snuffy

That sucks...I bet they were happy to see the board go...no returns!!

I wish I could be that mean...

Rev B board boxs say Rev B on them to in big letters....

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

i think abit is great, but unfortunately its on of those things which are speedy but not reliable where as we can see asus and gigabyte are very tough boards but speedwise isnt always faster than abit. sometimes its the price we pay for speed

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Judas

I can't say anything for RMA'ing... i get 30 day guarantees for anything i buy that i can't get at Futureshop... (futureshop provides an extended 3-4 somtimes 5 year warranty deal which within any time of the warranty... if ANYTHING AT ALL FAILS or you have some kinda of odd problems.... you can bring it back.. they either exchange for the same part.. or upgrade you without any questions at all)

I've used Abit's tech... it usually take them about 4-5 days to reply for e-mails.. never used the phone.. i never have luck with phones for ANYTHING....

Just recently i've been asking questions about Abit's IDE/Sata plans.... chips and speed related.... along with when they plan to drop IDE alltogether and go full on for SATA...

I've sent and received in the last 2 weeks... 3 e-mails.....

When i had questions about things abit has always answered in 5 days or so....

I've owned quite a few of abit's boards... never have i touched an NForce board though

I've owned and used:

Abit KA7-100 (first board to sport the Highpoint technology ATA100 Raid controller let alone first to have ATA100 and RAID) Unfortuneatly.. although i still have this board... it it blew a few dozen caps a couple years ago.... and somehow still runs perfectly fine everything with no crashes... but i'm not taking the chance

Abit KT7-RAID
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-133R
Abit KX7-333R
Abit KD7-RAID
Abit AT7-MAX2 <~~~~This is my current board pulling more then a year now and has been tweaked... overclocked.. I actually have 2 of them.... good good...

I've yet to get a Kt600 board... they don't have Raid versions ... and i want the highpoint Technology controllers.....

Erukian

the only problems with AN7's were the first couple months. Look on the Abit forums and read newegg's reviews. They've somehow fixed almost all the problems without a new revision.

The_Neon_Cowboy

I think quality in general has came a big issue be it abit or asus..

When I come to quality I’m looking at gigabyte has made some good strides I will maybe buy one on my next upgrade.

I read of asus using some inferior parts and have experienced it my self. I see a lot of these top guns line of companies cutting corners when it comes to quality

I had a lot of experience with abit long ago kt133/kt133a/kt266 boards and they were good but always a step behind asus and at the time they were plagued by IRQ and resource issues.

Really board makers should maybe try to get it right the first time so the don’t need a …1.2/1.4/1.6/2.0…... revision of the same boards

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kelticknight

well said neon

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Al_Vampyre

All I know is that I've used Abit for a long time, but my last two Abit boards (Intel chipsets) - one of them an IT7- Max - died, with no warning, within a couple of weeks of becoming a year old - think I'm going back to Asus for my next rig.

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nheimler

heh...i think i spoke too soon on my nf7-s v2 board. i booted up today after downgrading my bios and ascii characters all across the screen at the post screens as well as windows. somehow i managed to read between the characters to make out enough to where i could install the bios version 21 for the board. i'm a tinkerer...it's how i've gotten so good with good parts for building computers on the side. when i get new parts i like to put them to the test...not really into OCing, but just testing different versions of bios to figure out which one runs better and testing out drivers. i'm big on testing drivers. anyways, i pulled the cord on it last night for several hours plugged back in and thats when i got the ascii characters. so while i'm at work it is sitting at home unplugged as i did last night. hopefully i wont get that again. my 30 days is almost up on it. anyone think i should rma it to newegg and get a different board or try tinkering around with it some more and test the waters if something happens again and rma it to abit? i know there seems to be good feels and bad feels on abit. i'm kind neutral at the moment, but i must say that when i got this board at first i wasnt too happy with it as it took me two weeks to get it running and booting into windows. most other abit board i've gotten i haven't had that kinda luck with. i've been happy with abit, but after reading more and more forums on the nforce2 chipset which i understand is good and bad, i've just been wanting to find out for myself what all the fuss and not so much fuss was about. so...with all that said...what do some of you think? rma it to newegg and take the restocking fee to get another board or try tinkering some more? as i mentioned i only have a couple of days left before my 30 days is up with newegg. thanks to any responses! much appreciated as always.

Zardon

RMA it.

nheimler

thanks again zardon! as always you are quick with responses. is there any other boards you would recommend or just replace it with the same board?

nheimler

or does anyone else recommend a replacement if i go that route? i'm starting to worry a little more now since zardon started this thread. this is my first nforce board as i have always gone mainly the intel route or amd with via boards (all abit as well). could this be something with the nforce boards in general? and now with abit going with ati what will the outcome of the nforce chipset be with their older boards? will they continue to support and update the bios for these boards on a regular basis?

snuffy

Don't worry about Abit because of them selling ATI videocards. Nvidia would be dumb to mess with Abit when it comes to motherboard chipsets. They are the 2nd largest nforce2 chipset sellers. (Asus is #1)

I have heard that this board most likely will not be their last nforce product.

As for their being an issue with Nforce boards in general? Could be. Like I stated before the Abit RMA seems about average for this chipset.

As for bios updates...as long as it is current and selling we will see bios updates. After that...forget it. That goes for all companies.

One thing no one has hit on is that most everyone here is overclocking/tweaking. Of the boards I have seen dead. Most have been killed that way. (I killed an Asus A7N8X Deluxe overclocking.....tried to flash the bios while OCed...bad idea.)

