nVIDIA nForece2, again

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

My main machine has just fried a southbridge, and I'm looking for a
replacement.  From what I can see, in the AMD range, the current best
performer is the nVIDIA nForece2.  I've read Bill Paul's description
of the problems with the onboard NIC, and if I buy one of these
boards, I'll certainly swell his mailbox of disgruntled nVIDIA
customers.  But at a more pragmatic level, a 100 Mb/s NIC costs
nothing, and I have a few spares floating around, so it's not that big
a deal.

Looking at what our local suppliers have to offer, the MSI K7N2 Delta
boards
(http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=436)
look reasonable, both in terms of performance and price.  Does anybody
have any experience with them?  Are there any other problems with the
chip set?  I've heard that it has an IOAPIC on it, even for single
processors.  Is this an issue?  Any other comments?  Based on what
I've read, I'd probably be putting a Barton 2600XP+ and 0.5 to 1 GB of
DDR memory into it.

Greg
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