mobo choice?

Well, I'm thinking about getting one of the following.

ASUS A7N8X
ASUS A7N8X Delux
Gigabyte 7N400
Gigabyte 7N400 Pro 2

What do you guys think? Should I go for the Delux/Pro version? What are the advantages as far as overclocking goes if I pick the Delux/Pro version of either board? Any critical feature differences between them? Like CPU multi change in BIOS, PCI/AGP lock? Vcore range, etc, etc, etc...

Thanx.

First, choose ASUS over Gigabyte. As far as deluxe vs. not, depends on what features you need / want. Check out the extra features on the deluxe and decide whether or not you will use them. I wouldn't expect any advantage in OC'ing for the deluxe model.

Well, only features I'm concerned about are the ones that relate to overclockability... expecially PCI lock. I'd take it the standard version would have it as well as the Delux/Pro version??

AFAIK the available setting should be exactly the same. The additional 'features' of the deluxe are things like SATA, better sound etc.

Hey threeput, I just found myself with the same choice to make. I had a asus delx and was happy with it. I damaged it removing the original heatsink. I thought Icould squeeze a little more out of it with northbridge cooling. Too make a long story short I went with the pro2. primarily because I wanted to run raid and keep all my other devises on their own channel. I am going to use the ide raid controller as a plain ide channel. I just got the board today and have not completed install. In a day or two I will let you know what happens. BTW the giga raid is not the best on the pro 2. If you want raid plan on using the sil raid. If you don't case mod or plan on using more than 2 or three ide devises I would go Asus.

Dude what ever you do dont get the gigabyte, that board has major problems. I had one and after a few days i started having weird problems. I wasnt overclocking anything becasue my 1900+ really wont go much higher my USB ports would randomly freeze, data was being randomly corupted from the "giga raid" so i started to search around about this board (i should of done this before i chose this board) i found many users all over the net with strange problems with this board and tha tgigbyte were just blowing it off. There were a few bios updates to try and correct problems with the board but they couldnt fix anything. My nic card would randonly stop working this board is a nightmare dont get it

I finaly sent my board back to newegg and they took it off their site. They refunded my money and said they no longer carry this board.

The bad part is i was hoping for a replacement because i have data on the drives i wanted to get off. the "giga raid" is in a format not compatable with any other raid type so i pretty much just lost all my stuff.

I chose this board because it had the Nforce chipset, DDR and had 2 IDE plugs and 2 raid plugs (8 total devices) well i got the features i wanted but stability was 0

get anything but the gigabyte

the a7n8x board is still one of the best boards

the delx and pro wont matter really, the pro just have a few more features on it

the delx will be plenty

If the higher-end one has soundstorm and the lower-end one does not, you migt get the hgh-end one. Soundstorm uses less CPU cycles than standard onbpard sound. I know it doesn't affect OCability, but it may affect performance a small amount.

Thanx all...Just ordered A7N8X-X (SC) from Newegg refurb. $49...couldn't pass it up...

There is also a Model# A7N8X (New Version, now support AMD Barton 400Mhz) Retail , refurb on newegg for $55.

Does the same hold true for this board as far as oc'ing features? Just the extra goodies aren't included?

Thanks