cheap nforce2 wannabe

After hours and hours of reviews, and hours more reading through countless forms about the nforece 2 chipset I've made a compramise.
The choice was between the NF7s and the Soltek 'wonder'.
In the end I thought it too much trouble with the NF2 boards...Bios issues and all..even the newer boards still have them...and went with an ECS alternative for less than $60.

Before you say WTF the SiS746 board from ECS is a sweet deal...a multimedia card reader DDR400 support and the rest of it for $57 @newegg.
I'm also to understand that it can overclock to 200FSB fairly easy, and that it actually outperforms NF2 in real world benchmarks.

I order it today along with some Apacer pc3200 ram with samsung chipset.

So experts, any thoughts...

Nforce2 like performance and 512MB Pc3200 RAM for the price of the Abnit NF7-s.

Its your money and you get to decide.

I can't argue with you about the nf7-s since after working with my new rev2 for a day I RMAed it because the bios wouldn't take any changes. If I'm lucky I'll have a replace in a total of ~3 weeks --- Abit support ain't exactly greased lightning.

No problems with Soltek here, although they are supposedly leaving the North American market...

Just cant deal with the problems...I'll wait it out with this ECS board and see what good VIA has done with the kt600...If the boards are good I'll get one for overclocking by the end of the year

Hey Toscani, happy you're pleased with the Soltek.

From what I've gathered, Newegg will probably continue to carry the Soltek boards because they come straight from Taiwan. -I'm also guessing Googlegear is the same way.

Could see the prices increase a lil mo' though.

sounds like a good deal, let us know how well it overclocks for you

SiS Chipset :¬P}

The majority of bogstd PC's we build @ work are SiS chipset (Cheap& very Nasty) We say SiS means "S**tty Integrated Systems". The ones at work don't OC well...

ECS? Hmm, not bad. Providing you ain't got a Maxtor HD. My mate's had 2 separate PCs built on ECS mobos, (First was pII system with BX C'set, 2nd is athlon 1Ghz on KT133 board). When his Maxtor 18Gb wouldn't work on his KT7VA (I think) without EZ BIOS, (we tried BIOS updates & everything) he donated it to me and got an IBM.