nForce2 400Gb

[lowereastside]

Does anyone know of a good MB that uses nVidia's nForce2 400Gb chipset? The couple that I've found don't seem to be on sale anywhere and don't seem to have been reviewed, which makes me nervous. Also, it's very difficult sometimes to determine whether a particular board acutally has the 400Gb southbridge. There are so many small variations on the naming of the nForce2 chipsets, and some manufactures don't explicity name the NB and SB chips, and some online retailers misname them. (Here's the ONE I found that undoubtedly uses the 400Gb: http://web.epox.com/USA/product.asp?id=EP-8RDA3plusPRO . And here's one that I wasn't sure about: http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/...es=1&model=205 .) About a year ago several people gave rave reviews to the reference board sporting this chipset that nVidia released. http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2...b/index.x?pg=1 But after that, nothing. Very few manufacturers seem to be utilizing it, and no one's talking about it, at least not that I can see. I guess it being an update on an old chipset doesn't help. But I'm very interested in it. I'm going to stick with my Athlon XP Mobile 2600 CPU, and I'd love to have a MB with Ethernet and SATA RAID integrated into the chipset to free up the PCI bus for my soundcard.

Any info about this chipset would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[lowereastside]

Ok.

I think I'm on the trail.

From what I can see, MSI and EPoX are the only two manufacturers who have updated their nForce2 boards to incorporate the MCP2-Gb southbridge.

The contenders are:

MSI's K7N2 Delta2 Platinum, on sale here at newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130458

and...

EPoX's EP-8RDA6+Pro, on sale here at newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813123221


Which one should I get?

Who has experience with either of these boards?

Does anyone know any others that have the Gb southbridge?

Thanks.

[rmanet]

quick answer...gotta go

seems to me I saw a review between a DFI and Soltek mobo that had the same......

[lowereastside]

Right you are, though it wasn't easy to find them.

The Soltek doesn't look very impressive to me--no active chipset cooling and I can't find it on sale or reviewed anywhere. Here it is at Soltek's site:

http://www.soltek.com.tw/soltek/prod...=SL-75FRN3-GR#

Like the Soltek, the DFI has only passive chipset cooling and I can't find a review. Here it is on DFI's site:

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pro...YPE=MB&SITE=NA

...and on sale at ZipZoomFly:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...liate=shopping

Once again, I'm asking if anyone has any experience with any of these boards. The EPoX is looking good to me because of the extra SATA ports, the active chipset cooling, and lots of space around the CPU socket for a big fan. I like overclocking my XP Mobile 2600 (at least when it's not 100 degrees in my apartment), and the EPoX looks like a good overclocker.

Horror stories? Endorsements?