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EPOX NF2 or ASUS NF2

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Atari

Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2002
Hey all!

Maybe you can help. I had the Asus A7N8X ordered.. Well even though the retailer said it was in stock I wake up to find that infact it isnt and just cancelled it. So I luv the Asus board but man that Epox has a 250FSB! I need your help guys on what to get. I dont care about the features the asus has . I want OCing ability! Hey thats why I bought Corsair cas 2 3500. Points I like about the Asus is board layout. and so far seems more stable? I hear some serious issues with Epox but maybe you guys can show me the light. What do you think?

btw. Like everyone else the pci lock the Epox has is still worrying me. Still no proof just words.
 
Hey bud, i am in the same predicament as you are...

Right now i think that the Epox 8RDA is a better choice than the Asus for many reasons. One obviously being the 250FSB, the other being the price/performance ratio. The differance in the price of the Epox and Asus is approx. $20 which is really great.

With that said, i wanna get the Epox. Other opinions to help Atari (and me) out would be really great
 
I have heard many time by I think "emericana" that all NF2s have the PCI lock and such, cause it's a feature thats apart of the chipset. so it pretty much should be standard.

as for the boards.
I like the EPOX a whole lot more then the Asus.
has a much higher Vcore and Vdimm and such, and people have been hitting 230 and up on the FSB with the New Bios and the Epox, where as I have hardly seen a decent OC with the Asus.
 
well.... hold it guys...

nikhsub1,

Can you attach the email including the header info so we can verify it? Because it is important. If that is true, I might I want to return my 8RDA+ as well...

The following are reported from AOA forum

GF4 Crippled List using 8RDA+
  • Stanley Jobson
  • Soldier2000
  • Caper
  • ramire
  • eliteone
  • Corn
  • kuzma
Count 7

AMD CPU Fried List using 8RDA+
  • stinger 2700+
Count 1

CPU Socket 4 mounting holes misplacement using 8RDA+
  • CooledByWater
  • Toasted Comp
Count 2
*misplacement mounting holes makes the center of the water block not aligned with the center of the cpu die.

nikhsub1 said:
According to Ed at www.overclockers.com on the front page he says Epox confirmed that there is NO PCI lock, only a 1/5 divider. No wonder my HD corrupted at 211FSB. Here is what he says:

"I have a couple copies of emails sent to me from Epox technical support saying that the board 1) doesn't have a PCI lock and 2) has a maximum PCI divisor of /5. So that's the big secret."

Glad I got the ASUS!!!
 
Whoa that duz suck :/ Elusion if this fact is true you are going to return your epox then?

I'm surprised Overclockers.com did not try to measure the epox PCI for themselves.

I guess Asus then? Btw, Most sites are reporting 200+ fsb are possible with the asus board with ease.
 
Still, nothing is 100% confirmed with Epox Board.

However, Asus has confirmation that they do have a PCI Lock.

Epox board now has the most successful story in OC.

DaGoochMeister is able to run 250mhz x 11 on his 2600+!

This is his sig

Epox 8RDA+|Athlon XP 2600+ @ 2750MHz|KryoTech Super G2|512MB Corsair XMS PC3500C2|Abit Ti4600|2 x IBM 60GXP 40GB|Promise TX2|TTGI TT520SS|Windows 2000 SP3|

And he did post his wcpuid pic in this thread High FSB club
 
Well I think I made a decision on what Mobo to get.

Asus won...

I think epox is a good board but I got to face facts also. I want to able to OC but I dont care if reach insane speeds of a 250fsb. I will settle for a max of 200 or so :). I'm not all that into games most of my work involves 3D animation/programming and if there is even a slightest risk of HDD corruption I could lose some very valuable/time consuming work. I'm upgrading from a k7s5a and pc 133 memory. So I have todo this upgrade. Jeebus I ran a 3dmark and got 5988 on my gf3 ti500!

I wont be ordering anything still I see it in stock so MAYBE epox will surprise us till then *cross fingers*.
There is good word on alot of the forums that Asus (current revision ) will support the bartons. That is good enough for me. I really wish Epox would spill the beans on this mess but they won't.

Btw. Man you guys are right I checked out that AoA forums. Damn those mods are insane. I would almost feel dirty buying an epox after reading their posts. Every post I have seen by a mod their contains the word "ban" in it lol. THANKGOD for these forums!
 
I'd go with the Asus. nikhsub had a terrible time after 2 8RDA+ boards and with the Asus's PCI Lock, I would be hooked on that board. The only thing that surprises me is the outrageous price on that board.
 
There is a lot of functionality with the asus

Not many board have all the same features

dual lan
soundstorm
firewire
4usb 2.0 ports
dual channel ddr
SATA w/RAID
AGP 8X
voice error notices
support for 200fsb chips
 
I had a HORRIBLE time with the 8RDA+ board and yes that board fried my gainward gf4 ti4600. Luckily I got it from newegg and the replacement is on its way. I now own an asus A7N8X and I am in love with this board. I can only get my fsb to high 190s with my corsair pc3500 but thats really not a big deal at all. This board is rock solid and I would recommend it to anyone. Thing I dont like about it is it doesnt auto unlock tbreds which will probably be fixed in a bios update.
 
eliteoneXP said:
I had a HORRIBLE time with the 8RDA+ board and yes that board fried my gainward gf4 ti4600

Yea I have no doubt that this board fries GF4's. I mean I feel bad for people who had this happen :/. Sad thing is that the Epox fans blame it on the user installing the card and the main reason the blame it on is Static electricity. I mean come on Static?? You know how hard it is to destroy a newer card with static electricity? Yes if you have shaggy carpet and you decided to drag your feet for 5min. then touch your GF4 and here the snap. But come on, I see skilled users having their gf4's being destroyed. It's a small enigma with this board no doubt but yes it's a fact that it does happen. The only thing I would contribute it on would be on OCing. At 200+ FSB your AGP is running close to 100mhz. Or something with certain revisions of the GF4 and epox arent mixing right. Anyways i'm glad yah got a mobo yah like and btw nice OC!
 
