Well Newegg has the first nForce board I've seen readily available for the general consumer market.

The price seems a bit high, IMO. Granted, it comes with video and sound, but $187.00 worth? hmmm...

http://64.4.18.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=0daa9bb2f72d068edc0a106c9e3015bf&lat=1006885458&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2enewegg%2ecom%2fapp%2fviewproduct%2easp%3fdescription%3d13%2d130%2d312

I hope that link works.

It doesn't, do you have a better one?

Grr..sorry.

Here's a better one:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=22&manufactory=1312&DEPA=1

If that doesn't work, then goto http://www.newegg.com

Goto: product catalog->motherboards->MSI

As always, Tom's right on top of it!

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/011126/index.html

Yup, that link worked. I checked around some other sites, and the price is indeed around $190. I still plan on picking one up, because with all its integrated niceties, it'll be worth the price.

It's a little pricier than I expected. It seems that the Taiwanese mobo makers have been having trouble getting nForce boards to production. Growing pains, it's nVidia's first chipset. But when you consider you won't need to buy a Soundblaster Live or a 10/100 NIC the price isn't that far from an AMD 760 or Via KT266A based motherboard. Prices should get lower when more companies get their nForce products to market.

Brad Grenz

Yeah I'm taking a wait and see, plus I just bought this Via KT266A. The devil you know..

Actually, after reading that article on Tom's Hardware, I'm reconsidering my opinion. They seemed to find that the nForce pales in comparison to a couple of other Mobo's, both of those which I'm now very interested om.

http://www.gamepc.com

I did not agree with that Tom's Hardware review based on my analysis of the benchmark results. 1% faster denotes a "clear winner"?

Check the above link for a second opinion.

The only legitimate beef with the nForce is that you'll end up being a beta tester. But whaddaya gonna do?

"1% faster denotes a "clear winner"?"

Yeah, I have to agree with you there. They also said that nforce was "trounced" by the kt266a, which seemed like a ridiculous thing to say.

The Soyo board in that article looked pretty interesting.

I have to agree with you, that Soyo board does look very interesting, and might be the one I end up purchasing.

I've been pretty happy with the EPoX EP-8KHA+ I picked up a few weeks ago. Some people have reported instability problems with this motherboard, but I haven't seen any so far. On the other hand, I'm not overclocking my CPU.

I used to be into the overclocking scene, but I gave it up around the time I got my Pentium III 550, way back when. (I'm up to an Athlon XP 1700+ now.) It just doesn't seem to be worth the hassle anymore--you can get insanely fast processors for relatively small amounts of money now, so why bother with goofy things like connecting contacts on top of the CPU with a conductive pencil, or cutting "blowholes" in the top of your case because your CPU is now hotter than a volcano? It's nuts. I'll tweak BIOS settings to maximize the performance of what I have, but I've stopped running stuff out of spec.

Anyway, I mention all this in case you want to look at the EPoX, too. One happy benefit I received in this upgrade is that SMAC no longer locks up my system, something it used to do regularly on the Abit KT7 I ran previously.

Yeah, I was looking at the EPoX too. I don't ever plan on overclocking again, because like you said, it's not really worth the effort.

I've got an Abit KT7 right now too. I've been having all kinds of problems, especially with Diablo 2. It freezes on me all the time, but not in a predictable fashion. It's so bad that I've given up on D2 until I can upgrade. I'm considering the idea of just buying a new mobo and ram even though the rest of my system is kinda weak (Duron 800, TNT2 Ultra) just to see if that helps.

On a side note, wtf is going on with RAM prices? They're up $15-20 within the space of a week.

I can vouch for the EPoX also. I have the same board, the same chip as Lee and 512MB of Crucial RAM. It's been nice and solid.

I noticed RAM went up...no clue why other than Christmas season gouging maybe?

--Dave

Some commentary:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/22790.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/22812.html

I had originally thought of doing just that: Replace the KT7 and RAM, and wait until I had a little more dough to pick up the CPU. However, in a triumph of impulse over intellect, I ended up getting all three the same day. :-/