the future...

I can't wait to receive my NF4 + 6600GT + A64 3000+!!!

-
A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

TheRod · Feb 4, 2005

What about RAM?
Good luck d00d!

To start, I'll keep my DDR333 ram, and in a near future I'll upgrade to 2x512Megs of good DDR400.

-
A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

dhlucke · Feb 4, 2005

Buy memory now.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

TheRod · Feb 4, 2005

Buy memory now.

Ok, here is my reasoning...

I'll spend 700$CA tax included for the MoBo, CPU and GPU.

To buy good DDR400 ram, I would have to spend at least 250$CA, this would boost my upgrade cost to 950$CA... 35% more, to gain 5% in performance... It's not a good bargain!

-
A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

dhlucke · Feb 5, 2005

I'm not familiar with using DDR333 memory with a Athlon 64. How would that work exactly?

GOD BLESS AMERICA

TheRod · Feb 6, 2005

Simple! In the bios you set the memory to DDR333 instead of DDR400. Actually, the memory will be auto-detected to DDR333. If you search old post, you will find a thread that I started about regarding low-cost A64 upgrade. I can't remember the website, but they testes A64 with DDR266, DDR333 and DDR400 ram. The performance difference between DDR333 and DDR400 was less that 5% in most situation. Since, the memory would increase my upgrade cost by 30%, I don't think it's worth to spend this extra money, only to get 5% overall speed.

What I will do, is keep my 2x256Megs of DDR333 and get 2x512 DDR400 in the future, when I will actually really need 1Gig of RAM. At that time, I will probably be able to afford good quality DDR400 modules to do good memory overclocking.

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A7N8X / Athlon XP 1800+ o/c to Sempron 2800+
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
Radeon 8500 128Megs @ C:275/M:290 <- It's enough for WoW!

Low-Cost / High Performance NF4 MB

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