I recently built a system for a gamer using a Gigabyte 7N400L-1, an Athlon 2600+ (2.13Ghz) and 512 DDR 400 ram.  It runs extremely well. 

The only glitch occurred after he fired it up and started playing Medal of Honor.  Even with the CD in the drive it kept asking for the disk to be inserted, and the same thing happened with Battlefield 1942.

The salesguy at the wholesaler kept insisting that my customer's CD's were probably damaged, but that didn't seem right, as the problem was occurring with 4 different game CD's and I couldn't duplicate the glitch on my own system.

Finally I got to talk to the wholesaler's tech guy who said straight off, 'Get new nForce chipset drivers'.

That fixed the prob instantly - it was just buggy IDE drivers on the original motherboard CD.  The nForce chipsets are still newish and the latest driver pack was all that was needed.

I'd use the board again without hesitation.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: James Maki 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2003 9:17 AM
  Subject: [PCBUILD] nVidia nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset


  I am planning a new system build and am (at least initially) attracted to
  the motherboards from MSI and GigaByte with the indicated chipset. The
  boards seem very feature rich and potentially fast, but a search of some of
  the forums seems to indicate some problems (at least some vocal advocates of
  problems). Does anyone have first hand experience with the MSI K7N2
  Delta-ILSR or GigaByte GA-7N400 Pro motherboards? Any reviews (i.e.,Tom's
  Hardware and Anandtech, etc.) seem to give the boards very glowing reports.

  While in a bit of a bind last year, having to replace a motherboard at
  minimal cost, I installed an ECS K7S5A. It had many horrible reviews and bad
  press, but I have been satisfied with it performance. Not stellar, but
  dependable. I am wondering if the true story with the nForce2 boards might
  be similar. Some problems but a majority of satisfied users.

  Thanks for any input.

  Jim Maki
  [log in to unmask]

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