nforce 250gb -*- waiting patiently .. . .. . .. .

[nf250gb]

im dying to upgrade my old tbird 1.33 and a7m266 761 mobo. it seems like by the time the 250gb hits the stores the 939 should be rolling out. what am i waiting for. i just want my ethernet off the pci bus. im not overly concerned with the dual channel memory of the 939. i just need something. my current system is in disarray. i can probably wait one more week.

 

[mechBgon]

First of all, welcome to the Forums You're the only person I can recall who's picked a nickname based on a chipset, although maybe you wanted nF3250Gb?

Anyway, most chipsets already have their Ethernet off the PCI bus, such as nForce2 (all flavors) and even classic first-generation nForce. But they're not gigabit. So if you don't need gigabit, you're all set. If you DO want gigabit, then get in line right behind me, 'cause I'm waiting too.

 

[nf250gb]

hi mechBgon, i've waited so long to upgrade my cpu that i want an athlon 64 over an xp. i didnt know that about the nforce2 and ethernet... where have i been? haa. oh yeah i meant nf3250gb. just put it in my basket. prefer the asus, will take the msi.

 

[mechBgon]

Me wantie Asus too! *pant, pant, drool...* I think Newegg will start blocking my IP address if I check their nF3 250 selection much more frequently... :Q

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Me wantie Asus too! *pant, pant, drool...* I think Newegg will start blocking my IP address if I check their nF3 250 selection much more frequently... :Q

haha, I'm right there with you.

 

[nycxandy]

Originally posted by: jdogg707

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Me wantie Asus too! *pant, pant, drool...* I think Newegg will start blocking my IP address if I check their nF3 250 selection much more frequently... :Q

haha, I'm right there with you.

Same here... I've been on this P3 800 for way too long. Just a few more weeks!

 

[nf250gb]

haha, i just did the newegg nf3250 search and they have a chaintech nf3250gb board in stock. woah! http://www.telemason.com/ whats up, i have never owned a chaintech, but remember some decent reviews of their boards. so this looks like the real deal 250gb with all the bells and whistles for $180.

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: nf250gb
haha, i just did the newegg nf3250 search and they have a chaintech nf3250gb board in stock. woah! whats up, i have never owned a chaintech, but remember some decent reviews of their boards. so this looks like the real deal 250gb with all the bells and whistles for $180.

It's only the 250, not the GB version. The GB has the built in SATA, Firewire, USB 2.0, and Gigabit ethernet + Firewall. The Chaintech board is nothing more than their 150 design with a 250 chip.

 

[nf250gb]

ahh, ok. they list it as a GB here, but no mention of the firewall. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-042&depa=1

and even GB on the chaintech site: http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=13&PISNo=266

the zznf3 not vnf3?

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: nf250gb
ahh, ok. they list it as a GB here, but no mention of the firewall. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-042&depa=1

and even GB on the chaintech site: http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=13&PISNo=266

the zznf3 not vnf3?

The GB is just the model number, not the actual chip, unfortunately they are most likely trying to take advantage of those who do not do there homework. Look for a review online and you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: nf250gb
ahh, ok. they list it as a GB here, but no mention of the firewall. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-042&depa=1

and even GB on the chaintech site: http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=13&PISNo=266

the zznf3 not vnf3?

All that glitters is not gold...

They can tack PCI-based gigabit Ethernet onto anything they want to, and that appears to be what they've done there. I can handle it if they want to throw on PCI-bound SATA controllers (Chaintech did that too) because I'm not planning to make use of SATA beyond what the two chipset-based SATA jacks can handle, but I want the real deal for my gigabit! :|

 

[nf250gb]

ah ok, i got a little excited.

 

[Bar81]

The only board so far that doesn't tack on a bunch of PCI chips is the upcoming MSI K8N Neo Platinum. Hopefully, it should be here by the end of the month although their PR people are quoting a window of late May to mid June. The Asus won't hit before then and note that 4 of the 6 SATA ports are on the PCI bus.

 

[MichaelD]

I won't buy an MSI or a Gigabyte board. It's got to be Asus/Abit/Epox/Shuttle. Count me in as "waiting in line."

The performance boost I'd get from moving to an NF3250GB platform far outweighs moving to a P4-based board with 66MHz slots for my SCSI HBA.

 

[CraigRT]

All you Asus freaks make me sick

try something else, there are so many other good boards out there!

I'm loving all my Soltek boards I've owned.. never had a single problem with any of them! I'm waiting for a good A64 board from Soltek! or maybe even a DFI, I've been loving their stuff lately as well.

I'd never own an EPoX again.. the last one I had was an utter POS and I had heard that before I bought them too... so I won't be using that scrap ever again..

Soltek
DFI
Albatron

they all kickass!

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: CraigRT
All you Asus freaks make me sick

try something else, there are so many other good boards out there!

