What´s better ?? ( ABIT vs ABIT )

[VulkanBros]

Whats better for me to buy ?? ( For my spec. look at the end of this post )
ABIT NF7-S2G
VS
ABIT NF7-SL

and WHY ??

thanx !

[grazzhoppa]

Abit's naming of the NF7 series is really confusing.

The Nf7-SL is the same as the NF7-S but without a serial ata to ide adapter. That means it's basically an oem NF7-s, and does has the Soundstorm audio like the nf7-s. The nice thing with Soundstorm audio is that it can create 5.1 channels and send that to a home theater reciever that decodes Dolby Digital, and you can have a kickass sound system.

The the only disadvantage to the Nf7-s2g is that it doesn't have Soundstorm audio. It has serial ata support and SATA RAID. And it has gigbit ethernet (but in reality, gigabit ethernet is useless unless you have a gigabit router and send lots of data between you LAN computers).



Go for the NF7-SL. The interface for Soundstorm is great, I think it's better than Creative's Audigy interface. Soundstorm is by far the best onboard sound chip. Even if you won't use the Dolby 5.1 encoding, it is on par with Creative's Soundblaster Live! and Audigy 1 cards.

Just some tips about the nf7-s, it might apply to the nf7-SL: The board undervolts the cpu voltage setting by a little bit. It also sets 1.575 as the default voltage for my Barton 3000+ 400fsb, so my Barton is really running at about 1.5v when AMD's default is 1.65v. This may cause problems when you first set your computer up, if you're cpu doesn't run stable at 1.5v. You can manually change it though.

It overvolts the ram by .1v. The lowest voltage my board can send to the ram dimms is 2.7volts because the lowest setting in the bios is 2.6v. Your Corsair ram should be fine with this though.

My Soundstorm audio jacks are mixed up. If you have a 5.1 speaker setup, the black and yellow jacks coming from the motherboard are reversed.

Get the latest bios for your board or you when you overclock the fsb you risk losing the bios completely. The newer bios' set the fsb to the default before saving, so that the computer will be stable when it saves the bios information.

I think these "problems" are common to all nf7-s v2 boards, and might apply to the nf7-sl as they are fundamentally the same board. They aren't big problems, as long as you are prepared for them.

Here's a great site for all your Nf7 info http://www.lvcoyote.com/

edit: You may have trouble finding a bios for the nf7-SL, as Abit's USA website doesn't list the motherboard. You could probably use the nf7/nf7-s v2 bios (http://www.abit-usa.com/downloads/bios/bios_revision.php?categories=1&model=124), as the nf7-SL is inbetween those models.

[VulkanBros]

Thanx Grazzhoppa.....thats what I call usefull help......

If I understod you right it is basically : SATA/Gigabit eth. vs. Soundstorm

But for overclocking .... are the boards (chip-sets) equally ??
Or should I buy a different board ( ASUS or DFI or something else ? )

[wazzledoozle]

This SATA to IDE adapter that the NF7-S comes with is useless, same speeds as using the IDE interface. Get the NF7-SL
The NF7-S2G is Abit trying to make money off of a good brand name with a crap product, dont buy into it.

[grazzhoppa]

If I understod you right it is basically : SATA/Gigabit eth. vs. Soundstorm

But for overclocking .... are the boards (chip-sets) equally ??
Or should I buy a different board ( ASUS or DFI or something else ? )
Actually what you're looking at is gigabit ethernet vs. soundstorm. They both have serial ata ports. I was unclear before.

Both boards have the same northbridge, I think. They have different southbridge chips because the Soundstorm is located in the southbridge. They'd most likely overclock equally.

For overclocking, the nf7-SL is the same board as the nf7-s which is a great overclocking motherboard. I think you'll be ok overlocking with the nf7-SL.

[wazzledoozle]

The NF7-S2G also has cut down BIOS options. Not good for overclocking.

[VulkanBros]

thanx grazzhoppa & wazzledoozle.......
I will order the ABIT AN7, nForce2 Ultra, LAN, SATA RAID, Firewire, Dual DDR400, nVidia Soundstorm, 6 Channels.........

[wazzledoozle]

AN7 is good, successor to the NF7-S 2.0 :D