im going to get a 2500+M within a few days and wasnt sure what board to get, everyone says NF7-S is like the best for it, but i was looking and thought the AN7 had a better chipset...but i dont know exactly where these things top out so was wondering if i could get some advice...also, here i was looking at bartons, and the 2500+ and 2400+ seem the same, except operating frequency, witch is nothing because i can OC...would i lose anything by saving myself about $11

Thanks

I read a review on the AN7 here:

http://reviews.pcapex.com/motherboar..._400_ultra.php

The wise reviewer gave some good advice at the end.

so...AN7 then? oh and if you dont know, newegg has NF7-S on sale

Actually, I would go with whichever board is cheaper. There really isn't anything on the AN7 worth spending extra green on.

what about the bartons, is there realy a difference?

*bump* can anyone help me out with the bartons? im going to order in a couple hours...

When it comes down to it, the only thing you are going to get from the AN7 that is better is this...
2 additional USB 2.0 ports and a firewire port on the back of the mobo ready for use. I found my NF-7S OC's just a hair better but I would say they are pretty much on par with each other. Also, MBM5 does not support the AN7 as of yet.

Go with the NF7-S and 2500-M.
The NF7-S is a much more developed board, plus you can use the PR3ACH3R
bios which allowed me to move from my weak 230FSB to 250.

I like the NF7-S unless you want more bells and whistles which I really don't like as it adds to the total cost of a mobo; but then manufactuers would really want to make barebones mobo lets say without on-board lan and sound etc. Its just my opinon.

I think thought that the newer AN7 doesn't really have a performance difference. extras is the main difference I believe.

side by side comparison comin up...

NF7-s
$85

one optic line out which you could use to run a receiver instead of a speaker system..., onboard sound card, 2 com ports, 2 ready usb ports, and onboard lan.



AN7
$102

dual optics (if you want it...) 4 ready usb ports. and some of the same stuff as before only you lose a com port. (prolly doesn't matter no one uses them anymore anyway.)

I would say the extra money isn't really worth it. I bought the NF7-s because I read a bunch o posts in forums about people getting mad at the bios on the AN7 and I just didn't really want to worry about it. I also knew it had what I wanted because my brother also has one. Both boards do have about the same functions. Why you would want two optics I probably won't ever figure out but hey it looks good don't it? Something you also might worry about is your heatsink. Does it fit on both. Some peeps have a problem fitting the slk on this particular board even though I didn't. I did have a problem; however with the tornado fan, the clips hung over the side too far and rubbed against my power supply. Another thing to worry about is your fsb. Are you going to be able to run as much as you want as fast as you want? both borads are only capable of running up to 2gb at 400mhz. just pitching 'em out....

Go for the Abit NF7, if you really ned extra USB and firewire ports use a PCI card to take load off the south bridge, also not much need for an optical input these days either.

~Bob