A7V600 or A7N8X

[lexdiamond20]

Want to know which one to get. Will be bundled with AMD Barton 2500 and 512 Kingston PC-2700. Im not really into oc'ing but might experiment with it later. The reason im thinking of getting A7V600 is because it has serial ATA.

[saphalline]

If it has SATA, then by all means get it! I think only the expensive Deluxe versions of the A7N8X have SATA. Both Asus mobo's should have plenty of OC'ing features if you want to mess with that.

As for the chipsets, it's true that the A7N8X uses the NForce2 chipset and therefore has dual-channel RAM, but I find most of that goes to waste on the AMD platform. The CPU itself just doesn't have the bandwidth of the P4 and therefore only gets a small boost from dual-channel. Benchmarks show 3-10% on average, with 10% being very hard to hit and only in certain games.

IMO, if you want better game performance, you're better off getting an expensive graphics card! CPU power, RAM, and graphics cards are the only sure-fire way to improve gaming performance. Playing "chipset roulette" only gets you so far.

[Deagle]

If given the above 2 choices, I would go with the A7N8X. The reason is because of the stability of the Nforce2 chipset. Via KT chipset just can't compete with it. As for SATA, it won't be too much of an increase over PATA until SATA II. Although I agree with Sap that a powerful vid card will improve gaming more than any chipset.

[saphalline]

Both very valid points, Deagle, and I would personally agree with you. I like the NForce2 chipset very much, and SATA isn't a total draw. However, SATA 1.0 is still attractive and for those who don't want to upgrade their mobo every 9 months, banking on a little future-proofing isn't a bad idea. Besides, we don't know which version of the A7N8X is getting bundled in. If it's the original version, it won't support the 200MHz FSB and isn't all that stable anyway.

I guess you really have to decide if you want SATA, or if the NForce2 chipset is more attractive to you. If you go with the A7N8X, check the version number. 2.0 is the latest I believe, and is equipped with the NForce2 Ultra 400 chipset version.