EluSiOn said:
Still, nothing is 100% confirmed with Epox Board.

However, Asus has confirmation that they do have a PCI Lock.

Epox board now has the most successful story in OC.

DaGoochMeister is able to run 250mhz x 11 on his 2600+!

This is his sig



And he did post his wcpuid pic in this thread High FSB club

Con-F'ing-gradulations!! I hope he loves the rose that's been pinned on his nose. Do you really want to reformat/reinstall your OS once a week?

Some of us don't like corrupted hard drives.

Asus wins this one. Epox has pulled some pretty big boners ever since they got popular. Basically everything after the 8K7A was a pile of poop more often than not.

(Yes, I am still sore about Epox flat out lying to me about the M762A. But this is justifiable slaughter).
 
Wow I tell you these Nforce 2 Mobo's are just getting better and better.. I dont mean to b*tch so much (i guess because there is so much to b*itch about?) but omg look at this reply from the corsair memory forums...

Thank you for your support of our products,
The NForce 2 will support 2 sticks and has been Validated
For 2 256 or 2 512 Meg stacks. XMS3500
But it will be a new part # just for the Nforce 2
Once we have the # we will post it here for you.
If you use mare than 512 Meg Total Win2K or XP is suggested
As Win9X/ME will not cache above 512 Meg properly
Ram Guy

Link:http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=8813&highlight=nforce2+new+part

According to Corsair they will be making a revision on the memory just for nforce2 boards. LOL . I'm sitting here with my memory still in the fedex box waiting for a mobo to be set into and this comes up.
According to the forums Ram Guy states that the ram still *works* fine in nf2 boards.. Then why the rivision??? Something is wrong here! Scarey since this ram is almost Double the cost of the mobo.
 
Yes this overclock really surprizes me. I guess I just got a good stepping chip (didnt look at it).
 
The 8rda is not as bad as people say. I love it and it has been confirmed by epox that there is a pci lock. I have been running at 225 fsb for a week now with no corruption. Asus's are overpriced and do not have nearly the ocing features the epox has. Not to mention the fact that the epox has more an better bios's
 
youthemandan,

You are the lucky one.... So many people having so many weird problem.... They all cried for help on AOA Forum.....

I owned a 8RDA+ and a 8KHA+.... I love Epox... However, I believe this time Epox drop the ball. They need to beef up their Quality Control/Check and also not to rush the product out until it is ready.

We have so many C1 error and check sum error. We have peopoe's Bios just went bad on its own. Including AOA staff uncle bob.

We have many people reporting fried GF4 card and also wrong position of the 4 mounting holes so that their center line of their water block is not line up to the center of the cpu die.

For me, this board is problematic. It has many minor problems and it is not as smooth as my 8KHA+. This board is definately picky and very hard to ride on. No doubt about it, it is the wild beast and it can OC the most. However, the question is are you able to get it to OC at all from the beginning.

By the way, what is your setup, voltage, timing, hardware?
 
Oh I'm not saying that Epox isnt a Good board but in no way can you say that it has a PCI lock. Just because you been stable at 225mhz fsb for a week or two doesnt mean that you wont have issues down the road. I hope it does have pci lock that would be great but I believe it has a 1/5 divider and thats all. We have seen older Epox boards that have no PCI lock hit 230 FSB before so it's nothing new. I'm still waiting for the asus to be in stock at Newegg. I'm hoping in the mean time that epox will announce a true 33mhz pci at 166+ fsb. (I doubt it).
Actually I dont know why people say Asus is soooo Expensive. Epox (i'm rounding off) is about 120 shipped (max) and asus is about 160 (tops). For all the extras I think its not all that bad of a price.

Edit: I forgot .. Epox emails saying that it DOES have a pci lock and its been tested upto 166mhz fsb is a joke. They know people want to know if its locked at 200fsb but they STILL will not say it. Anything above 166mhz fsb would Not be locked due its probable 1/5 divider. It just feels like Epox found a way to say: "Yes we do have a PCI lock... at 166mhz..." which is true for a 1/5 divider.
 
In theory a PCI lock should be a PCI lock at any speed. e.g. at 150 FSB (which is not evenly divisible by 33) if the PCI is 33 MHz it **should** be 33 MHz at any speed.

I suppose there is a way to implement it though, so that the lock deactivates at >= 167 MHz FSB.

I took a look at that thread over at AOA and they're going to pretty great lengths to see if it's true. I know one way we can find out for sure.... if everyone who is interested in this nForce2/PCI lock issue sent Joe $1, he could order up one of these boards and throw in the PCI card that measures PCI speed independant of O.S....

I'm pretty sure Joe and Ed don't sign NDA's (and obviously would not have to on a released product) so if they could get a definitive answer that would be pretty cool.

sb
 
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