What new, cheap(!), trouble-free socket A board?

[Liquid Snake]

Maybe I got lucky, but my Asus A7N8X Deluxe hasn't ever given me any troubles, except for SATA but it wasn't a big deal since I don't use it.

Actually my K7S5A gave me more trouble than the A7N8X. I could never get it working with two SDRAM modules unless I used a 450W PC P&C PSU. DDR RAM worked fine.

[rugger]

Oh ok Dr Mordrid,

First time I had heard about the the AGP problems. Can you provide me with any links to confirm your claims? (for my reference)

However your second complaint about the hypertransport bus doesn't really hold water ... whether it is 800mb or 1000mb doesn't really matter, they are both way overspec for an athlon system.

[Dr Mordrid]

I got my info during a beta so that source has to remain undercover, but it is a real issue. Apparently their AGP issue extends into the nForce3 (Athlon64) chipset as well;

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030923/athlon_64-06.html

The extremely low AGP performance of the NForce3 can be clearly attributed to problems with the HyperTransport channel interface to the Northbridge. That is proven by the benchmark results and the performance differences of up to 33.2 percent. Details about this can be found in the benchmark section of this article.

Might be related since the archetectures are very similar. The SiS 755 is making such a splash mainly because it's not hampered by AGP/hypertransport issues.

Dr. Mordrid

[Marshmallowman]

nforce 3 defintely has problems, but I think the agp on nforce 2 is not to bad, in fact is probably quite reaonable from a gaming standpoint,

But PCI does seem to be slighlty underperfroming, The IDE controllers are ok, as long as you stick with the MS drivers. I am using the latest nv ones and the ide performance is good, but compatibilty is bad.
The first time I installled them windows stopped booting, and when I did get them working and installed sonic mydvd , the DLA thingy launcher also stopped windows from booting..AGAIN.

I reasonably happy with my a7n8x, it is stable once you get things configured, and the fact it DEFINTELY suports at least 2 dimms at 200mhz fsb was the deciding factor for me.

[rugger]

Yeah, I switched from the Nforce2 ITB caching drivers to the standard nforce2 drivers because it didn't like my liteon cd-rw very much.

Not entirely happy about that.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
nforce 3 defintely has problems, but I think the agp on nforce 2 is not to bad, in fact is probably quite reaonable from a gaming standpoint,

But PCI does seem to be slighlty underperfroming, The IDE controllers are ok, as long as you stick with the MS drivers. I am using the latest nv ones and the ide performance is good, but compatibilty is bad.
The first time I installled them windows stopped booting, and when I did get them working and installed sonic mydvd , the DLA thingy launcher also stopped windows from booting..AGAIN.

I reasonably happy with my a7n8x, it is stable once you get things configured, and the fact it DEFINTELY suports at least 2 dimms at 200mhz fsb was the deciding factor for me.

The NV IDE drivers work absolutely fine on a fresh install. They seem to bork quite badly if used as an update -not everytime though...

Otherwise, their IDE controllers are quite fast.

[DentyCracker]

sonic mydvd is EVIL. It has fuxX0r3d a few installations. I think I got it with my ldw411s. Of course I refused to install it given the horror stories i heard about it.

[Kooldino]

*knocks on wood*

my Nforce2 (A7N8x Deluxe) has never given me any real issues.

[Helevitia]

My vote: Asus A7N8X-X

[Schorsch]

I bought a SIS748-based AOpen AK76F-400N a while ago and I am extremely happy with it, but in comparison to the Asrock K7S8XE+ it probably won't count as "cheap" (the AOpen costs 70 EUR while the Asrock can be found for 50 EUR or even less)...