Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Pro opinions?

[BombrMan]

Ok, so I would prefer a 64x2, but my employee discount at intel lets me get a pentium D real cheap, so I have to go with a Pentium D for my new system. I've been looking for SLI boards that support the Pentium D 830 and I'm leaning towards the Gigabyte GA-8N SLI Pro because it seems pretty fully featured and its $90 refurbed from the egg. Does anyone have any experience with this board as far as quality and OCing go? Are there any flaws or problems I should know about?

 

[Dillusion]

Its a very nice feature packed board. Look into the P5ND2 as I have every single stable bios for that board. The Abit NI8 SLI is nice too

 

[Formula383]

Let me start off by saying that i love gigabyte as they have great products at a resanable price. Plus all gigabyte mobo's that i have had have had ample overclockin ablities even for me and i'm bit of a entusiest and not much of a realist when it comes to overclockin. allways lookin for that extra 15% overclock above anyone else with normal everyday usage.. not that its allways posible but you get the idea I have owned 4 gigabyte mobo's one sock A, 2 sock 478's and now the 775 GA-8N-SLI PRO. And let me tell you its been the worst nitmare... i'm not sure what the problem is yet i will let you know when i get it resolved. i have been searching for info on this board since 9/11/05 thats the day i orderd the mobo and everything else from new egg, new 6800gt leadtek, 2, 1gb sticks of pc8000 ballistx ram, pentium D 830, and a GA-8N-SLI PRO. recived it the folowing monday 3day fedex. installed every think in my midtower case with my OCZ powerstreem ps 600w press the power and no post.... went threw and tested every thing that i could think of unpluging evey thing trying differnt video card powersuply nothing no post no beep... removed ram got continuos beeb.... so i called up giga-byte and asked them what they thought... they said well it must be the ballistix ram do to its speed pc8000 (lol sorry but any ram that is rated a faster speed is still defalted to stock so that mother board will see them and work just fine proving to me that the silly sounding "tech support" really have no real life expeince with computers) so i decided i dident like this tech's anwcer that only kingston ram is test to work so its the only ram that will work with this mobo.... so i called in again and got someother goffy sounding tech support guy and he says that the F1 bios doesent suport the 830 prossesor, but does support the 820.???? i said really because everywere that i have read it says that the 820 is not supported! this is why i spent the extra $60 on the 830. well he says that i should return it to newegg and get a new one so i do.. get that one back the same thing no post. So i decided to have a buddy of mine buy me some more ddr2 ram for testing so he picks up some cheap pc4200 256mb ram (samsung chips).. i couldent get them localy do to my small ass town i live in dark ages (for computers that is). pop that ram same thing happens so i call gigabyte once again and talk to there tech support and they say well give me the s/n off the mobo i do and he looks it up and it the F1 bios again so he and i alike asume it must be the none support of the 830 chip... altho i have read reviews that say this board worked with this chip moths ago in there tests... so i send the mobo back to gigabyte overnighted as i was geting impatient and then it takes them 2weeks to flash a bios thank gigabyte honestly...
and so now i have the mobo back again and still no post so i decide that it must be the dual core cpu.. i ordered a cheap celleron for $76 off of newegg 326 LGA775 2.53Ghz got it in today and still no post... called gigabyte yet again, and they said its my video card??? i have no idea lol so i'm venturing out to the big city tommorow to see if i can test my components there at a local shop i shal return with ancers soon

 

[therapist]

I have the same board as Formula383 but with an 840 extreme edition and when I first got it would not post either. Finally i found out it was one of the external USB ports as soon as I disconnected it it would finally boot. Now I am getting blue screens left and right. Have tried different hd, memory, power supplies, processors, cables, and I also tried all 3 bioses. A friend of mine said he had a lot of issues with F2 and F3 versions of bioses so I flashed back to f1 and now no boot. must of screwd up the flash. I am not impressed with this board since I have replaced almost everything wiht no luck getting rid of the bluescreens.

 

[Formula383]

As for my GA-8N-SLI Pro it turns out its a great board wiht little or no flaws... I went to the local computer shop to have them look at my system and see what was wrong... They had no idea why it wasent posting, however did manage to get it to post out of the case as i had tryed earlyer and had failed.. then we put it back in the case and it worked fine... brought it home worked for about 4hr's and then poof no post.... So i take it out of the case still no post... it was late so i said piss on it.

Next day i went back to the local shop and picked up a ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe (as i have had good luck with asus mobo's in the past) it was a bit spendy @ $250 for a 167 board on newegg but damnit i wanted it to work now! While i was at the shop we also tryed a abit Nforce4 and a abit 955x mobo with poor luck on both one locked up in the bios and the other 955x had very limited oc features compared to the N4 chipset. So i take the asus home after testing it at the store and seeeing it worked.

Got home put the shit in the case and no post! i was not happy. so i pulled it out of the case and then it posts and i started to wonder could it really be a case thats "no good"
sure enough i both the asus and the gigabyte mobos work great in other cases...

So i guess i learned my lesson never rule out anything! but it was had to know for sure do to it working for 4hr's in that case and the case had allways worked fine before that with my old mobo's but me and the guys at the shop could see nothing wrong with it soo i dont know.

At any rate i'm very pleased with both mobo's. I spent about tones of time overclockin them both.. well worth the time got my 830 running up to 4.1Ghz on water and it's rock solid at 4.0Ghz supper happy with that and as for the good old celeryonion well it aint doing to bad either it pulls a 4.2 on air and is rock solid at 4.1Ghz on air!!! oh yea and did i mention that thats a 2.53ghz stock chip! wow! i honestly couldent recomend a beter chip for only $76 on newegg

i got lots of screen picks but i have no idea how to make them work and i will see about geting them posted asap

edit:
Is this i good board yes! both are great no complaints. took some time to learn all the setings for over clockin but i got my ballistix pc8000 mem runing 711 @ 3,3,3,9,12 T1
and well to me that damn inpressive.

However,
The whole reason that i was upgrading was for the nvidia raid on board for faster hard drives. Due to my friend having his nforce3 winne runing 2 wd250gb drives in raid 0 pulling a inpressive 110MB/sec ... well no such luck for me both the asus with 2 ide wd200gb only pull 45MB/sec and the gigabyte has 2 wd250gb sata and they pull 55MB/sec Not impressed!! at all... so i dont know whats going on with the nforce4 raid but i dont like it...
So i wait and hope that i find some info on why they are soo slow on the nforce4..
I guess i'll just endup buying that scsi drive after all

 

[therapist]

I guess I can retract my original statement of the board. My corsair memory is supposed to run at 1.9v and the board defaulted to 1.8v. Increased the voltage to 1.9 and have had no issues since.