Abit, Biostar and MSI Roundup @ tomshardware

Toms Hardware has posted a multi-review of three nForce2 boards - an Abit NF7-S, Biostar M7NCG and MSI K7N2-L - compared with previous results from reviews of an Asus A7N8X, Leadtek WinFast K7NCR18D and Chaintech 7NJS. Worth a read just to check out the benchmarks, but watch out for the specs listed in the ‘Motherboard Comparison Table’ as a number of inaccuracies have been pointed out in the forum - the IGP-based M7NCG is listed as an SPP, the K7N2-L as having an MCP-T, etc.

About three months ago, NVIDIA took the performance crown among Athlon chipsets with its nForce2 chipset. Today the competition from SiS and VIA have nothing to match the American chipmaker’s power chipset with, even if work on products with more oomph is already going at fever pitch.

Now, three more manufacturers have joined nForce2’s triumphal procession: Abit, Biostar and MSI. The secret to nForce2’s success is, first, its dual-channel SDRAM interface and second, its wide range of features. nForce2 was the first consumer chipset to offer support for two DDR channels. The choice is between DDR333 or DDR400, although the latter usually doesn’t add anything to performance. Among its practical highlights are the support for two network controllers, FireWire/USB 2.0 and Dolby Digital Sound. nForce2 is also fully equipped for the coming AMD processor generation. The new Athlon, codenamed Barton, offers an L2 cache expanded to 512 KB and turns out FSB clock speeds of 166 MHz. This article compares the Asus A7N8X, Leadtek WinFast K7NCR18D and Chaintech 7NJS nForce2 boards tested two months ago with the three latecomers, Abit NF7-S, Biostar M7NCG and MSI K7N2-L

More nForce 2: New Boards from Abit, Biostar and MSI @ tomshardware.com


Watch this space for an nFHQ review of version 1.1 of the BIOSTAR M7NCG.