Difference please between NF7-s Version 2.0 and NF7 Version 2.0

[kgwanchos]

Is the only difference that the S support sata drives ??? cos Im not really interested in a sata drive at this stage so I may as well save money and get the non S..... advice much appreciated... oh and by the way Im hoping an Antec 350w will be ok to run this board with AMD 2500, 2 x hard drives, 1 cd rom, FX5900XT and maybe a dvd burner??

Many cheers

Karlos

[kgwanchos]

Is the only difference that the S support sata drives ??? cos Im not really interested in a sata drive at this stage so I may as well save money and get the non S..... advice much appreciated... oh and by the way Im hoping an Antec 350w will be ok to run this board with AMD 2500, 2 x hard drives, 1 cd rom, FX5900XT and maybe a dvd burner??

Many cheers

Karlos

[Weather_Man]

NF7-S has SATA and Soundstorm audio.
NF7-M has onboard video
NF7 has none of the above.

I have a NF7-S with an Antec 350W, AMD2500+, 2 SATA drives and 9800pro, DVD, CDRW, 2 fans--it runs fine. 350W seems adequate.

[kgwanchos]

Ok I want to use onboard sound but I dont have a surround sound set up so will the onboard sound on the straight nf7 be ok for use on good headphones ??? IE is it really worth the extra cash for the soundstorm ????

cheers

[steve_v]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by kgwanchos:
IE is it really worth the extra cash for the soundstorm ????

cheers<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Is it really worth a few extra dollars to have an onboard APU that handles the processing requirements of rendering sound vs having to lower the hardware acceleration to Standard due to the FPS hit and studdering produced as the cpu tries to handle sound rendering?
For me the decision was easy - NF7-S.

[LuckyBoy1]

Easily worth twice the extra money!

Solutions for internet security & spyware problems... http://www.geocities.com/callingelvis911/s_s.html

Luckyboy = Senior hydraulic landing gear designer for the P-11 & Contributing Editor to Complete Users magazine.

[Hunter82]

Hands down the best NForce 2 board out there IMO... I love my Abit boards

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[|CoB|_Spectre]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Weather_Man:
NF7-S has SATA and Soundstorm audio.
NF7-M has onboard video
NF7 has none of the above.

The NF7 does have onboard Soundstorm audio, just not the onboard video (who'd want it!) and SATA. I didn't want to replace my HDDs either, so I went with the NF7, but SATA HDDs have fallen rapidly in price to about the same as regular HDDs. I had been running a KR7 (built 6 computers, all with Abit boards and no problems) and bought an ATI 9700 Pro AIW card. For some reason, even after BIOS flashing, the KR7 did NOT like the 9700 Pro, so I had to change mobos or ditch the card. I had already built a pc for my daughter with the NF7/ XP2500 Barton and tried the 9700 in it without a problem, so I got an NF7 for myself. All this happened right before Xmas and was unexpected, so the mobo was all I replaced in my system. I've had no problems running two HDDs, one FDD, one CD-RW and the 9700 Pro on my original 300w PS despite everything you read about needing a 350-400w PS or the world will come to an end http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/images/smiley/16x16_smiley-wink.gif.

[Hunter82]

Really if your power supply has STABLE rails is the issue. My current power supply is a Enermax Noisetaker 470W and it works really good. Rails are very stable

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[kgwanchos]

Yeah everything I can find suggests to me that the audio APU is the same on the vanilla NF7 V2 as the S or M so Ive gone for the standard NF7 as I just wouldnt use the other bits certainly for the next year or so....

Thanks for your help everyone

Cheers

Karlos

[Supr]

Sorry man, but you didn't read the above very well. The Soundstorm audio on the nf7-S is in no way the same as the audio on the standard nfs. It has its own apu built into the southbridge. (the mcp_T [art of the chipset.) The standard nfs does not have this. As you were told above, it is easily worth twice the extra money. And with the S version, not only do you get outstanding audio. you get sata support. DO a search on soundstorm, it will help you understand.

[oeqvist]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Hunter82:
Hands down the best NForce 2 board out there IMO... I love my Abit boards

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hate mine 210 fsb just plane out sucks and that isnâ´t even 100 % stable http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif