Legit Reviews

My main computer I'm upgrading my 7600GT to an 8800GT (and the PSU with it). I have a second box (also used for gaming) that is running an old P4 on AGP, well past its use-by date.

Given prices, I've decided to reuse the 7600 + old PSU and other parts to budget upgrade on the second box. I'm going to get an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane and I want to get a $70-100 board so that with a couple GB of RAM, I can get a pretty nice upgrade for a little over $200.

I've owned a couple Asus boards and my main has an SLI Deluxe that is great. When I read that the M2N-E http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131022 is a stripped version of it, I thought I had a good candidate until I read that part of the strip-down was removing OC features.

Other options I'm currently considering are the Gigabyte GA-M57 SLI-S4 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128014 and MSI K9N4 SLI-F http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813130071.

I'm not looking for a future-proof board, so AM2+ isn't a concern. Nor do I need SLI. Aside from decent OC options, I just want a solid board. One that won't double as a toaster oven would be nice. I don't constantly tweak settings; once I find something stable, I'll leave it at that until the next upgrade.

Does anyone have experience/input?

Apologies is this a repeat post, but the most recent thread I saw on these lines was from about 10 months ago.

I have a M2N-E it's not a real good OC board, has enough features including AI OC, AI gear, OC profile but the voltage control isn't real good on that board. I just got mine back from an RMA to Asus and they replaced it with a new board that exhibits the same poor voltage regulation. If it's any help take a look at the M3A thread in this forum, it's AM2/AM2+ was 97 over at the egg. NB cooler is passive heat sink, I put a $4 scythe fan on it and it clocks pretty good with the X2. It's a little new, only the 2nd bios revision. On the M2N-E I had a x2 3800, x2 4200, and x2 6400 couldn't get a solid OC on any of them, popped the 6400 on the M3A 5 minutes tinkering and 3.52 solid. Not much head room on this chip but it passes Orthos, CPU-Z, and OCCT. Pros pcie 2.0, HT 3.0, forward compatible with Quad. Cons, passive heat sink NB, limited on board fan connectors, 4 sata.

Thanks for the answer, and all the good information in your other thread.

Read some more, and going to order from newegg now.

More than welcome and BTW welcome to the forums!