LEADTEK - Leadtek K7NCR18D-PRO Motherboard Review @ TECH-PC.co.uk

Leadtek K7NCR18D-PRO Motherboard Review @ TECH-PC.co.uk
Review Title: Nvidia nForce 2 review
Reviewer Name: Pug
Date of Review: December 2002

I feel dismay in that I hoped for better performance - if they truly have done away with the ‘north’ and ’south’ bridge to increase performance then great - do whatever is necessary, but I feel they have only done half of the job. The limitation imposed by the CPU/FSB means Nvidia’s best efforts are, and were always going to be, hampered by limitations imposed, ultimately I suspect, by AMD and Microsoft.
What we do have have though is arguably the fastest board in most all situations, with great scope for both future-proofing and overclocking. A PCI audio card - even the Audigy - is now surplus to requirements - as the technology here is as good, if not better in many areas…Leadtek’s incarnation of the nForce2 was one of the first to market and I feel that shows in areas of the boards design and setup - which was unnecessarily complicated - but documented nonetheless.

The performance I am confident will get better with time, due to Nvidia’s constant driver release program already evident in their VGA market, and Leadtek have brought a much desired product to market exceedingly quickly and at one of the cheapest prices I have seen an nForce2 available for (£80 at some online retailers). This is exceptionally good value with the inclusion of the Soundstorm APU, firewire add-in and SPDIF support - a veritable standard in home audio.

Who would I recommend this board to?

Well, on the benchmarks alone upgrading from a KT333 based board would be silly. The two boards are identical in almost all areas of performance. I would consider it a stepping stone from 266DDR boards as both the processor and RAM could be used in the interim on this board - saving massively on cost for the user, and allowing them to save for faster memory and a CPU (Barton?) at a later stage.

If you have an SDR SDRAM based system at the moment and are thinking of going for a change to DDR then I can recommend the nForce2 heartily. Discounting the performance and price - which is comparable to the KT333 - the onboard audio is the clincher. Even if you don’t have a 5.1 speaker system now, nForce’s implementation of onboard audio is hands down better than the CMedia, Avance Logic and AC97s on 2 or 2.1 speakers, let alone 5.1 or full blown Dolby digital. What’s more with the Leadtek K7NCR18-Pro you don’t have to pay any more money for it - it is effectively free with the nForce2 - and that to me sounds like a good deal.

[Full review] @ tech-pc.co.uk