GA-7N400 Pro

Does anyone own this board? Im just wondering what they think of it. cuz im probably gonna get one

I dont have one but i helped a friend build a PC for someone else with that board and I was impressed, many great features seemed to work great, im actually planning on getting one now pretty soon....better imo than the asus board

I installed mine a week ago with an Athlon 2800 and I love it! The only downside is it doesn't have mounting holes around the CPU socket for certain heatsinks.

I just bought it, but I'm waiting for my MSI geforce FX 5900U 256MB to arrive.

This board works great for me and my 2700+

I have only OCed a little and that went smoothly, nothing major...yet!

I have the board and a 2100+. Been having some difficulties with stability. I can do 10.5x and 200 FSB (on expert mode) but system hangs when playing video games. The best I've got it to is 11x and 200FSB and about 1.725volts. System is unstable but it could be from the heat. I bought some thermal paste but may need to go more extream like water cooling.

Things I like:
Price, performance, chipset, onboard raid, 8x agp

Things I dislike:
No mounting holes around the cpu socket, Placement of the 3 prong mobo fan power connectors, crappy ram settings ( Imean really what the hell is optimal, aggressive, turbo, and expert mean anyway?

Also, I'm not sure which larger heatsinks work with this board

Overall good board, maybe I'm nit picking too much.

8-26-03
I've found a trick that will help all of the overclockers out there. It seems that you can get additional O/C settings by pressing clt+f1 key at the main bios page. It will let you do some more volt and ram timing mods.
Also, there seems to be a quirk in the bios. If I set the multiplier to 12x it actually reads 13x. Weird but there seems to be no 12x multiplier on the board even though you can choose it in the bios. I finally got my 2100+ to run 13x 166 @1.75 volt. Pretty fast on air cooling.

9/9/03 update
Looks like I'm done with this board. I've been playing with it a bunch and now it seems to have become very unstable using the stock multipliers. The onboard sound wasn't working correctly either. In the middle of my game it sounded really bad and my frame rate dropped. Don't get me wrong its a good board and has very good reviews especially for the price.

I've opted to return the mobo and sell my 2100+ I'm going to try intel for awhile. Abit's IC7 looks promising and for about $100 you can't beat it. Now I just need to find a inexpensive 2.4.

Im looking at getting this board next month along with the Athlon 2800 it looks like a good board with a lot of room for future upgrades

I love mine, but they are getting hard to find, the pro is being replaced by the pro 2. The pro 2 has a 4 layer pcb (pro has 6 layer), also the pro 2 uses MCP "southbridge" (pro has MCP-T, soundstorm), and the pro 2 is not easytune compatible (pro is supposed to be fixed with the F11 bios). Also, the layout of the pro 2 is based on the 7N400 L1, but the layout of the pro is based on the 7NNXP. Personally I think the 7N400 pro is the best board for the money out there, my only little gripe is that Via's KT600 has native SATA support with raid 0,1, & 0+1, but the Nforce 2 SATA is non-native (PCI-Bus) and only has raid 0 & 1. I think the Nforce is better quality and has it has dual channel memory (besides nothing's perfect).

WSU, if you haven't tried them already, you might want to try pr3ach3r's modded F11 bios (called hardm3nu) link: http://pr3ach3r.overkillsystems.net/7N400PRO/HARDM3NU/HM.htm
I haven't tried them yet, still waiting on some money/parts before I really push this thing, but it's not like you have to worry about hosing the bios Oh, that reminds me, they need a jumper to short the bios, pulling the battery sucks.

I also found a lot of useful information at this forum: http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48
Hope that info helps and goodluck.

well i couldn't' find a ga-7n400 pro cuz all i foudn weret eh pro 2s, so i just went with teh ga-7nnxp.

all i found was the pro 2 so ill just give it a try its gonig to be a birthday present so it wont be nothnig out of my pocket and if i find it to be good ill drop a line or two when i get it up and gonig

BMorg003,
I have the MCP-T southbridge. I'm not sure from your post if this is the good one or not. Thanks for the bios, I'll flash it tonight and try again. Even though I have my RMA # I have 14 days to return it so I'll give it one last try. How fast are you running? And what are your settings?

By the way I ordered mine from new egg: Item: 13-128-191 MB nF2Ultra400|5P1A4D GA-7N400Pro A (Quantity:1)

Here are some refurbished ones for all you penny pinchers
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=1&submit=Go&description=13-128-191

What cooler are you using? If I keep this board I would want something a bit more quiet.

