New Stuph

[The Baron]

I think it's time to take this spaceheater/Thunderbird Athlon out to pasture so I could actually review stuff without it catching fire or dying of old age.

So... after reading all the stuff and looking at my bank account, I think I'll do a few things.

Abit NF7-S 2.0 (see below for discussion on this... another option is there)
Barton 3000+ (see below as well)
1 gig PC3500 Corsair XMS (no discussion here ;) )
Preferably serial ATA RAID (once again, see below, yargh)
Vantec AeroFlow HSF
Video card of SOME sort

So, the thing is, I read that there will be a minor nForce 2 refresh to add serial ATA and gigabit ether directly to the nForce 2 chip, and it's coming in a month or two. PLUS, the serial ATA drives I want (Maxtor 160 gigs) aren't out yet.

And then there's the OTHER question of the 400Mhz Bartons receiving a clockspeed bump, which would make them tastier than the 3000+ (which is generally on-par with the 3.0C and a Canterwood board right now, and is still better than a 3.0C and Springdale).

So... yeah. Wait or just go "Meh" and buy it. Going to wait at least two weeks though, have to get settled in after the move and such.

[netviper13]

AFAIK the onboard SATA controller on the NF7-S is pretty good, the only issues seen have been with the Serillel Connector, which you obviously wouldn't be using if you get actual SATA drives.

When it comes to Gigabit ethernet, I'd say it's a feature you don't really need. I mean unless you're constantly transferring multi-gigabyte files across your network, it's pretty much useless; current games would barely tax a 10mbps network, and internet that comes even close to hitting that 1000mbps mark is quite a ways off.

So basically it comes down to how long you want to keep your system and how soon you want to upgrade. If you're going to keep it a while and are ok with waiting, then it can't hurt.

[The Baron]

Well... Right now, the NF7-S 2.0 has a separate SATA controller from the actual nForce 2 chip, so it's limited by the PCI bus (IIRC). But it won't be once the SATA controller is integrated with the chipset.

Gigabit ether, I don't need anyway... ;)