I'm loving all my Soltek boards I've owned.. never had a single problem with any of them! I'm waiting for a good A64 board from Soltek! or maybe even a DFI, I've been loving their stuff lately as well.

I'd never own an EPoX again.. the last one I had was an utter POS and I had heard that before I bought them too... so I won't be using that scrap ever again..

Soltek
DFI
Albatron

they all kickass!

I have a fleet of Asus CUV4X's and A7N266-VM/AA's that all seem to run well, and that's about 50 computers total, so hey Some of the ol' CUV4X's are coming up on 4 years old, I think. There's something to be said for longevity, even if the company itself has laughable customer service.

(let me add that there's a special place in motherboard *ell for the A7V333-RAID, though :|)

 

[Bar81]

I was an Asus only guy until the fiasco that is the K8V Deluxe and 2 dead baby Asus/ASRock mobos. I'm now into trying some new stuff, next up is MSI.

 

[essasin]

The MSI new platnium looks sweet! But personally im waiting for a Dfi board to come out to do some overclocking. I already got a 3400, ocz pc 4400, an x800 pro, a lian li pc-75, a 64 brass top for my rbx, and a lianli pc75 case but no mobo! I cant wait any longer...i am seriously thinkin about getting a cheap msi ifsr refurb from newegg to hold me off but i rather set everything up once.

 

[djm68]

Hey essasin,

Seems you and I are in the same situation -- I have purchased everything for a new amd system except for the CPU/mobo. I was also thinking of buying a cheapo refurb board from newegg -- something to hold me over until the nf3-250 boards are released and have most of the bugs worked out. However, when I saw the chaintech vnf3-250, I was tempted to go for that board. Think about it: it has SATA and IDE off of the PCI bus, so only the network and sound card are on PCI. I do not know about yo ur situation, but if I am honest with myself, do I really make such huge network transfers that I *need* Gbit? Geez, I only have 10/100 switch on my home lan...

I have been sorely temped to wait for the MSI or ASUS 250Gb boards, but then have you seen this:

Asus K8N-E price

Roughly $240 for a mobo???? Ouch. Considering you can get the Chaintech vnf3-250 for $90, that means the Asus or likely the MSI will cost you at least an extra $150! That is the same price difference between an Amd64 3000+ and a 3400+.

Also, consider that the perforamce difference between most amd64 boards is neglible...

What do ya think?

Cheers,
DJM

 

[Bar81]

I would expect that price is just a scam for the early adopters, king of like the $500 for the X800 Pro some shops are charging (and apparently there are several idiots who actually pay over sticker.) I would expect that prices for the high end nForce3 250 boards to remain the same as those of the similar 150 boards, right around the $175 range.

 

[saqdeez]

what does the gigabyte ethernet do better than what is currently out there? I have the original nforce 2 mobo

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: saqdeez
what does the gigabyte ethernet do better than what is currently out there? I have the original nforce 2 mobo

It's Gigabit ethernet. And the reason why the nForce3-250GB implementation of the GB ethernet is great is because the physical layer resides off of the PCI bus, thus saving CPU process cycles.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: wicktron

Originally posted by: saqdeez
what does the gigabyte ethernet do better than what is currently out there? I have the original nforce 2 mobo

It's Gigabit ethernet. And the reason why the nForce3-250GB implementation of the GB ethernet is great is because the physical layer resides off of the PCI bus, thus saving CPU process cycles.

Sustained full-duplex gigabit transfer requires about double the bandwidth of an entire 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus, so getting it out onto the 1600MB/sec Hypertransport bus instead of the 133MB/sec PCI bus does two things:

1) it leaves the PCI bus more available for stuff that has to use the PCI bus, like perhaps a TV-tuner card, a professional audio-capture card, SCSI cards, etc.

2) it lets gigabit Ethernet really cut loose (initial Chariot benchmarks show nF3 250Gb's FD throughput peaking at over 1700 megabits per second, faster than a 64-bit 100MHz PCI-X server NIC on a dual-Xeon server board)

For a typical home user who's picked up a 5-port all-gigabit switch and a PCI gigEthernet NIC for their little home fileserver, and has nF3 250Gb in their primary system, benefit #2 may not really make much difference. The PCI gigaNIC in their home server will be the bottleneck no matter what. But benefit #1 still exists and you should still see about three times the performance of 100Mbit (been there, done that).

If your home fileserver happens to have non-PCI-bound gigaLAN on it (another nF3 250Gb, or nForce2 Ultra400Gb, or one of the upcoming native-gigabit SiS or VIA chipsets, or Intel CSA Gigabit), then you might find that benefit #2 is very tangible. Or if you're on a business network and your server has a PCI-X gigabit NIC (or better yet, two of them in link-aggregated mode with a compatible gigabit switch!), then again you ought to see benefits.