Overall Conclusion & Score

So what of things overall? It's a flagship nForce2 product in a couple of ways. The most obvious is in the use of the new chipset. Nothing more than an evolution of the original nForce2 chipset, Ultra 400 gives the platform as a whole another little boost in performance when running at the new official bus speed. In terms of the lifespan of the product, it ushers in the final chapter in 32-bit Athlon XP system performance before the 64-bit consumer hardware arrives in the fall. It's now a mature platform and the performance and complete stability of the board throughout testing shows that.

Secondly, in terms of a motherboard for all tastes, it hardly puts a foot wrong. Packed with features and not too expensive (although there are cheaper nForce2's around), it overclocks well and has excellent performance. What more could you ask for?

The only sticking points are in the eyes of the enthusiast, not much room around the socket and some middle of the road voltage options mean the overclocker gets a slightly raw deal. A bit more juice in a new BIOS would help things along and if chipset voltage could also be manipulated, ASUS would truly have a power users board.

If you're in the market for something solid, feature packed and that overclocks nicely due to the use of the new chipset, do yourself a favour and put the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 on your shopping list. Sure there may be cheaper Ultra 400 boards about to arrive, but you can't go wrong with this one if the price is to your liking.

Pro's

New chipset overclocking performance
More features than maybe any other shipping nForce2 board
Stability
Good bundle and presentation
Support for the latest CPU's without issue

Con's

More expensive than other boards
Awkward BIOS navigation (nit picking)

Overall Score

Thanks

Asus for the sample
Ray @ Pathway for my Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9700 Pro
Komplett for the digital camera used to take the shots