‘Revolver’ says Amdmb.com
has reviewed the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (nForce2 SPP/MCP-T).
Written by Ryan Shrout, this includes benchmarks against a pre-production
ASUS A7N8X and a Leadtek K7NCR18D.
“Back in October, with the release of the Athlon XP 2700+
processor, I reviewed an Asus A7N8X motherboard that
was a pre-production sample sent to us by AMD. The sample was basically taken
from Asus in an unfinished format, before they were able to complete the board
to be ready for the retail market. While not very much did change on the motherboard,
it is obvious from our testing that they were able to squeeze some more out of
the chipset and motherboard to provide end users with a better experience.
Other than that pre-production board, the only other nForce2 board reviewed on
Amdmb.com was the Leadtek K7NCR18D which proved to best the Asus board in almost
every aspect. Can the Leadtek board hold onto the lead it had back in November,
or will the retail version of the Asus A7N8X best it?…Where the Asus A7N8X motherboard really shines, however,
is in its Deluxe model version of the board. Here is where you get all of the
added features that make the motherboard worth having: Firewire, Serial ATA, 6-channel
audio with Dolby Digital, dual NIC and more. The motherboard is a quality piece
of hardware that most users would be proud and happy to have. The standard version
of the board drops a lot of these features, which is a shame, but more suitable
for those looking for inexpensive solutions (which Asus is NOT known to cater
to) or for those with the extras available in PCI cards already. I would have
liked to have seen some IDE RAID available, but Serial ATA RAID is available to
compensate.
The overclocking potential of the A7N8X motherboard is very good as well as it
provides nearly all the features that you could want for overclocking your processor
and getting the most out of your machine. The only drawbacks that I could see
were the unavailability of high Vcore settings and the inability to modify the
processor multiplier without modding the processor (or having an Athlon MP). That
feature, however, seems to be a lacking on the chipset and not the Asus A7N8X
motherboard individually.
Overall, I would have no problem recommending the Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard
to anyone looking to build a system based on the Athlon XP 333 MHz FSB processors.
The nForce2 chipset has all the power you could want and hope for to draw all
the performance out of the processor. Coupling this with the extra features, a
bonus that cannot be overlooked, and you have a winning combination.
Overall Rating (9.0 / 10.0)“
Full review: Asus
A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 Motherboard Review @ amdmb.com
More details: asus.com.tw
Published in: Hardware on 2002-12-27
