Okay fellas I'm at a crossroad here, at first I was dead set on the Asus, but after hearing so many good things about the MSI board and the OC' potential I am downright stumped as to which one to purchase.

I want to have decent onboard sound, and I plan on OC'ing a XP 2500 Barton on it. I just want to know your opinions!

Asus A7N8X - http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=13-131-436

MSI K7N2- http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=13-130-418

If there are any other boards you guys really think are top notch, I'm open to suggestions!

Well, I have the MSI AND the BArton. That's my OC plan...

I would get an Abit NF7-S if it were me, awesome oc potential, red pcb, soundstorm certified audio, firewire, sata, lan and a sata to ide adapter. thats just me though

If what your final decision is must be one of the two boards you listed, get the MSI, but I would get the Abit NF7-S

GET THE ABIT NF7-S take it from the guy that has ran all of them daily. The Abit easily pulls 200+ FSB and super stable. And if thats not enouhg the ABIT has a jumper to force the FSB down to 100Mhz for when you go to high. that way you dont have to reset the CMOS Every time. Just change the FSB bus with the jumper and then back down a few nothces . on your way and no resetting memory timings and setting the clock etc.....

Of course if budget is a concern over that MSI and that ASUS i would consider the EPOX 8rda+

But the money you save wont be worth it. You can get the NF7-S under 130 bucks from any reputable dealer.

ITS WHAT I RUN

Of course sickly every board I own is ABIT.

It doesn't have to be between those two boards, I just remember hearing good things about both, so the Abit is what you guys suggest? Then I guess I am going with that bad boy then, money isn't really an issue, although I don't have massive amounts of money to spend. Anyways thanks for the thoughs, keep um comming!

i would suggest MSI for its features like 5.1 surround sound and from a trusty manufacturer i would go with A-bit as well but since past few weeks ive been hearing some problems about it you can check them out in this forum cpu/motherboard

ok personaly i would go witht eh asus one becaseu they have good quality controle, and sandstorm sound is one of the best, rated over the aduigy 2, 6.1 suround sound and there are a lot of toys on that board, with a 400fsb on it too it is very usefull and can be overclocked past that. i would go with the delux version because of t he sata feature and dual lan. other than that it is a great board. and i have had 2 MIS boards before and one vid card and they were both crap, one board over heated and the other one was made very ****ty. parts not sottered flat on board. but this is just me. from experence i would recoment the asus one.

The ABit NF7-S has the sandstorm audio as well!!

ah i didnt notice that, my bad

Here is what a friend had to say about the K7N2:
The MSI board works fine, but for some reason its Nforce2 chipsets dont preform as well as others, and from experence there dual channel DDR feature yeilds the work preformence over other nforce2 boards.

He e-mailed me that after I had already bought it. He reccommended the Abit Nf7 & Epox 8rda+. But for me, upgrading from a Duron 700 I won't care...

DW, the NF7-S has a jumper to set the FSB at 100? Which one is it? I didn't notice that in the manual at all.

Oh, and I just bought and NF7-S, it's nice

Quote: Originally posted by Digital-World GET THE ABIT NF7-S take it from the guy that has ran all of them daily. The Abit easily pulls 200+ FSB and super stable. And if thats not enouhg the ABIT has a jumper to force the FSB down to 100Mhz for when you go to high. that way you dont have to reset the CMOS Every time. Just change the FSB bus with the jumper and then back down a few nothces . on your way and no resetting memory timings and setting the clock etc..... Of course if budget is a concern over that MSI and that ASUS i would consider the EPOX 8rda+ But the money you save wont be worth it. You can get the NF7-S under 130 bucks from any reputable dealer. ITS WHAT I RUN Of course sickly every board I own is ABIT.

Dude, the MSI board has the 100mhz jumper too. Ive used it alot when some overclocking failed to boot the computer.