CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-04-27, 07:59:Abit NF7-S2G. I still has this board pretty much unused in box. […]
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Abit NF7-S2G. I still has this board pretty much unused in box.
Back in the day, I fiddled a lot with Socket A platform. Bought cheap Athlons, tested several motherboards, had fast memory, watercooling and tweaked the hell out of the systems just for fun. Athlons were so much fun, because you could buy low end T-bred Bs and Bartons extremely cheap and overclock the hell out of them. I had a nice EPoX board before that turd and during some of my tests I somehow managed to break the socket. So, I needed a replacement and went to the computer shop relatively near my home. However, they had very limited selection available on the shelf, mostly just generic boards not aimed at the enthusiasts, so there was clearly a problem. Because I didin't have a functioning computer otherwise, I decided to pick this turd because hey, it is NF7-series after all, so how bad it could be?
It was horrible. It had no CPU multiplier controls and CPU support was abysmal (of course this turd pretty much never got any BIOS updates either, not to mention modded BIOSes). You couldn't even get most fast Athlons running at their nominal speed, because it didin't detect the processor correctly and used too small multiplier. You couldn't set CAS2 for memory. Every tweak it had in BIOS, which was not many, usually caused the system becoming horribly unstable.
It was probably after half an hour with that thing when I realised that I had made a huge mistake. I decided to keep the board so I had at least somewhat functioning computer for internet stuff for a time being and ordered a proper enthusiast board. If I remember correctly, it was another turd from Abit, AN7 which was just released at that point. Or I had AN7 before the EPoX, but the point still remains, that it was horrible too. It had all the bells and whistles, but it was disastrously unstable. I just couldn't get it stable with 2 or more RAM sticks even stock and I got it replaced for NF7-S v2.0 after few days of frustration (or EPoX board, if my memory fails me of the order of things)
But NF7-S2G still lingers with me. I couldn't bear to sell it to anyone so I just left it in my bin with a box and accessories as a reminder. Just few weeks ago I browsed the contents of the box. It still had the Tbred-b 1700+ in the socket. Nice processor, overclocked like a beast with water. I think I need to remove it from the board, it doesn't deserve to be tortured with that board.
The AN7 is amazing. They are so good I got a hold of and kept two of them. The NF7 however... well, mine has no stability issues whatsoever, but it does lack any usefull overclocking features. I have no idea why Abit released the thing.
I did however have severe stability issues, back in the day and rather recently, with a couple of Epox boards... 8RDA3 and 8RDA+ to be precise. The 8RDA3 is fine as long as I don't use anything faster then a 2600+ barthon and don't try to use any fast ram (like 400MHZ CL2). The 8RDA is just generally unstable. It can work fine for weeks, then decide to corrupt the hard drive the next day. I do remember the 8RDA3 was finnicky, I had one when they were new and I was so happy when I replaced it with an Albatron KX18D PRO2 witch really surprised me. Cheaper then an AN7, but with similar features and overclocking ability. One of the best boards I've ever had.
As for my "worse boards", oho, there is a list:
- Abit KV7 - I have a few of these, and really wanted to build a KT600 + Athlon 2600+ (AXDA2600DKV3C, toroughbread, 2133MHz) PC. My boards are unstable, at least with this CPU. One of them worked fine with a 2200+, did several benchmark loops for 6 hours streight with that chip. Put the 2600+ in it and it locks up in 30-60 minutes. Dissapointing, as I remember these were among the better KT600 boards back in the day. Also picky about ram.
- Asus P4P800 Deluxe - I have a box of these. Issues with the EEPROM and/or CPU socket. Fast when working, they were well priced back in the day, but boy do they like to die.
- Asus A7N8X - very picky about ram. Had issues running some board with FSB200 CPU's. Issues getting the systems stable with dual channel ram configurations.
- Asus P5K - had one back in the day - would not say it's a horrible board, but it is slow, and tends to get unstable when using faster more power hugry chips.
- Asus P5A - any revision. Again, I have a box of these. Some even post, but throw a "Gate A20 error" when loading himem.sys.
- Epox 8RDA3 - generally unstable board.
- MSI MS6167 - slot A board. I love the fact that it has two ISA slots - BUT, out of 3 boards (got a hold of another one last weekend) none worked properly. One even let out magic smoke. Mosfets near the CPU slot like to cook themselves.
- Gigabyte X79-UD7. Good board apart from a wierd bios issue. It would randomly loose CMOS settings. Otherwise ran fine and is a great overclocker. Had one of these when it was new, paired with an i7 3930k. It could overclock the snot out of that chip, but once in a while it would fail to post, loop 2-3 times, and I'd get a "cmos settings invalid" error. Good thing the BIOS had a "save configuration" option. Found another one last summer - pretty cheap, picked it up. Played with it for a few days, them BAM - CMOS configuration invalid all over again. My brother in law had a Z77 board with the exact same issue (can't remember the exact model).
- Gigabyte Z77-UD3M - the most pointless Z77 board ever made. It did not have any voltage settings in bios, severly limiting overclocking potential and as such negating the whole reason for buying a Z77 in the first place.
- Matsonic socket A boards. These were fine if you didn't try any sort of tweaks and stuck with cheaper CPUs. I remember trying to get a 1700+ running on some KT133A matsonic board - could not get it running. Came across the board recently again - by some accident the orange heatsink fell of the northbridge - and surprise - it's a regular KT133 - not an "A" model. No wonder it had so many issues with FSB133 chips. It was marketed as a KT133 tough. Hell, even the BIOS string sais "KT133A".
- Most if not all socket 478 SDRAM boards. These things are HORRIBLY slow. I don't know if it's a fault of the boards themselves, since I've tried Asus, DFI, Gigabyte, MSI, OEM stuff from IBM and HP, and they're all dog slow - even compared to a regular 1GHZ pentium 3. Some are even unstable, and down-right unusable, particularly models from PCChips and Matsonic.
Generally most MSI or ASUS 2001 to 2004 motherboards. In fact the first good MSI board I've seen was the MSI P35 Neo2. Budget asus boards in that period were horrenodus. Started with mediocre boards in 2001 and just kept getting worse and worse. Their high end stuff was OK tough. I have a P4C800 that's been kicking since 2006, and it was used as a file server at one point.