Well, which is better / faster / stable?
I'm looking at replacing amy dying KT333 board and already have
another n'Force 2 Ultra 400 based system, so I was eyeing the
KT880.
Any thoughts?

At best, it is as fast as the nForce2. It is never faster then the nForce2 & is often slower (but not by much). If you are more comfortable with Via + Hyperion drivers, go with Via. If you prefer nForce + nForce Unified drivers, get nVidia.

The only thing Via had going for it was native support for SATA but latest nForce southbridge has native SATA & nVidia Gigabit NIC (+software firewall) but no more SoundStorm.

I have pretty much read similar specs and stuff. I was just wondering if
anyone had got a 880 yet. I might just go ahead and try it just for the hell
of it :grinthumb VIA have been pretty good so far.... (untill the Ultra 400
came along)

Well i used Via a lot..and so far i am pretty happy with it...(Stable & Reliable)..Nforce on the other hand is not stable everytime...games crashes and all..just used 2 nforce based motherboard ....really hated it...


Asus A7N8X is worst mobo i've ever seen.

When I built my current PC I had to choose between the Via K8t800 or the Nforce 2 Ultra.

The Via was a little bet faster then the Nvidia, but the Nvidia has the Dual Channel Memory option and (some mother boards) the SoundStorm on board audio (which is very nice). One of the things I do remember is that the Nvidia IDE controller is much slower then the other chipsets but if your doing SATA you probable won't have to worry about it.

I ended up doing the via chipset and bought the Audgy 2 ZS.

I do believe that the current Nvidia is the fastest (last time I blinked

I would make sure you would buy something with at least 1 PCI Express slot so you can use modern / future video cards.

I'm very happy with my mother board, Gigabyte GA-K8VNXP.

If you going for a new CPU go with the Athlon 64 934 pin CPU's, the Athlon 64 934 pin have a far better memory controller and can do dual channel if you have 2 same size / speed simms.

Although dual channel for athlon xp's are kinda pointless they dont support dual channel.....getting a mobo with 3 DIMMs for dual channel is again pointless thing...i would rather stick with single channel mobo for athlon xp's and athlon 64's on sock 754

would you mind if i asked why? im currently running an a7n8x-e deluxe and i havent had any problems with it (sorry to the rest of you :rolleyes: )


this motherboard does have a lot of problems with memory, and you need to be careful as to what will work when buying it. i remember seeing a table on Asus's site quoting what memory will work with it.

anyway, ive never had any problems with my motherboard, and neither have 4 of my mates and my dad

Asus A7N8X is picky about memories.....its rather like a complicted s*** to me..i never liked Asus....well Asus work for sure but not for everyone. MSI, ABIT Rocks.!!

- Watch your language on these forums
Didou

Thought I throw this out.....

I don't know if you want to consider this but the new ATI mother board chipset with PCI express for Athlon 64 is coming out.

I don't the name / chip set or how well it peforms compared the current stuff out. I've haven't researched much on it yet.

I would love to see AMD Athlon 64 with DDR-2 as well. :rolleyes:

The K8T800 is for Athlon64s. The KT880 is for the AthlonXP & it has a DualChannel memory controller (even though it is useless on the AthlonXP platform).

I was talking about the new KT880 chipset, it has dual channel, Sata and
everything. It's also supposed to be faster (slightly) than the n'Force Ultra
chipset.... go look here:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q...80/index.x?pg=1

You seem to have your mind made up already.

Just go for the KT880 then.

Sorry Didou... didn't catch your post... started from the top and saw that
they had missed to boat. :blush:
Yes I think my mind is made up.... but it would have been nice to talk to
someone who had one. Most of the reviews were with reference boards....

Well the dual channel did make the n'Force chipset slightly faster than the
KT600. I agree it does not deliver twice the bandwidth / throughput but it's
not totally useless.

I think the nForce 2 advantage over the KT600 had a lot more to do with the nForce's prefetch mechanism & its use of a HyperTransport link between the North & Southbridge more then anything.

Yes undoubtedly, I am sure that it all contributed....