Nucleus checks out revision 2.0 of the ASUS A7N8X (nForce2-ST) with official 400FSB support and an improved BIOS: “The CPU external frequency can be increased to a whopping 300Mhz … that’s 600FSB !!!“. This revision is packaged as an ‘Nvidia N-Force2 SPP (Ultra 400) Chipset’ motherboard, but we’re not so sure it’s actually THE nForce2 Ultra 400 we’ve been hearing so much about… Here’s a snip:
Don’t let this put you off from purchasing a N-Force2 motherboard no matter what the revision. It’s still one of the best performing chipsets available for the Athlon XP processors. Official support for the 400FSB processors is not really an important issue, as most N-Force2 motherboards can overclock to 400FSB anyway. And also, remember that AMD is concertrating on their new Opteron processors (K8), so the chances are … the 400FSB Bartons might not become widely available anyway. So are there any REAL significant differences between the old N-Force2 and the newer N-Force2 SSP (Ultra 400) chipset? Well, apart from the official support for 400FSB processors … it’s almost identical. If you place a standard Athlon XP2000+ (266FSB) processor in both motherboards and ran them side-by-side … the performance is near identical. Asus … being Asus wants only the best for their customers. So, they decided to scap the original A7N8X and have the new revision of the board … the A7N8X (Rev.2).
Asus A7N8X (Rev.2) Motherboard @ AMD3D
