Gigabyte 7NNXP (nForce2 Ultra 400): Gigabyte Goes nForce
by Evan Lieb on July 5, 2003 10:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
After much testing, we can safely conclude that the Gigabyte 7NNXP is the most feature-filled Athlon XP motherboard we’ve ever tested. The combination of features such as IDE and Serial ATA RAID, dual LAN, dual BIOS, and IEEE 1394 FireWire, among other contributing factors, led us to this conclusion. Certainly, ASUS and ABIT’s nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards are excellent choices for a high-end Socket A motherboard, and in general, are quite comparable to the 7NNXP's feature set. But in terms of pure onboard features (and BIOS features too), the Gigabyte 7NNXP manages to be a cut above the rest.
The only real negative thing we can say about the 7NNXP is that it doesn’t offer much bang for your buck, as it’s approximately $60 more expensive than its slightly less featured cousin, the 7N400 Pro. The 7N400 Pro is identical to the 7NNXP in every way except for two things; lack of a second onboard LAN controller (the Intel version) and the DPS technology. For $60 less, you’d be crazy to pass up the 7N400 Pro if you don’t require the second LAN port or DPS unit. In fact, if we had to choose between the Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, ABIT NF7-S and ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, we’d choose the 7N400 Pro any day of the week. All three motherboards are priced nearly the same in the U.S., so there’s little point in passing up a motherboard that offers more features and the same performance for the exact same price tag.
Therefore, we have no problem recommending the Gigabyte 7NNXP or 7N400 Pro to Athlon XP users who desire the absolute fastest motherboard with stellar overclocking ability, in addition to the best feature set we've seen from any Athlon XP motherboard to date. Currently, we are examining DFI’s nForce2 Ultra 400 LAN Party motherboard, and it has shown potential thus far. You may want to wait for the verdict on that review, but regardless of the outcome, we can safely say you won’t be making a bad choice by purchasing Gigabyte’s 7N400 Pro or 7NNXP today.
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Anonymous User - Friday, July 11, 2003 - link
Is it really important ....Anonymous User - Friday, July 11, 2003 - link
Please Go back to The OLD way of doing reviews,without any flash!
Even better Make Charts with the numbers instead
of these unnecessary Printer head killers.
:(
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 10, 2003 - link
Regardless of the size of Flash itself, it would seem many users prefer not to use it because of Flash advertisements.For Christ's sake, it's not like GIFs are huge, and this is just annoying.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, July 9, 2003 - link
I filter all Flash/Shockwave content because of all those annoying overlay ads out there. Please revert back to something that is standards-based like plain HTML or GIF/JPG.Thanks.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, July 9, 2003 - link
The ITE chips support ATAPI devices I read, has this been tested?Anonymous User - Wednesday, July 9, 2003 - link
The board is a non-runner in my competition sinceit does NOT have HSF mounting holes! I seems as if
Gigabyte has overlooked the NEED for these holes
to save time/money on the engineering/production costs, and consquently will suffer poor sales of this part. The socket is arranged in an orientation that would preclude this part being used in a machine that will be transported any
distance with a most of the effective HSFs on the
market today. The socket arrangement should have the mounting lugs facing top to bottom to provide
against the sag of the HSF combination. Installing
the socket as they have, will result in the need for shimming (hate those things), and even then,
the mechanical stresses will be the achilles heel
of many many installations.
Sorry for the long-winded, but I have developed
this opinion through extensive use and study of the socket A specified hardware.
As for the fellow whom was looking for "any-time"
support contacts for Giga-byte? Hah!! It doesn't exist. Any inquiry I have made to thier support site seems to "get lost" for an always indeterminate time, occasionaly permantly.
It's a good thing that Giga-byte generally does
an excellent job producing thier products, (I own
20 of thier boards so-far) because if the support
side of thier business governed thier corporate
health, they would have folded by now.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, July 8, 2003 - link
The size of the Flash download is irrelevant. I don't know about the others, but I choose not to install such dreadful programs because other websites use them for extremely irritating advertisements. It's been a while since I did HTML, but is there a way that you could have the page test for Flash and then display a GIF if no flash is available? Heck, just the numbers in plain text would be fine with me if you don't want to make Flash and GIF charts. Just no loathsome Flash forced on us.Zuni - Tuesday, July 8, 2003 - link
Correction its 400k, which on a 56k modem takes a minute.http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/downl...
Zuni - Tuesday, July 8, 2003 - link
Flash is less than a 200k download, dialup can handle that no problem. GIF/PNG are 2-3 times the size of flash graphs. Over 80% of the internet uses flash, so do we at this time.Anonymous User - Tuesday, July 8, 2003 - link
What's with the Flash charts? I filter all Flash/Shockwave content so I see a big nothing there. Please revert to a standard like GIF or PNG! Thanks.