My issue is RMA time. I have been ranting to these guys that they should offer a better warranty. If you buy an Intel brand board it has a 3 year warranty like the rest BUT when it goes bad they have been replacing them NEXT DAY...with free return shipping (Label is in the box). I wish the other board makers would do the same. Now one thing to note is that Intel brand boards cost more. (About $10-20 USD)

Would you be willing to pay a little more for the warranty? I know I would in a heartbeat.

nheimler

anyone have any feelings on the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe board? newegg has a nice deal for 110 through today. if i should rma it maybe i should take the restock fee which isn't that much since i got a good deal and swap it for another board. unless of course people have had better luck with another board. but this one looks nice.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...131-478&depa=0

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/sock...d/overview.htm

Zardon

yes I would certainly, I think thats why so many pay over the odds to buy locally, knowing that if anything goes wrong they can bring it back to the store and deal with someone face to face.

Zardon

that board gets a good enough name, I know it wont overclock as well as the NF7s though. depends what you want. I would personally try one of the DFI lan party rev b boards, im hearing nothing but good things about them. from reliability to overclocking. only time I wouldnt recommend a DFI lan party b is if you are using one of the massive bolt on heatsinks like the thermal SLK900, which wont fit onto the cpu socket on that board. I hate the way so many of these mobo makers have capacitors near the CPU socket, seems such a stupid oversight.

And I wont trade my SLK900 for anything, I can pump 1.95 volts into my barton to get it running at 2.5ghz stable and only around 50-55c.

nheimler

yeah it would be nice to buy locally; however, when all your local stores charge you about 50 or 60 bucks more on a mb than you could get it on newegg or another site i would take having to pay a few bucks to ship it back for an rma. to me 50 or 60 bucks more is a little too much to spare when i've only had one or two bad experiences ordering online. and cpus are about 40 bucks more. so i'm spending an extra 100 bucks if i bought locally. that extra 100 bucks could go towards a better video card or something.

nheimler

yeah i'm not into overclocking. i just build em and test em out as i build machines on the side. i want my customers to have good reliable machines. and so far i think i'm gonna steer away from the nf7 boards at the moment. yeah i've been hearing good things about the dfi boards too...i'm tempted... i'll probably end up going with the asus board though as the dfi is a little too steep a price at the moment. unless anyone knows of any good via boards out there? i know via has been pretty stable for me with amd chips as that is what i have been using in my server for almost two years right now.

Zardon

Yeah it is costly but its a well loaded board. even nice little touches like 4 SATA ports.

nheimler

does anyone know if the dfi board comes with an ide to sata adapter? that is the one thing i will miss if i go with another brand board as i don't see it listed as apart of the package. i liked having a less bigger cable in my box. i liked the small sata cables. unfortunately i have hds running out my ears so i dont want to buy a new one. and i have heard so many issues with nforce2 ide drivers causing problems with the loss of data and what not thus the via question about via boards that are really good at the moment.

zerodamage

Well you have the option of not installing the Nforce IDE drivers which is what many of us here do. The biggest thing about those drivers is the inability to burn cd's with them.

snuffy

The Infinity is the same PCB but does not have dual NIC, it is a red color not black, and does not come if all the extra accessories. We sell that board for 115.00. So it is cheaper. It does have the 4 SATA ports and is a NFII Ultra 400 so dual channel,soundstrom,etc,etc.

BTW We sell the Lanparty Rev B for 159.00....

nheimler

so no real difference between the two besides the extra on-board nic and a few cables? do they perform the same?

snuffy

As far as we have seen the perform exactly the same.

I have tons in stock if you want one.....

One more thing only the Abit board has the Seriello SATA to PATA adapter with it. Sorry

nheimler

can i buy an adapter that will do the same the abit board does? and are you referring to both dfi boards not containing the adapter?

nheimler

unless you think i can get by without the adapter. so everyone recommends NOT using the ide sw drivers that comes with the nvidia drivers?

nheimler

is ther any ram or any components that have know issues with the dfi board? i have two sticks of pny 2700 512mb. was just wondering if this would cause any issues? i know some board have issues with certain ram even though pny has been around a long time.

snuffy

All the components that you have should work in the DFI board.

You can find SATA to PATA adapters. The range around 20-40 bucks.

All NFII boards by Asus, MSI, DFI, FIC, Gigabyte do not come with the adapter. Only the Abit does.

nheimler

hmm...i'm tempted to go the infinity route. i dont really need all the extra stuff that comes with it really. especially for almost 50 bucks more. i dont do enough internal transfers to use the gig nic. if i do it is usually from a wireless laptop which only gets 11meg anyways. i dont see firewire on either board either, so yeah i dont see the point in getting the lanparty version over the infinity. all that stuff sounds awesome but i dont need all that. if there wasnt such a big price difference then i would probably consider it. grrr...i hate the thought of having to take my machine apart. that is the only thing i dread at the moment. i wonder why ascii code was scrambled on my screen. i was if i just had a bad flash and when i upgraded it took care of it. i will find out more when i get home. i'm stil leary on keeping it with only a couple days left before i can return it. i dont want something to happen especially with everything said in this thread to happen to me. i mean who is a fan of rmas, but it is always easier if it breaks in the first 30 days when you can return it. i was starting to like the nf7-s v2 board after i got it running right. grr...my brain hurts from thinking about all this and i haven't had much sleep the last few weeks to boot due to...well life.

nm on the firewire...i found a pic that it does... couldnt make out the other pic i found.