Got mine from Newegg too, I've still got my old Tbird 1.4 (running at approx. 1.5 (11x133). I'm waiting for the Hammer Release on Sept. 23 and I'll probably pick up a cheap barton around then. I've had my Tbird over 1.6 easy with my old Iwill KK266, but the temps that are being reported to be by MBM seem too low and the Tbird doesn't have the die sensor (only in socket), so I'm playing it "safe" until I get the new cpu and bios, then I'll have a spare (hehehe ). I haven't played with the memory timings much either, I have 1x256 Samsung PC-2700 DDR (supposed to OC to 433), I've had the board for less than a month (I hated to retire my KK266, it was a great board), so I'm still "breaking it in" and I haven't had alot of time to play with it. I've been researching this board for about 3 months, that's why I know alot about it, and that's why I picked it (over a Soltek). I haven't had hardly any problems at all with mine (knock on wood). Have you checked out that forum (the link isn't working for me today)? I've gotten alot of great information there, AMDMB.com also has a great gigabyte forum.

As for the MCP/MCP-T issue, Tom's has a great article on onboard sound here: http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030405/index.html Basically the MCP-T is (as I understand) a kind of co-processor to the Audio chip on the board (Realtek ALC650) both working together to take the audio load off of the CPU (MCP-T handles dolby decoding chores etc... the audio chip hadles the analog chores). From the benchmarks it really does make a difference! Also many people with SB Audigy cards have found the on-board audio to be as good or better.

Cooling: Thermalright ROCKS!!! I've got the SK7 from newegg ($20) and a Thermaltake 80mm case fan (cut and soldered the thermistor so it runs high speed all the time). I posted a review there about it (check out the OC.com link!), truly a superb heatsink. Performance/Noise will depend on what fan you use: more air (cfms) = more noise/better performance, and I'm sure you get the picture...

I hope this information helps, I'm sorry I can't give you more personal experience, I'm still experimenting with mine as well (and I've still got alot of parts to get). From what I've read the board can be a little picky about Ram and Power Supplies. Also the F9 bios have a problem with dual channel ram, the F10 bios cause the MAC address on the NIC to be 000.000.000, and the F11's are new and they are supposed to be okay. This weekend when I have time I'm going to play with Pr3ach3rs Hardm3nu/F11 bois. I'll let you know how it goes. Goodluck, and let me know if I can be of any further help.

I agree with you about the motherboard. It took a lot of reading and research before I chose this board. One issue that I thought was interesting is that dual channel ram doesn't make a lot of difference in performance on AMD boards like it does on Intel. I purchesed one 512mb stick of 3200 BH-5 ram. I could have gone with 2x256 but the performance isn't worth the price. There is almost no difference bewteen the two and I thought that using only one stick would help my chances of obtaining higher FBS speeds.

Unfortunitly, I can not even overclock 1mhz above 200 FBS. The computer doesn't reboot and I have to pull the battery out (which is getting old). I'm thinking that maybe my problem may also be in the power supply. It's the one that came with the case I just bought but I'm not sure if the PSU is any good. Sure it runs the computer but could the stubility be affected? I'm not sure. I'm looking into getting a better PSU. Maybe my stability problems are from excessive CPU heat? I did take the northbridge apart , lapped it, and applied better thermal compound.

Tonight I will flash the bios and post an update on the stability. Oh and I did see that link before it went down. Lots of good stuff thanks.

Could you and anyone else out there post their sandra numbers so that I can tell ho my machine is performing. I'll post mine tomorrow.

dead_man311,
Have you purchased that maxtor hard drive? I have one right now and I wouldn't buy one again due to heat issues (can barely hold onto it). Change that to the WD 400jb and you'll never regret it!

What Bios are you currently using? Also, what are you using for cooling? Bios, Cooling, and yes the Power Supply could all/each be affecting your ability to overclock. The old EV6 bus of the Athlon is really starting to show it's age, that's why you don't get much extra performance from Dual Channel, that's also one reason why they integrated the memory controller in the upcoming hammer processors.

