nforce2 or kt600?

[exodus454]

ok, i am thoroughly fed up with my NF7. Every few months it decides to have problems with stability to the point where i want to rip my hair out, and the first time it happened it just went away and i have no idea what was wrong with it. I've also had USB problems out the ears and the north bridge overheats constantly, and im about through with it. i's rather just buy a new motherboard because fixing this is driving me nuts. but onto this...
i've been fairly happy with the performance of the nforce2 chipset thus far, and wondering if i should try the kt600 to get away from all the pitfalls the nforce2 has. i have 2 x 256mb 333mhz and a 2500+ barton, so i cant see much of an advantage to upgrading to any of the 400 or ultra chipsets. i'm open to try the kt600, im seeing most of the via boards are cheaper anyways and have raid and sata built in and seems like more bang for your buck.im honestly undecided between the two. can someone help to push me either way? maybe make some recommendations?

 

[ncage]

LOL well i would recommend the nf7-2 but with your problems you probably aren't going to go that way. Its wierd cause ive had tons of abit boards and never had a single problem with them. I actually have an epox 8rda+ which i have only had one issue with. The secondary USB ports don't work other than that it has been a terrific board. I definitly would stay with the nforce chipset. If it the nforce chipset was bad then it wouldn't have became so popular. If your wanting to stay away from abit then i would go with an asus board. Also if your NF7 is unstable and less than a year old then you could RMA. Every manufactorer is going to have some defects. You just were unlucky. I remember a long time ago i bought a pioneer cd player and it went back in 6 months so i stayed away from pioneer equipment for a long time which was stupid to do..i just was unlucky and got a bad cd player. It happens.

Ncage

 

[exodus454]

could be defective, but at this point i'm out of luck as far as RMAs go, because i got this board when the NF7 1.1 first came out, which was definatly more than a year ago. but, i have heard good things about asus, ive built two computers with asus boards in them and that is definatly being considered. is there any huge performance difference between KT600 and nf2? from what i have read, the only huge difference is the way the memory is handled, i still cant decide. bah.

 

[imported_Flux]

I've had both chipsets (Abit NF7-S and Asus A7V600) so I'll explain my experiences with them.
Both were solid boards.

With DDR400 the KT600 theoretically gets half the bandwidth that the NF2 does (in dual channel mode).
In practice it turned out to be an 80% difference, give or take. (still very significant)
The difference in practice is even more pronounced when using DDR333.
If you only have one stick of memory, then the KT600 ends up being a little faster in either case.
Also, the IDE controller on the NF2 is slower than the one on the KT600.

My recommendation depends on whether you have two sticks of memory or not.
If you have two sticks of memory capable of dual channel mode you should either stick with an NF2 board or go with the new KT880 chipset (VIA dual channel).
These chipsets are roughly equal in stock performance.
Newegg has an Asus board with the KT880.

If you only have one stick of memory then there is no point to going with anything more expensive than the KT600.
My recomendation remains Asus as I've had no trouble with my A7V600.
Newegg also has one of these.
If you don't want the extras here is a cheaper version of the same board.

You might want to shop around.
I like referencing newegg because they provide nice screen shots and plenty of info.
Hope this is helpful.

 

[tuongo]

Are you talking about the ECS KT600? I haven't got mine to work yet, but I'm a noob.

I posted something about it here too: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=1347322&enterthread=y

My take away was you NEED a CPU fan that is 4500RPM+

Looks llke you're ok on mem and vid (4x+, right?)