archive.org has this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040607122053/htt … /mb/mbindex.htm

I believe some came with Sata and some didn't, Some had the Nforce Soundstorm sound and some didn't, and later ones had the official 400mhz fsb support (Nforce2 400 Ultra) while the earlier ones officially did 333fsb. Oh, and some had dual channel ram support and some didn't.

I believe the best one (that has everything) is the A7N8X-E deLuxe

I have the A7N8X, A7N8X deLuxe and the A7N8X-E deLuxe all complete and boxed and one A7N8X deLuxe in a running system with Athlon 3200+ and Geforce 6800Ultra. I really like this particular era even tough i do not really see it as retro (but as long as it has agp it's still old enough for me 😎 )

They also had A7N8X-X

meljor wrote:

[...]

I believe the best one (that has everything) is the A7N8X-E deLuxe

It has everything - but that's why I didn't like it: too much junk onboard, eating up resources and power, and giving you potential sources of instability (particularly with Win9x). If you have to go Asus, the plain -E was the best choice IMHO - but I'd strongly advise against any Asus nForce2 board. They were incredibly and inexplicably picky when it came to RAM. DIMMs that were in-spec and worked on any other board, including any other nForce2 board, failed to work on A7N8X boards. In general it's best practice to stick to the RAM QVL when choosing DIMMs for a system, but with the A7N8X you were pretty much guaranteed failure if you deviated even a single digit.

I recall my housemate and I both bought nForce2-400 boards at the same time somewhere in 2003 or so when they were hot. He insisted on paying the premium for an A7N8X-E (non-Deluxe). I went for a Gigabyte GA-7N400-L. Basically the same board, only difference is that Asus went for the MCP-T with nForce LAN & Audio, whereas Gigabyte somewhat inexplicably went for the plain MCP, then added discrete Realtek LAN and audio. But in terms of memory they both have the same nForce2-400 Ultra SPP. So they should be identical in terms of RAM behaviour, right? Nope. We also bought different RAM, iirc he went for TwinMOS, I bought Infineon or Elpida, but both 2x 512MB PC3200. My system was stable straight away, his refused to even boot with his RAM. Just before he wanted to RMA the damned thing (together with the DIMMs) I convinced him to try exchanging DIMMs. His DIMMs worked fine in my board, and fortunately mine did in his too. So no RMA, we just swapped DIMMs - and he swore never to buy Asus again. This wasn't an isolated incident, forums were full of this sort of stories back then. So no, I wouldn't recommend any A7N8X-E.

That said, I recently got hold of an A7N8X-X and had no trouble with any known-good DIMMs on it - but the -X is single-channel, which is somewhat less challenging in terms of memory controller of course.

Xplo wrote:

They also had A7N8X-X

ctrue. that was tge shorter version i think

meljor wrote:

I believe some came with Sata and some didn't, Some had the Nforce Soundstorm sound and some didn't, and later ones had the official 400mhz fsb support (Nforce2 400 Ultra) while the earlier ones officially did 333fsb. Oh, and some had dual channel ram support and some didn't.

I believe the best one (that has everything) is the A7N8X-E deLuxe

I have the A7N8X, A7N8X deLuxe and the A7N8X-E deLuxe all complete and boxed and one A7N8X deLuxe in a running system with Athlon 3200+ and Geforce 6800Ultra. I really like this particular era even tough i do not really see it as retro (but as long as it has agp it's still old enough for me 😎 )

can you post pictures of box + motherboard of all 3 variants?
i cant remember which is the one i had

dionb wrote:

It has everything - but that's why I didn't like it: too much junk onboard, eating up resources and power, and giving you potent […]
Show full quote

meljor wrote:

[...]

I believe the best one (that has everything) is the A7N8X-E deLuxe

It has everything - but that's why I didn't like it: too much junk onboard, eating up resources and power, and giving you potential sources of instability (particularly with Win9x). If you have to go Asus, the plain -E was the best choice IMHO - but I'd strongly advise against any Asus nForce2 board. They were incredibly and inexplicably picky when it came to RAM. DIMMs that were in-spec and worked on any other board, including any other nForce2 board, failed to work on A7N8X boards. In general it's best practice to stick to the RAM QVL when choosing DIMMs for a system, but with the A7N8X you were pretty much guaranteed failure if you deviated even a single digit.

I recall my housemate and I both bought nForce2-400 boards at the same time somewhere in 2003 or so when they were hot. He insisted on paying the premium for an A7N8X-E (non-Deluxe). I went for a Gigabyte GA-7N400-L. Basically the same board, only difference is that Asus went for the MCP-T with nForce LAN & Audio, whereas Gigabyte somewhat inexplicably went for the plain MCP, then added discrete Realtek LAN and audio. But in terms of memory they both have the same nForce2-400 Ultra SPP. So they should be identical in terms of RAM behaviour, right? Nope. We also bought different RAM, iirc he went for TwinMOS, I bought Infineon or Elpida, but both 2x 512MB PC3200. My system was stable straight away, his refused to even boot with his RAM. Just before he wanted to RMA the damned thing (together with the DIMMs) I convinced him to try exchanging DIMMs. His DIMMs worked fine in my board, and fortunately mine did in his too. So no RMA, we just swapped DIMMs - and he swore never to buy Asus again. This wasn't an isolated incident, forums were full of this sort of stories back then. So no, I wouldn't recommend any A7N8X-E.

That said, I recently got hold of an A7N8X-X and had no trouble with any known-good DIMMs on it - but the -X is single-channel, which is somewhat less challenging in terms of memory controller of course.

In that period there was a lot of incompatibilities with ram. For that reason i started using Kingston only and never had a problem ever again (tough it wasn't the fastest ram out there). I had the A7n8x deluxe back then and it was perfect (for me). It ran a 2500+ barton fine at 3200+ which was a common overclock for that cpu.