About power supplies, they have some really good information here about what to look for and what's good: http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150384
Basically look for the 3.3v and 5v lead combined wattages, the higher the better. I'm looking at a Sparkle 350W or an Enlight 360W from newegg to replace my allied 300W. If you've got one of those Codgen cases or a cheap case with a cheap power supply, I'd be willing to bet you'll notice a TON of improvement with a new power supply. As for cooling, I've got 5-80mm case fans, 1-80mm fan on my heatsink, and of course the northbridge, video card, and powersupply fans. I get strangely high temps from the bios and really low temps from MBM (haven't upgraded to the latest version though) so I'm waiting till I get the temps right before I go "hog wild" overclocking. Again, I can't say enough about the Thermalright SK7 heatsink, it really saved my a** one time; I forgot to reconnect the 3 pin connector on the heatsink fan, and it booted all the way into windows and let me shut down without damaging my 1.4Ghz Tbird. For 20 bucks and you can add a 80mm fan that pushes more air than a 60mm with less noise, it's great! I've convinced several friends to get one and they were all impressed, if you're looking for a new heatsink on a budget then look no further, if money is no object then the SLK-800 and 900 perform just a little better (for a much higher price). I 've got my sheet of Sandra scores at the house, I'll post them tommorrow. I recorded all of my scores before I switched the board(KK266) and after, and I noticed big changes in the harddrive benchmark and of course the memory (SDRam to DDR Ram). Those are the things I remember that really "stuck out." I must say, I'm really pleased with the board so far. It has far more features than my old KK266, and from what I hear AMD might be releasing some Athlons at .09 microns, so I'll be doing good with this set-up until the Hammers at .09 are stable and cheap!

After playing with this board some more I've realized something. If you set the multiplier and FSB to a high number and save and exit the bios and it DOESN'T restart on its own, meaning that you have to turn off the power and turn it back on so that it restarts, the SYSTEM IS UNSTABLE. You can run the system but playing games will lock up the machine. Demo loops with the mad onion are my new test for stability (although I have a few others).
Here are my current best sandra scores:

Multimedia:
11486
12560

Cpu arth:
7974
3210

Mem bandwidth:
2860
2609

I have one 512mb stick of twinmos PC3200 and a 2100+
My settings are 11x 195FSB agressive ram settings
I don't have to increase volts on the ram or chip to accomplish this. My bios is F9 I didn't update the bios last night since I'm not sure if there will be any increase in performance. I didn't want to chance loosing performance.

Check out this review:
http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/gigabyte-7nnxp/

this board is the deluxe version of what we have. The reviewers found some interesting things about the multipliers in the review. The information can be found on page 5 of the review.

I'm going to ask one of my friends to borrow his dual channel hyper X PC3700 to see if my ram is holding me back and also if the dual channel makes a big difference.

I'll be looking for the sk7 today. I can't stand how loud my current CPU fan is.

Found the FORTRON PSU (the one from the PSU thread) on newegg for 55 shipped I'll most likely order that but I may wait and order everything together when I find the sk7 and a good fan.

Does any ones northbridge fan shut off when windows starts? mine does and i dont' have any idea why.

The only thing I can think of is that there is a fan mode in the bios that throttles the cpu fan up or down depending on the temp of the chip. Maybe it does the same with the northbridge fan. It's enabled by default in the bios.

I would try to update the bios. Which one do you currently have?

Also, check the northbridge fan plug with an multimeter to make sure that the fan is getting juice.

Manslayer, WSU is right make sure the "smart" fan control is disabled in the bios, that is most likely your problem.

WSU Keep in mind that I still have only a Thunderbird 1.4 with 256M Samsung PC-3500 (overclocked 2700) and a pos 300W Allied psu. (all of which I hope to remedy soon)
Sandra (OCed cafe edition) @ 1466/266 (11x133)
CPU1: 5300
CPU2: 2140
MultiMed1: 7888
MultiMed2: 8641
Mem1: 1745
Mem2: 1663
HD: 26454

Of course the memory and the HD numbers improved most over my old KK266 (MAJOR improvement!). 3Dmark03 went from 830 to 894 with my GF3TI200 after the upgrade (board and memory only). Oddly the CPU and multimedia numbers were SLIGHTLY higher with my KK266. Another interesting bit of info, I got a few scores with some PC-2100 Micron that a friend was having problems with, the memory scores were 1964/1904, but the memory did not perform reliably on my board either, so I got the Samsung. I hope to push this set-up a little further once I feel comfortable with the temps etc...

My system is as follows:
CPU: Athlon Thunderbird 1.4
Memory: 256M Samsung PC-2700
Board: Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro (F9 bios)
Graphics: Visiontek GeForce 3 TI200
HD: Western Digital WD800JB 80G Special Edition
Pioneer A04, Lite-On 48x48x24
56K modem, Winfast TV XP (nightmare XP drivers!),
onboard audio.

Newegg link to SK7: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...=62&manufactory=1444&DEPA=1&sortby=14&order=1 ($21.99) add a Fan for $5.00 and you're ready to overclock...