Fast and complicated.
Written: Jul 10 '03 (Updated Jul 11 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, lots of features
Cons: Expensive, can be difficult to work with
The Bottom Line: Lots of features but kind of picky.
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| Bradman's Full Review: Abit NF7-S Motherboard |
I was running an Athlon XP 2100+ on a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP with little problems. When I upgraded to an ATI Radeon 9800pro video card I noticed that the AGP was only running at 4X. I needed to upgrade my wife's computer anyway so I made the jump to an Athlon XP 2600+ (333 MHz FSB) and this motherboard. The installation went well and my benchmarks are much higher, games are running smoothly. I have noticed a random reboot right at startup. I wonder if it is a picky memory or power supply startup problem. This only happens rarely and once booted up the system is very stable. Maybe I'll try a different power supply.
One thing that I recall like is the dual channel DDR memory. If you have two identical DIMMS in slot 2 and 3 then the motherboard can use them both at the same time instead of one large chunk. This should help some memory intensive applications run better.
Overall I am satisfied with the motherboard but I do think it is a "high end" product with a few quirks. When I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version I lost the "auto" CPU setup. After I rebooted my system was running a 100MHz FSB and a default (low) multiplier. I had to go in manually and set everything to the correct values. It is working great and I guess that will leave some good room for overclocking. Since I am more concerned about the noise than the overclock capabilities this feature doesn't matter as much to me.
Bradman
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 125
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Epinions.com ID:
Bradman
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Brad W
Location: OH
Reviews written: 125
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
Cars, computers, digital photography and video.
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